Chemistry Department at Lima

ALEKS  prep opens seven weeks prior to the first General Chemistry class day for you to begin the required skill review and pre-course preparation.  You may begin 7 weeks before the term, or at any point after that, up to the first day of classes. This review and prep is best completed over several weeks and as rigorously as possible BEFORE the term starts.  Students with sufficient background in math and chemistry will find many of the prep topics familiar, while students with weaker backgrounds may find a number of topics to be new to them. However, all students will benefit from this opportunity to refresh and enhance their incoming knowledge.  The prep portion will be due just after the term begins.

Getting started using ALEKS for General Chemistry Preparation

Once you have enrolled in CHEM 1210...go to www.aleks.com, click on “New User, Sign Up Now” and enter the *course code* in the boxes provided.

*You can get the course code for your class from the handout provided at an on-campus orientation, from OSU-Lima advising, and through the CHEM 1210 course Carmen site (https://carmen.osu.edu). Also check your OSU email because codes are periodically sent out to all enrolled students. You may also request the course code by emailing Ruth Kinder at kinder.9@osu.edu.

What happens next?
ALEKS will teach you a bit about the available tools and then you will be asked to do an initial assessment.  The initial assessment may take as little as 20 minutes or as long as 90 minutes.  Most take about 45-60 minutes.  You MAY stop at any point and ALEKS will save your work and let you begin again later where you left off.  Do not continue working in ALEKS when you are too tired or too distracted to perform well. Once you have completed your initial assessment, ALEKS will open topics for you to work on.  You may work on any topics that are selected as available for you.

Initial Assessment
Do the initial assessment carefully and honestly! It is the way ALEKS finds out about YOU, what you already know, and what you are therefore ready to learn. If you do this assessment carelessly or answer randomly, you’ll waste time later because ALEKS will force you to work through material you already know and don’t really need to review.   On the other hand, there is no advantage to consulting outside resources - such as a textbook or a friend - to improve your assessment score.  Then, the assessment will just take you much longer and when you enter the learning mode ALEKS will try to teach you things you are not really ready to learn.  The occasional progress assessments will discover this, and you’ll spend even more time in learning than is necessary.  IT IS A WASTE OF TIME to play games with the ALEKS assessments.  Always read and follow the instructions very carefully.  NEVER! EVER!  Click the “I don't know” button during any ALEKS assessment unless you really don't have any idea of how to do the problem.  Otherwise, ALEKS may think you don't know a bunch of things you actually do know and take you way back and make you "learn" them.
The initial assessment might take close to an hour.  The strongest students will get more difficult questions (the test adapts to you), and may take as long as an hour and a half.  (But these students will spend much less time in the learning mode!).

What is "Learning Mode"? Once the initial assessment has determined what you remember, you will enter a learning mode where you can work to add to your knowledge. As you work in the learning mode you will take occasional progress assessments to confirm retention of previous material. You can expect a progress assessment to trigger whenever your instructors have decided it is a good point for you to be asked to recall what you have been learning.  A lot of learning actually takes place based on “forgetting” and the “remembering” so try to believe in the value of these of these periodic assessments to your overall learning process.  This is mastery based learning and it WILL feel different than “digest-regurgitate-forget” style learning.
Everyone will have a different assessment profile and need to focus on different topics and skills.  When you use ALEKS, you complete the learning tasks you need and not those somebody else needs.  ALEKS provides one-on-one instruction tailored specifically to you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from virtually any computer with access to the web. 

In Learning Mode you'll study topics by doing problems in them. You'll have to do several problems in the same topic correctly for ALEKS to conclude you've mastered the topic. How many can vary, depending on what kind of mistakes you make, if any.  The fastest way to be awarded credit is to be methodical and careful.  Get three or four in a row correct and you'll be done.  Get one right, then one wrong, then another two right, then one wrong, and you could be there a long time.  ALEKS puts a real premium on solving a problem perfectly, every i dotted and t crossed -- units correct and complete, answers rounded to the correct number of significant
figures, names spelled correctly, not a single small careless error.

This is not to say you can't make mistakes in ALEKS and do just fine. ALEKS can detect a pretty wide range of mistakes and give you useful feedback about them, and you will certainly move through the system, even if you make many small mistakes all the time.  But the system does reward being careful, so -- take your time and get it right. You'll be rewarded with needing to spend less time.

