STTR Phase I: Courseware Self-Assembly: Auto-Constructed Nanotechnology Education Content

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project develops an online educational resource system that provides automatically constructed courseware. The auto-assembled courseware will focus on education in nanotechnology, with the ability to extend into all subject areas. The key objectives of the 'Courseware Self-Assembly' (CSA) system are: (1) an analytical resource-mapping software product that will mine diverse repositories of learning content and auto-categorize them to produce (2) a Web-based, graphical interface for effective instructional use of a multi-dimensional set of learning content resources. A formative evaluation of the CSA system will be implemented to determine key factors the system needs to master in order to automatically generate high-quality, pedagogically-appropriate courseware. The CSA focuses on meeting the pragmatic needs of instructors, especially in content areas with complex subject matter and new, distributed learning materials. CSA will enable the creation of online educational courseware with the same user approach and effort as doing a traditional Internet search. CSA will automate the job of compiling, organizing, structuring, and sequencing available learning resources, simplifying the task of creating basic courseware for courses or for instructional units to selection of topics and adapting the auto-produced results for instructors' preferences.Because CSA system will enable the creation of online educational courseware as users are accustomed to doing with a traditional Internet search tools, teaching and learning resources can be far more widely distributed, started up, and revised, than is currently possible. With this capability, schools, organizations, and individuals can get high quality, well organized and sequenced instruction in subject areas as quickly and as easily as searching the Web. This will enable teaching and learning to expand and increase in speed, as full-text search has done for the Web. This research will have the largest impact on disadvantaged people and for those who have difficulty with the culture, language, or technology, because it will give them simpler, quicker, and more adaptable access to broad choices of quality education.