[Fhaner]

I am looking for online training courses for techniques for my students. I used one last year through analyticaltrainingsolutions.com for HPLC as free, but this year there appears to be a $98 charge.  I can't expect my undergraduate students to pay that.  Any suggestions?

[Corribus]

 Which methods?

[Arkcon]

How in depth do you need?  I've attended basic separations science courses for ~$1000 USD, and advanced method development courses for ~$1800 USD.  These courses are routinely paid for by an  employer, who're glad to have a highly trained worker, and are glad to foot the bill, and the vendors know that, and price themselves accordingly.  The courses now know they'll have students who are motivated to learn, and students of these sorts of courses can even offer constructive criticism, if they think the course doesn't address their needs.

If you want the general sort of running technique, that can be part of a university course lab exercise, and the very basics can be part of a lecture.  There are many, simple courses on the internet in PDF or Powerpoint format.

What can you tell us, about what you need for your students?

[Fhaner]

I teach a quantitative analysis and instrumental analysis course for upper-division students at a primarily teaching institution.  The students get a lot of good hand's-on experience with a number of techniques in the course.  I am specifically thinking about HPLC.  We cover it in lecture and the students get time on the instrument in our lab course.  I used an online training course that provided certification (at some level) which I liked just because the students could put it on their resume.  I just wanted to give my students a bit more of an in-depth look and independent study on one of the techniques I cover in class. 

I have a lot of confidence that the material I cover is more than acceptable, I just liked the certification portion.  Plus, be having the students dive deeper into a specific topic, I was able to incorporate an oral final exam into my lab course on that specific techniques (HPLC).  I know employers will pay for their people to take further training, however I am just looking for something that would allow students to update their resumes with a respectable training course, hopefully making them more marketable to professional schools and industry positions after they are finished with their undergrad degree.