STTR Phase I: An Intelligent Infinitely Explorable Online Learning Environment

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop an intelligent infinitely explorable online learning environment. The use of online learning has grown significantly in higher education and promises to reduce program cost and improve educational outcomes. Current massively open online courses (MOOCS) can deliver an online course to hundreds of thousands or millions of students at minimal cost. These systems deliver content such as video lectures, text, and audio recordings to students with student assessment in the form of simple and directed questions. While in some fields, these current online systems are adequate, online systems fail in Engineering where students must be trained to think creatively about complex systems. Engineering education is an area of vital national economic importance. Creating more flexible systems, which are better suited for complex subjects requiring integrated learning such as engineering, will benefit both students and the nation. This SBIR Phase I project will focus on developing a prototype system capable of identifying specific student computational mistakes and conceptual errors while solving complex problems. The system will quickly and automatically identify these mistakes, then provide students with the resources they need to correct their mistake and to improve their fundamental understanding of the topic. The system will also provide a platform for skill-based credentialing, which is being explored in many engineering programs across the country.