SBIR Phase I: Digital Loft--An online platform for innovation education

SBIR第一期项目将开发教育技术，以更好地培养大学生的创新能力。要成为创新者，学生必须获得解决现实世界问题的实践，例如减少医院获得性感染，缩小教育成就差距或减少贫困。然而，大学很难为学生创新者提供解决现实问题所需的劳动密集型面对面指导。该项目开发了一个新颖的基于项目的在线学习平台，帮助教师更有效地指导创新项目团队。该平台允许教师(a)创建项目目标库，帮助学生规划；(b)合作编写和重新组合设计指南，帮助学生发展技术技能；(c)众包大型团体，面对面的批评，为正在进行的创新工作提供反馈。该项目的研究和开发重点是克服与创建软件库相关的技术风险，这些软件库是创建新的基于项目的学习平台所必需的，并支持复杂的计算机支持的协作学习交互，以实现所需的学习成果。通过开发必要的技术来实现更有效的基于项目的学习，该项目将改善大学教育，创造一支更有能力的创新队伍，更好地应对社会挑战。该SBIR一期项目将对Loft平台进行研究和开发，该平台结合了基于项目的新型学习环境、社交媒体平台和软件组件，以改变大学培养社会创新者的方式。本项目中的技术风险源于软件工程、学习科学和计算机支持的协作工作障碍，这些障碍与创建新的软件平台有关，以实现在基于项目的学习环境中实现更有效的学习成果的新教学策略。软件库将包括一组更强大、更灵活的组件，用于创建复杂的对象层次结构和社交媒体界面，以快速开发基于在线项目的学习平台所需的众包和实时协作编辑功能。该平台将引入新的计算机支持的协作学习策略，例如教学内容的协作混合，技术支持的针对个别项目团队的教学目标定制，以及提供与个别教师一样好或更好的反馈的群体批评。研发将测试该平台对创新团队学习成果的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This SBIR Phase I project will develop educational technologies to better train university students to innovate. To become innovators, students must gain practice solving real-world problems, such as reducing hospital acquired infections, narrowing education achievement gaps or reducing poverty. However, universities struggle to provide the labor intensive, face-to-face coaching necessary for student innovators to tackle real-world problems. This project develops a novel online project-based learning platform that helps instructors more effectively coach innovation project teams. The platform allows instructors to (a) create libraries of project goals to help students plan, (b) collaboratively author and remix design guides to help students develop technical skills, and (c) crowdsource large group, face-to-face critique to provide feedback on in-progress innovation work. The research and development in this project focus on overcoming the technical risks associated with creating the software libraries necessary to create new project-based learning platforms and supporting the complex computer-supported collaborative learning interactions necessary to achieve desired learning outcomes. By developing the technologies necessary to enable more effective project-based learning, this project will improve university education and create a more capable innovation workforce better able to tackle societal challenges.This SBIR Phase I project will conduct research and development of the Loft platform, which combines a novel project-based learning environment, social media platform, and software components to transform how universities train social innovators. Technical risks in this project stem from software engineering, learning sciences, and computer-supported cooperative work obstacles associated with creating novel software platforms to enable new pedagogical strategies that achieve more effective learning outcomes in project-based learning environments. Software libraries will include a more powerful and flexible set of components for creating complex object hierarchies and social media interfaces required for rapid development of the crowdsourcing and real-time collaborative editing features needed for online project-based learning platforms. The platform will introduce new computer-supported collaborative learning strategies, such as collaborative remixing of instructional content, technology-supported tailoring of instructional goals to individual project teams, and crowd critique to provide feedback as good or better than individual instructors. Research and development will test the impact of the platform on learning outcomes for innovation teams.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.