In Learning Mode you'll also have access to learning resources.  You can ask ALEKS to show you how to solve any problem you're given, in every detail.  (ALEKS will then ask you to solve another, similar but not identical, problem on your own.)  There are hyperlinks in these Explanations that will take you to the ALEKSPaedia, a built-in "encyclopedia" of general chemistry that has more general and background knowledge you may need.

An unfortunate but absolutely necessary aspect of this re-assessment is that you can lose credit for topics which you have forgotten.  If this happens -- or rather WHEN it happens, since it will almost certainly happen to all of you, and more than once -- then you will have to restudy the topics in Learning Mode and re-gain credit for them.  That's more work, of course, so the lesson here is: learn topics thoroughly the first time, so you can demonstrate your mastery of them any time, on any re-assessment, for the rest of the course.

(ALEKS also has a Review feature, where you can do a little extra work on topics that feel a little shaky.  In fact, ALEKS will even suggest which topics you should review, based on its data and your own record. A judicious use of the Review feature will make it much less likely you have to re-study many topics.)

ALEKS Technical Support
VERY IMPORTANT

No one in the department of chemistry at OSU LIMA can provide you with technical support for ALEKS.  Fortunately, ALEKS  provides this at http://support.aleks.com

It's designed to run as painlessly as possible, but with the huge variety of computers and browsers and set-ups out there, sometimes you may need some technical assistance to get things running, or iron some strange behaviour out.

Call ALEKS Customer Support.  Your instructors can't help at all with this, but ALEKS has people who know all about computers on staff, and they will work with you to fix any technical problems as fast as possible.  Your fastest response is to go to the Support website,
http://support.aleks.com/, and describe the problem in detail. Someone will e-mail you or call you promptly.

If you have questions before classes begin, contact Ruth Kinder using kinder.9@osu.edu or Dr. Ewan Hamilton using hamilton.40@osu.edu.

Chemistry: The Central Science 12th Edition

Brown, LeMay, Bursten, Murphy & Woodward

9780321696724 (hardcover)

9780321705051 (eText)

9780321741455 (binder ready)

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

Used (online)

NO Mastering Chemistry Access code is needed

same text is used for CHEM 1220

ALEKs General Chemistry

1 Semester license OR include CHEM 1220 with a 1 year license

(see "ALEKS" below)

see direct credit card purchase

ISBN for bookstore pending (from bookstore)

direct credit card purchase from http://www.aleks.com

Lima campus bookstore-PREORDER!

A course code from the instructor is required to start (see email and Carmen).

Lab Manual for OSU CHEM 1210 Au13

Custom published

9780738059136

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

must be NEW

Spiral Bound Lab Notebook with Duplicate Pages 

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

must be NEW

same lab notebook style is used for CHEM 1220, CHEM 1250, CHEM 2540, CHEM 2550

What is ALEKS and why is it being used before and during Chem 1210 and during Chem 1220? 

To increase your chances of success in Chem 1210 and 1220 we are using ALEKS as a required component to rapidly and accurately identify your strengths or weaknesses and help you build your knowledge. ALEKS will be with you to help you learn the Chem 1210 & 1220 material as we move forward (10 percent of your total grade will be calculated based on your performance in this system).

ALEKS is a powerful artificial-intelligence based teaching tool.  ALEKS first assesses what you know and don’t know, and reports the results of this assessment to you and your instructors. Once ALEKS determines what you have remembered and what you have forgotten (or never learned before) about the course content, it will teach you only those things meeting the following criteria:
A) You don't already know how to do an item (though these can be reviewed at any time in ALEKS by clicking the tab labeled “Review”)
B) You are ready to learn it, based on what you already know.

ALEKS will rarely force you to "learn" material you already know, nor will it try to teach you things for which your foundational skills make you unlikely to succeed.
ALEKS has some specific quite useful features:

It is critical that you take a few moments to learn to use the ALEKs calculator. It is VERY important to use it to solve numerical problems within ALEKS because your responses will be evaluated based on the values of constants and atomic masses stored within and available from the calculator.  Using any other calculator will be less efficient and may lead to answers that the system does not recognize as correct!  Using the ALEKs calculator well involves calling atomic masses and constants directly into the calculator so learning to do this will streamline your interaction with ALEKs.

Use the color-coded pie slices and list of topics to guide your individual work in ALEKs.

