Active learning gets a lot of attention in education, and for good reason. But what often gets overlooked is the foundation beneath it: the instructional design that makes it all work. When done well, it doesn’t just help students understand the material—it guides how they move through it, often without even realizing how much time they’re spending thinking, solving, and engaging like real chemists.
That’s the kind of experience REAL CHEM is designed to create.
It starts with structure: concepts are introduced clearly, at the right moment—never too early, never too late. Students are guided through a sequence that makes sense: a short video that sparks interest, a challenge that invites exploration, a prompt that nudges them to pause and reflect—and before they know it, they’ve spent 45 minutes inside a learning flow without checking their phone.
They’re not overwhelmed, confused, or stuck—they’re moving through the course with clarity, where every click has meaning, every step builds on the last, and the entire experience feels intuitive because it was designed that way from the start.
Designed to Do More Than Deliver Content
A lot of online chemistry platforms are built to deliver content, but not to support learning. They hand students the material, press play on a video, and leave them to figure it out on their own. When confusion sets in or a misconception takes hold, there’s often nothing in place to catch it. No feedback loop, no moment to pause and redirect, just a quiet drift further from understanding.
REAL CHEM takes a different approach, one that prioritizes guidance, not just exposure. Every part of the course is built around what students need to know and how they learn it best. It starts with the learning objective and builds a path that helps students move toward it with structure, clarity, and support.
Key ideas are introduced through short, focused videos that create curiosity without cognitive overload. From there, scaffolded practice breaks complex problems into manageable steps, encouraging students to stay with it instead of giving up. When they veer off course, adaptive feedback helps them stop, rethink, and try again—without handing them the answer. They’re not just reviewing content; they’re working through it, building understanding as they go.
This kind of structure doesn’t just benefit students—it takes pressure off instructors, too. With a system that supports learning in real time, instructors don’t have to constantly step in to re-explain or re-teach. The course is already doing that work—so students stay supported, and instructors stay focused on what matters most.
Why REAL CHEM’s Design Matters
A lot of chemistry courseware gets built around content, then tries to retrofit assessments and outcomes afterward. REAL CHEM works in the opposite direction: it starts with what students actually need to learn and then builds the instruction, practice, and feedback around those goals from the very beginning.
That structure is grounded in a learning design triangle that connects objectives, content, and assessment so every piece of the course supports a clear skill or concept. Students aren’t just watching videos or completing assignments, they’re following a carefully designed sequence that builds knowledge step by step, with scaffolded practice and timely feedback along the way.
This model was developed in collaboration with faculty and learning experts from Arizona State University and Carnegie Mellon University, two institutions known for leading-edge work in digital learning and instructional design. Their expertise helped shape a course that’s not only rooted in research, but built for real classrooms, real students, and real teaching.
With that foundation in place, students don’t just absorb content, they engage with it, apply it, and stick with it. And instructors can feel confident that what’s built into the platform reflects the same intention and care they bring to their own teaching.
Designed to Keep Students In It—and Moving Forward
When instructional design is working, students stay with the material—not because they’re being pushed, but because the structure pulls them in. The course feels navigable, the pacing feels right, and the work feels doable, even when it’s hard.
REAL CHEM was built to support that kind of experience, helping instructors create the conditions for deep, focused learning without having to build the entire framework themselves. With the structure in place, they can spend more time guiding students through the why behind the work, not just the how.
