SBIR Phase I: Advanced Software for Interactive Chemistry Tutoring

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is aimed at advancing the state-of-the-art in chemistry education software in a critically important respect demanded by students and teachers. The primary research objective is the development of meaningful interactive tutoring capabilities for problem solving. This area has been repeatedly identified as that where existing offerings are weakest. This project offers a new and different approach, adapting and incorporating certain concepts from artificial intelligence that have not previously been applied in chemistry education. A program will be constructed that not only solves problems, but also can explain its work to the student coherently and respond to various questions. The program will dynamically create detailed explanations of worked-out solutions for problems entered by the student or teacher, and provide the connections to the underlying fundamental chemical concepts. This technology will be implemented as a sophisticated tutoring "engine" that can be easily interfaced to add interactive tutoring capabilities to any existing educational program or curriculum, such as those dealing with practical real-world applications of chemistry.
The chemistry education software has broad commercial implications, creating opportunities for tremendous synergy in use with other packages and curricula. In addition, the improvement to be developed is of a fundamental nature, is portable and scalable, and can be deployed equally well on CD-ROM, on the desktop, or on the Internet.