Contract Closed

Online Learning System to Advance Teaching of Hyper Molecular Modeling

NCER

Program: Small Business Innovation Research

Award amount: $841,875

Project director: Keith Donaldson

Awardee:

MolySym, Inc.

Year: 2008

Project type:

Fast Track

Contract number: ED08CO0044

Purpose

MolySym has prototyped and classroom tested the MolySym Hypermodeling System, a tangible user interface that provides high school chemistry students with a direct link between a physical chemistry model and a software simulation system. The incorporation of electronics and robotics technologies into ball-and-stick models to communicate in real-time with a software simulation system is called hypermodeling. The use of this system is intended to improve students' understanding of important chemical principles relating to 3-dimensional molecular structures. In order to successfully deploy this tool in classrooms, this project will develop the teaching and training interface, called the Online Learning System (OLS).

Project Activities

The MolySym team will assess the level of preparedness of high school chemistry teachers to teach hyper molecular modeling. Following the assessment, the team will develop an OLS for hypermodeling that will provide educators with the training and tools needed to support hypermodeling in their classroom. The OLS is an easy-to-use authoring tool for building lessons, creating interactive demonstrations, and writing guided activities. In-service and pre-service chemistry teachers will be recruited from Boston area education programs and school systems to assess whether teacher understanding of the model concept is improved with the use of the proposed online hypermodeling teaching and training interface.

People and institutions involved

IES program contact(s)

Edward Metz

IES Research Scientist

NCER

Products and publications

Products: Products will include a fully developed Online Learning System (OLS) designed for teacher use. Resources for teachers will also be developed, including an online help function, tutorials, and tools to aid in the analysis of submitted homework. In addition, OLS will be equipped with a report and assessment system for collecting data and measuring learning with hypermodels and simulations. All of these functionalities will be seamlessly integrated under the MolySym Hypermodeling System user interface, with the goal of making many potentially difficult tasks easy and intuitive for educators and students.

Project Website: http://www.molysym.com/