ACS Essentials of Lab Safety for General Chemistry

It is intended to be used prior to the first day in the lab for any general chemistry course. It can be taken once or repeated for Lab 1 and Lab 2 for Gen Chem if that matches your department needs. It may also be used for other courses such as Organic Chemistry Lab and even Biology, but an ACS course specific to the risks posed in organic chemistry lab, ACS Essentials of Lab Safety for Organic Chemistry, is available.

This course is designed for an introductory audience and covers the basics of safety in any educational lab. This course would serve high school students very well.

While much of the material is universally appropriate to learn in this circumstance, there are portions that would not apply to students using at home lab kits, for example, the material discussing use of chemical hoods, eyewash stations, and safety showers as these items would not be found in a typical home. The course also does not offer specific instructions for students conducting experiments outside of a laboratory.

The entire course takes approximately 90 minutes to complete. It can be done in one sitting or in several. Learners’ progress will be automatically saved, and they can come back to where they left off at any time.

The course consists of 6 main sections that are broken into 30 subsections. Each subsection may take on average 2–5 minutes to complete. The module length varies depending on the type of content and the level of interaction required. The entire course takes approximately 90 minutes to complete.

Remember, the course is not simply a video, or even a series of videos. The course consists of a variety of interactive lessons and video content. Learners must progress through each lesson, answer questions, and play each video before they can move to the next subsection. Learners do have some capability to fast forward and rewind videos. Instructors will be able to see the progress of each learner and any content they may have attempted to skip.

The gated experience with the enabled scrub bar is by design so that learners who are reading the transcript could then go faster through the VO. We can look into changing it if is a deal-breaker, but we suggest leaving it as is.

A shorter or “refresher” version is not currently available. The course is comprised of six digestible learning modules and can be repeated if that matches your department’s need. Additionally, ACS Essentials for Lab Safety for Organic Chemistry goes deeper into this material and makes it more specific for organic chemistry students. Remember, students are expected to complete this course on their own time.

Since the GHS system was implemented in 2015 and is followed worldwide, we have focused primarily on familiarizing learners with the GHS pictograms. The course does mention that there are other symbols that may appear in the labs and encourage the learners to follow up with their instructors.

We are aware of these issues and plan to have a new release out before fall with some accessibility remediation fixes.

Instructors can see the completed percentage of each linked student in their LMS. In addition, the last module, A Day in the Lab, is a series of questions that are graded and assess students’ understanding of the topics covered in this course.

The assessment has 15 total questions, with 3 questions coming from each of the 5 modules. We have 2 versions available. In one version, the students need to get all 15 questions in the “A Day in the Lab” assessment correct to pass. The other version requires that the students get 2 of the 3 questions associated with each module correct to pass.

For those who do not answer enough questions associated with a particular lesson to pass, they are required to complete a brief review to reinforce key concepts from that lesson—then they pass. They are not required to retake the assessment nor are they required to go through an entire Lesson/Module all over again.

For any lessons they do not pass during the final assessment, they are sent through a brief review to reinforce the key takeaways. After the review, they pass the assessment. Instructors can also review students’ performance and request that they take the course again as many times as needed, during the semester.

Yes! The student receives a digital certificate upon completion.

The course is tooled with xAPI and can report grades. There should be a setting in your LMS to receive them. If you are unable to correct the problem, please contact institute@acs.org and we are happy to help.

This course is hosted and delivered via your school’s LMS. We will provide the course in a SCORM package that you can upload to your learning management system, AICC package, LTi 1.1 or LTi 1.3. Our team will help your LMS administrators set up the course and handle any questions or concerns along the way. View a detailed list of system requirements. https://solutions.acs.org/solutions/institute/acs-essentials-of-lab-safety-for-general-chemistry/

To use this course in an academic setting and LMS is required. Without LMS integration, the ability to track students’ performance, assign the course, and other administrative features are not available.

We require someone at the school serving as an LMS administrator to load the course. In some cases, this may be a faculty member. An ACS team member will be available to aid in this process.

The institution typically covers the cost and price is roughly based on the total volume of students who will be using the course. Typical purchases cover 1–3 years of use and are situated to ensure that schools have the capacity to flex up and down in the number of students who use the class without experiencing interruption or additional fees. Cost is tailored to meet each school’s unique circumstances and quotations are available by getting in touch with us.

There are no pre-set limits, but the cost is roughly proportional to the number of students you plan to enroll in the course. We need an approximate number during the setup and price quotation process to scale your adoption appropriately.

We can typically provide installation assistance within a week of a confirmed order. Should you have expedited needs, let us know and we will do everything we can to accommodate your timeline.

Once they complete the course, the modules will be fully open so they can return to whichever module they would like.

In most cases, students can revisit the course for the duration of the semester in which they began the course.