Occasional review suggestions will pop up when you log in (or can be accessed at any time by hitting the “Review” tab).  These are important! They stress what ALEKs is not sure you have mastered and what WILL be on your next assessment.  We have found that it is best to clear these review topics at your earliest opportunity since uncleared review topics are likely to lengthen your next assessment.

Getting started using ALEKS for your General Chemistry course-Gen CHEM 1 (1210) or Gen CHEM 2 (1220)
Purchase an ALEKS access code.

Purchase a 1 semester license (~$40.00) to just cover Chem 1210 or Chem 1220.

Or purchase a 1 year license (~$70 to cover both 1210 and 1220)

If you have been working in the General Chemistry Prep ALEKS, you will simply need to sign into your account and select "Sign up for a new class"

If you are in CHEM 1220, or for some reason did not work in the General Chemistry Prep ALEKS, go to www.aleks.com

Click on “New User, Sign Up Now”

Fill out the credit card and personal information - purchase of this user code is nonrefundable

You will receive a 20 character alpha-numeric string.  Please enter this access code when prompted and continue following the instructions to complete the registration process.

Shrink-wrapped access codes may be purchased on campus. The bookstore price will be slightly higher than direct online price. You will need to PREORDER a shrinkwrapped code directly from the bookstore!!

Contact Ruth Kinder (kinder.9@osu.edu) for more information about a temporary two week license.

If you have questions before classes begin, contact Ruth Kinder using kinder.9@osu.edu or Dr. Ewan Hamilton using hamilton.40@osu.edu.

Chemistry: The Central Science 12th Edition

Brown, LeMay, Bursten, Murphy & Woodward

9780321696724 (hardcover)

9780321705051 (eText)

9780321741455 (binder ready)

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

Used (online)

NO Mastering Chemistry Access code is needed

same text is used for CHEM 1210

ALEKs General Chemistry

1 Semester license OR include both CHEM 1210 & 1220 with a 1 year license

see direct purchase

ISBN for bookstore pending (from bookstore)

direct credit card purchase from http://www.aleks.com

Lima campus bookstore-PREORDER!

A course code from the instructor is required to start (see email and Carmen).

Lab Manual for OSU CHEM 1220

Custom published

9780738059129

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

must be NEW

Required Lab Notebook

(if last one is full)

Spiral Bound Lab Notebook with Duplicate Pages 

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

same lab notebook style is used for CHEM 1220, CHEM 1250, CHEM 2540, CHEM 2550

Chemistry for Engineering Students, 2nd Edition

Brown & Holme

9781439047910

Lima campus bookstore

Used (online)

Lab Manual for OSU CHEM 1250

Custom published

ISBN pending

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

must be NEW

Spiral Bound Lab Notebook with Duplicate Pages 

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

Organic Chemistry: Short Course

Hart

978111425562

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

HSG Molecular Structure Model Set

9780716748229

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus Bookstore

http://www.whfreeman.com/catalog

Organic Chemistry -Structure and Function 6th Edition

Vollhardt and Schore

9781429204941 (hardcover)

9781429289870 (interactive eText)

9781429231480 (pdf style eBook)

9781429263733 (binder ready)

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

http://www.whfreeman.com/catalog

packages of text, study guide, model set are available

Study Guide/Solutions for 6th Edition

9781429231367

Lima campus bookstore

http://www.whfreeman.com/catalog

HSG Molecular Structure Model Set

0716748223

Lima campus bookstore

http://www.whfreeman.com/catalog

same materials as CHEM 2510

same text as used for CHEM 2510 and 2520

Organic Chemistry Laboratory CH 2540 Manual-2013- 2014

Callam & Paul

ISBN pending

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

Spiral Bound Lab Notebook with Duplicate Pages 

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

same text as used for CHEM 2510 and 2520

Organic Chemistry Laboratory CH 2550 Manual-2013-2014

Callam & Paul

ISBN pending

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

Spiral Bound Lab Notebook with Duplicate Pages 

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

Basic Chemistry, Custom Edition

Timberlake

Custom published for OSU-best deal! (~ $67.00!)

9781256593171

(binder ready)

Lima campus bookstore

Columbus campus bookstore

http://www.mypearsonstore.com

NO Mastering Chemistry Access code is needed

Chemistry 1110 Lab Experiments, Exercises, and Tutorials-Lima campus

Kinder

ISBN pending

Lima campus bookstore only

This course will be taught through Biology in Spring 2014