STTR Phase I: Automated Assessment of Educational Activities in a Physics Simulation Environment

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project investigates constructivist learning principles that can be applied to increase problem solving ability and conceptual understanding, improve student attitudes, and decrease failure rates. These methods have been applied and validated, with particular benefit shown to women and minority students, by rigorous research in college level physics courses through the NSF-supported SCALE-UP project. Comprehensive assessment strategies based on detailed models of science instruction should be integrated into software architecture at a core level and leveraged throughout the software to give accurate and valuable feedback to teachers and students. This research project investigates the application of these principles toward secondary school physics instruction through the use of an innovative physics simulation problem solving software tool. Employing extensive experience in educational simulation software research, instructional design and physics teaching, this project will build a simple research instrument to enable subject matter experts to assess the feasibility of this concept.The innovations will have significant impacts on our society through improved scientific literacy of our students, advanced knowledge of teaching and learning, and valuable new products. This will lead to an increased number of students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in scientific fields, and will result in greater quantity and quality of scientific advances coming from our universities and corporations where these graduates will be employed, with direct improvements to our national economy and security. New knowledge of teaching and learning emanating from this project will be applicable to other areas of science and learning. Over time, new approaches derived from this knowledge will yield significant improvements in our educational system with far-ranging positive effects.