SBIR Phase II: Avatar-guided system to develop mastery in mathematical problem solving.

This SBIR Phase II project will develop software that teaches 4th-10th grade students how to solve mathematical problems that seem difficult, maybe even hopeless at first. Problems, by definition, are hard to solve. They require intensive thinking and open-ended experimentation, which are often not possible in today's classrooms. In the software, an expert avatar takes students on math explorations in video-game-quality 3D where they visualize and discover eye-opening mathematical truths. The program helps teachers turn math into exciting explorations that students will love. For example, as students fly a jumbo jet from New York to Tokyo, they effortlessly discover methods for finding the shortest path between two points on the surface of a sphere, which is a difficult geometry problem. Teachers can easily fit the program into their daily instruction and get crucial details about the weak spots of each student. The joy of discovery is envisioned to increase students' interest in math, science, and engineering and to significantly reduce their math anxiety. Besides creating jobs and tax revenue, the project is expected to contribute to measurably improved math scores across the nation's 132,000 schools educating 58 million students. The software being developed in this project is unique in that it emulates the natural style of communication between a student and an expert math teacher and immerses students in 3D virtual worlds where they develop deep mathematical insight and solve fascinating real-world problems. The program's ability to develop both mathematical content knowledge and problem-solving skills at the same time, as well as its capability to non-intrusively assess students during the mathematical explorations is also unmatched. During the Phase II project, the commercially viable software will be fully developed and its efficacy to improve students' mathematical problem-solving skills will be thoroughly researched. A pretest-posttest control group experiment will be conducted in authentic education settings to determine efficacy. The software's educational model and content may be adjusted if necessary based on the outcome of the research.