Graduate College. iv DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my two children, Anna and Joseph Howlett, who remind me daily how important problem solving and life-long learning are. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge all those who helped me to achieve my educational goals; including my family, professors, colleagues, and friends. vi ABSTRACT Online science courses are becoming increasingly available to K-12 students in the United States. With the utilization of these courses, it is important to facilitate student completion of laboratories as well as student interest in and use of the science and engineering practices (SEPs) of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This exploratory research provided online laboratory introductions to help students interact with the content and the instructor. The research studied if the laboratory introductions led students to ask questions about laboratories, complete laboratories, and think about and use two NGSS SEPs, specifically analyzing and interpreting data and constructing explanations and designing solutions. Archived data provided information for the background of the study. The intervention class experienced introductions to the content, procedures, and focus NGSS SEPs for online laboratories. The researcher studied qualitative and quantitative data and determined there was an increase in student completion of the laboratories in general as well as identifiable impacts on student questions and thoughts about and use of the NGSS SEPs of focus. Data included pre-and post-course surveys, student laboratory questions, laboratory completion rates, laboratory scores, and laboratory answer analyses.