Cognitive load and representational competence: The development of an adaptive learning system to assist students with structure creation

许多科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的学生都需要参加化学课程，学习构建表征，以帮助他们可视化组成物质的分子结构，并使用这些表征来理解物质的性质。这种结构创建过程对学生来说往往很困难，并且可能会受到与“认知负荷”相关的问题的阻碍，认知负荷是与任务相关的心理努力的整体量。在整体认知负荷高的情况下，学生可能难以完成任务，学习可能会受到不利影响。本研究的目的是探讨认知负荷对化学专业本科生建构表征能力的影响，并利用这些研究结果开发一个适应性学习系统，帮助学生更熟练地建构化学表征，同时评估该系统对学生建构能力和化学学习的影响。这项工作有可能提高学生对化学表征的熟练程度，从而帮助他们更深入地了解促进STEM成功的关键化学概念。NSF改进本科STEM教育（IUSE：EHR）项目旨在更好地了解认知负荷与学生构建化学结构表征能力之间的相互作用。它构成了第一个正式的研究之一，使用生理指标，如心率和脑电图来衡量认知负荷作为本科化学学生的工作，以解决问题。与其他测量负载的方法不同，这些技术可以在真实的时间内收集，并且在其他学科进行的研究中已经显示出对负载的微小变化做出响应。这些研究的结果将被用来设计和开发一个自适应学习系统，将重点放在帮助化学学生构建分子的刘易斯和骨架结构。该系统将利用一个初步的诊断系统，该系统是由研究结果，以确定学生的建设能力，并提供苏格拉底式的反馈，因为他们寻求帮助，创造他们的代表。虽然为该项目开发的系统将专门为化学课堂设计，但开发的一般方法学方法可能对其他STEM学科具有广泛的适用性，并可作为这些领域类似工作的模型。

Many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students are required to take chemistry courses, learn to construct representations to help them visualize the structures of molecules that make up matter, and use these representations to understand the properties of matter. This structure-creation process is often difficult for students and may be hindered by issues associated with "cognitive load", which is the global amount of mental effort connected to a task. In instances where the overall cognitive load is high, students may struggle with completing the task and learning may be adversely impacted. The goals of this project are to study fundamental issues surrounding the role that cognitive load plays in undergraduate chemistry students' ability to construct representations, to use the results of these studies to develop an adaptive learning system that will help students become more proficient at creating chemical representations, and to assess the impact this system has on students' construction abilities and learning of chemistry. This work has the potential to enhance students' proficiency with chemical representations, and therefore, help them gain a more thorough understanding of key chemistry concepts that promote success in STEM.This NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) project seeks to better understand the interplay between cognitive load and students' abilities to construct representations of chemical structure. It constitutes one of the first formal research studies to use physiological metrics such as heart rate and electroencephalography to measure cognitive load as undergraduate chemistry students work to solve problems. Unlike other methods of measuring load, these techniques can be gathered in real time and have been shown, in research conducted in other disciplines, to be responsive to small changes in load. Results of these studies will then be used to design and develop an adaptive learning system that will focus on helping chemistry students construct Lewis and skeletal structures of molecules. The system will make use of an initial diagnostic system that is informed by the research results to ascertain the students' construction ability and provide Socratic-style feedback as they seek help in creating their representations. Although the system developed for this project will be specifically designed for the chemistry classroom, the general methodological approaches developed will likely have broad applicability to other STEM disciplines and serve as models for similar work in those fields.