SBIR Phase I: Advanced Software for Interactive Chemistry Tutoring

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的目标是在学生和教师所要求的一个至关重要的方面推进最先进的化学教育软件。本研究的主要目的是发展有意义的互动辅导能力，以解决问题。这一领域已被反复确认为现有产品最薄弱的地方。这个项目提供了一种新的和不同的方法，适应和融合了以前没有应用于化学教育的人工智能的某些概念。一个程序不仅可以解决问题，还可以连贯地向学生解释其工作并回答各种问题。该程序将动态地为学生或老师输入的问题创建详细的解决方案解释，并提供与潜在的基本化学概念的联系。这项技术将作为一个复杂的辅导“引擎”来实现，它可以很容易地连接到任何现有的教育项目或课程中，比如那些处理化学实际应用的课程。化学教育软件具有广泛的商业意义，创造了与其他软件包和课程使用的巨大协同作用的机会。此外，要开发的改进是基本性质的，可移植和可伸缩的，并且可以同样很好地部署在CD-ROM、桌面或Internet上。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is aimed at advancing the state-of-the-art in chemistry education software in a critically important respect demanded by students and teachers. The primary research objective is the development of meaningful interactive tutoring capabilities for problem solving. This area has been repeatedly identified as that where existing offerings are weakest. This project offers a new and different approach, adapting and incorporating certain concepts from artificial intelligence that have not previously been applied in chemistry education. A program will be constructed that not only solves problems, but also can explain its work to the student coherently and respond to various questions. The program will dynamically create detailed explanations of worked-out solutions for problems entered by the student or teacher, and provide the connections to the underlying fundamental chemical concepts. This technology will be implemented as a sophisticated tutoring "engine" that can be easily interfaced to add interactive tutoring capabilities to any existing educational program or curriculum, such as those dealing with practical real-world applications of chemistry.The chemistry education software has broad commercial implications, creating opportunities for tremendous synergy in use with other packages and curricula. In addition, the improvement to be developed is of a fundamental nature, is portable and scalable, and can be deployed equally well on CD-ROM, on the desktop, or on the Internet.