Collaborative Research: Interdisciplinary Virtual Labs for Undergraduate Education in the NSDL MatDL

跨学科（99）虚拟实验室（VL）活动旨在帮助学生将微观结构和原理与宏观结果联系起来，这对学生来说是一种难以学习的联系，非常适合VL体验。VLs可以提供一个可行的替代物理实验室，允许学生实现许多ABET实验室学习目标，同时规避与不断增长的招生和物理空间限制相关的困难。VL项目的技术重点是分子相互作用，它们如何受到温度的影响，以及这些如何影响自组装和相分离，这在材料科学、化学和生物学这三个选定的领域都可以看到。在这三个领域中，相同的主要教学技术是学生与分子水平模拟的互动。提供了与每个领域相关的两种不同的上下文类型：现代研究和日常科学。特定领域的介绍部分为学生提供了相关的“大局”视图。最后，学生在一个特定的领域内应用，从与模拟的互动中获得知识。情境化的学习经历对学生来说更有吸引力，增加了概念随着时间的推移被保留的可能性，也增加了学习转移到其他情况的可能性。NSDL MatDL路径项目对该项目的贡献是，通过增加学习资源的数量、质量、可访问性和使用，特别是基于最新研究的学习资源，从而将研究和教育结合起来，实现了NSF资助计划的更广泛影响。

Interdisciplinary (99)Virtual lab (VL) activities are designed to help students connect microscopic structure and principles to macroscopic outcomes, a difficult connection for students to learn and ideally suited to VL experience. VLs may provide a workable alternative to physical labs, allowing students to achieve many ABET laboratory learning objectives while circumventing difficulties associated with growing enrollments and physical space limitations. The technical focus of the VL project is molecular interactions, how they are affected by temperature, and how these can be managed to influence self-assembly and phase separation, which are seen in all three chosen domains: materials science, chemistry and biology. The same principal instructional technique across the three domains is student interaction with molecular level simulations. Two different context types relevant to each domain are provided: modern research and everyday science. A domain-specific introductory segment provides students with a relevant "big-picture" view. At the end, students apply within a particular domain, knowledge gained from interactions with the simulation. Contextualizing the learning experience makes it more compelling for students, increasing the likelihood that concepts are retained over time and that learning is transferred to other situations. The NSDL MatDL Pathway project contributes to this project with the result that broader impact of NSF funded initiatives is attained by increasing the number, quality, accessibility, and usage of learning resources, particularly those based on recent research, thereby integrating research and education.