At large Universities, General Chemistry classes often rely on eLearning systems to provide students with practice in applying new concepts to solve problems. These systems offer many potential advantages, including instant feedback to students, adaptive learning capability, and valuable data to instructors that help identify learning obstacles on-the-fly. However, there does not currently exist network infrastructure that allows a global community of online learners to leverage this wealth of data to facilitate synchronous interactions, enable higher cognitive skills to be exercised, and enhance team learning in cyberspace. We have recently developed a framework for the creation of a new networking paradigm to build effective online learning communities: Academic Social Networks (ASNs). The framework integrates several key components: problem template engines (PTEs) that generate questions or exercises that test specific learning objectives, a critical skills network (CSN) that establishes an underlying fingerprint for each problem that is generated, and a virtual classroom environment (VCE) that allows synchronous interactions to take place in order to enable problem-based team learning in cyberspace. These components act together to create an environment where students can work problems in order to assess mastery of specific learning objectives. Mastery is tracked at various levels of difficulty that are determined by the set of required critical skills needed to solve each problem. In this way, the CSN provides the foundation for which problems can be connected to one another, mastery of learning objectives can be tracked, and specific learning pathways can be analyzed. Ultimately, this framework allows for the development of tools that leverage the power of large enrollments to facilitate team learning in cyberspace, on-demand peer mentoring, and delivery of custom instruction at scale.

Creation of Academic Social Networks (ASNs) for effective online eLearning in general chemistry

251st National Meeting (2016)

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