The ChemCom course was developed for upper secondary students in response to a need for a course which prepared students for effective resolution of science related issues in the real world through a knowledge and interest in chemistry (Sutman and Bruce 1992 ) . The results of the testing programme that assessed both chemistry learned and applications of chemistry, indicated that students completing the entire year-long ChemCom course significantly outperformed students completing more traditional college prep chemistry on test items designed by ChemCom writers (Sutman and Bruce 1992 ) . Also, a second study found that minority students learned more when using ChemCom compared with a more traditional approach
(Winther and Volk 1994 ) .