Moving towards a more equitable approach to teaching general chemistry in an urban metropolitan university setting

The successful implementation of pedagogical approaches involves considering many aspects of context. Every semester is a refinement process through student feedback and continuous improvement toward alignment with course goals. This presentation will discuss the context of teaching general chemistry at the University of Missouri - St. Louis and how Aktiv Chemistry (formerly Chem101) helped us bridge the digital divide made evident at the start of the pandemic in the Spring of 2020. We will also outline the iterative progression of using the platform to help engage students inside and outside the classroom. In the most recent semester of its use, we will detail a scholarship of teaching and learning project where we assessed whether students’ understanding of the reason for its implementation and how it fostered learning was made transparent. Lessons learned about effective communication of the intention of using Aktiv Chemistry with students will be shared.