Development and Assessment of Interactive Online Homework for Introductory Chemistry

虽然大量的教育研究提倡主动学习，但实际的限制阻碍了大型入门课程的变化。在线作业系统通过轻松地整合到普通课程结构中，自动为学生作业评分，并提供及时的反馈，帮助绕过了这些限制。然而，在线作业在很大程度上仍然是定量问题。这一建议是创建各种互动的在线作业活动，以增强学生的概念学习和提高他们对科学的兴趣。这些问题提出的目标更接近于实践化学家的工作，专注于设计简单的实验，并将化学概念融入有意义的现实环境中。这项工作正在影响入门课程的学生，因为家庭作业是学生练习应用新概念的主要手段。这个项目建立在以前nsf资助的工作的基础上，已经产生了一个虚拟实验室，现在由三所大学和500名学生使用，以及一套创作工具（CREATE）来促进交互式教育软件的开发。我们将为至少10章的导论化学中的每一章编写5-10个不同难度的问题。这些材料的质量是通过密集的评估来保证的——首先是通过采访学生来确定可能的困难，然后在在线作业系统中包括概念和态度问题，以汇编各大学的持续数据。通过几个课程管理系统、我们自己的网站、一张CD和专业会议进行传播，使教师能够浏览问题、解决方案和难点。

While a large body of educational research advocates active learning, practical constraints hinder changes in large introductory courses. Online homework systems help bypass some of these constraints by integrating easily into common course structures, automatically grading of student assignments, and providing timelyfeedback. However, the online assignments continue to be largely quantitative problems. This proposal is creating a variety of interactive online homework activities that is enhancing students' conceptual learning and increasing their interest in science. These problems pose goals more closely resembling the work of practicing chemists, focus on designing simple experiments, and put chemical concepts into meaningful, real-world contexts. This work is impacting students in introductory courses since homework serves as the primary means through which students practice applying new concepts. This project builds on previous NSF-funded work that has produced a Virtual Lab, now used by three universities and 500 students to date, and a set of authoring tools (CREATE) to facilitate interactive educational software development. We are developing 5-10 problems, varying in difficulty, for each of at least 10 chapters of introductory chemistry. The quality of these materials is being ensured through intensive assessment -- first by interviewing students to identify likely difficulties and later by including conceptual and attitude questions in the online homework system to compile ongoing data across universities. Dissemination through several course management systems, our own web site, a CD, and professional meetings are enabling instructors to browse the problems, their solutions, and their difficulty.