I-Corps: Interactive Tutoring for Virtualized STEM Labs

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是为可能不熟悉心理学和教育学理论的教育开发人员提供一个设计框架，帮助他们建立一种新的学习活动设计方法，使学生参与进来，帮助他们加速和巩固他们对实验室环境中教授的科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)概念的理解。STEM教育的预期改善将特别有利于背景不同的学习者，他们传统上不太可能攻读STEM学位，以及那些面临传统上被视为残疾的学习挑战的人。成功将意味着机构和学习部门，包括学术和企业，将采用更有效的方式灌输知识和产生技能，以实现更好的培训和更具包容性的STEM工作队伍。这项i-Corps项目将进一步开发一个框架，以创建在三维虚拟学习环境中运行的有效教育软件。已经创建了一套设计启发式方法，将现有的用于一般软件设计、教育软件设计和虚拟空间设计的可用性启发式方法与来自认知科学的人类学习和记忆原理相结合。使用该框架开发的应用程序是部署到(三维虚拟学习空间)中的学习机。这些应用程序的有效性是通过在应用程序设计和用户测试期间有控制地实施基于证据的学习和记忆原则来最大化的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide educational developers, who may not be familiar with psychological and pedagogical theories, a design framework to help forge a new way of designing learning activities that will engage students and help them to accelerate and solidify their understanding of Science Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) concepts being taught in lab setting. The anticipated improvement of STEM education will be particularly beneficial to learners of disparate backgrounds who are traditionally less likely to pursue STEM degrees and for those who face learning challenges traditionally viewed as disabilities. Success will mean institutions and departments of learning, both academic and corporate, will engage in more efficient ways of instilling knowledge and engendering skills to achieve a better trained and more inclusive STEM work force.This I-Corps project will further develop a framework for the creation of effective educational software running in a three dimensional Virtual Learning Environment. A set of design heuristics has been created that combine existing usability heuristics for general software design, educational software design, and software designed for virtual spaces, along with principles of human learning and memory taken from cognitive science. The applications developed using this framework are Learning Machines that are deployed into a(three dimensional Virtual Learning Space. The effectiveness of these applications are maximized through controlled implementation of evidence based principles of learning and memory during application design and user testing.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.