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About Us

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ChemVantage LLC was founded in 2010 to provide Open Education Resources for teaching and learning General Chemistry. The founder and chief software architect of ChemVantage is Chuck Wight, who has taught General Chemistry since 1984 at the University of Utah, Weber State University and now Salisbury University.

Chemistry is usually taught from a problem-solving approach, and students need lots of practice to build a solid foundation for solving scientific problems. We create web sites that provide immediate feedback so that students can learn problem-solving skills without having to wait for their assignments to be graded by a human instructor.

Web sites with dynamic content like this one are best used as learning tools, not assessment or testing tools. For this reason, we have configured the assignments to allow unlimited submissions so students may improve their scores. However, instructors have the option of restricting the number of submissions to ChemVantage or the number of graded submissions (using the options in the LMS) or both.

Textbook Alignment

Most modern General Chemistry textbooks follow a similar method of organizing the course content, although the depth of coverage may vary. ChemVantage offers assignments in 44 different topic areas, so it's easy to find a set that matches the organization of nearly any textbook. Furthermore, the instructor can select quiz/homework/exam questions that have the appropriate level of difficulty for the class being offered.

The default set of ChemVantage topics is designed to match the OpenStax OER textbooks, Chemistry 2e or Chemistry: Atoms First 2e.

Instructors

ChemVantage is a great resource for teachers and professors because it leverages your institution's learning management system (e.g., Canvas, Model, Blackboard, Desire2Learn or Sakai) using the LTI standard. This allows your LMS to handle all passwords, role assignments and security. To connect your LMS to ChemVantage, please visit our LTI registration page. After registration, instructors can customize quiz and homework assignments for their classes using the instructor tools in each assignment.

Teaching Assistants

An instructor may assign any LMS user to be a teaching assistant. This role is recognized by ChemVantage. Teaching assistants may view solutions to homework exercises to provide guidance to students on some of the more challenging problems.

Authors

Any instructor wishing to contribute question items for quiz or homework assignments may do this using the instructor tools accessible in the assignments. A ChemVantage editor will review and edit them before including it in the database. The copyrights to all question items at this site are owned entirely by ChemVantage LLC. The only way that we can keep costs low enough to offer free services to both students and instructors is to avoid paying royalties. Therefore, we ask all contributors of ChemVantage question items to certify that all contributed items are original works, and that the author assigns the copyrights to ChemVantage LLC to be shared freely under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Learning Management System Integration

ChemVantage is certified by 1edtech-logo to be conformant with the LTI Advantage Complete standard for learning tools interoperability. You can find the current 1EdTech certification document here. The certification ensures that you can configure compatible learning management systems with an LTI link to ChemVantage. This allows your LMS to establish a trusted relationship with ChemVantage without having to maintain any usernames and passwords. ChemVantage reports the assignment scores back to the LMS grade book automatically. Your LMS administrator can register your LMS with ChemVantage at our LTI registration page.

Web Site Accessibility

ChemVantage is committed to providing accessible content for its users. The site is in substantial compliance with The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as measured by Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which is our target level of compliance. If you experience difficulty accessing any ChemVantage resource, or if you have questions or suggestions regarding accessibility of our site, please let us know through the ChemVantage Feedback Page or by using the contact information at the bottom of this page.