SBIR Phase I: A Next Generation High School Chemistry Educational Platform

The innovation is a novel teaching platform and related lesson plans that leverage touch-screen mobile computing devices and molecular modeling tools that will improve student comprehension of and interest in chemistry. Understanding the properties and three-dimensional (3D) structure of molecules is key to succeeding as a chemist; however, it is difficult to teach this to high school students using traditional media such as lectures, textbooks, and laboratory exercises. Students can have difficulty understanding how two-dimensional (2D) drawings used in textbooks represent the real 3D structures. Also, concepts such as chirality, molecular interactions, steric hindrance, and energetic stability are inaccessible without a 3D understanding of molecules. The proposal is to develop an electronic notebook, molecular visualizer, and interactive educational tool designed to increase student engagement, collaboration, and learning in high school chemistry. The software will run on touch-screen mobile devices, including mobile phones, making the technology accessible to a broad population. The combination of 3D molecular visualization, interactive lessons, annotated scenes, and traditional text, will make it much more intuitive to learn chemistry concepts that are traditionally considered difficult. The broader/commercial impact is a novel educational environment accessible by mobile devices, making it available to a wide audience of chemistry students both in the classroom and at home. The greatest immediate benefit will be to both high school and university students. Using currently accessible mobile devices, they will be able to visualize and manipulate molecules as never before in an intuitive and connected environment. This type of engagement will improve understanding of fundamental chemistry principles and will motivate more students to continue studying chemistry or other sciences, eventually increasing the number of Americans in scientific fields. The product of this proposal will be distributed to high school and college chemistry classrooms. In addition, personal versions will be available to individuals who want to further their educational experience or for home-schooling applications. Finally, the commercial value of this project becomes even more significant when considering potential extensions to other subjects, such as physics, biology, and chemical engineering. This application will also benefit researchers in the life sciences who frequently must visualize, manipulate, and share molecular models to make informed decisions.