Work in Progress: An Interactive Cognitively-Informed On-Line Statics Course

Progress in developing an highly-interactive online statics course is reported This course is part of Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative (OLI), which is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and seeks to create and sustain cognitively-informed online courses, to be available in various forms for individuals and institutions. To provide an effective learning environment this course both incorporates knowledge about typical difficulties faced by students in Statics and segments the subject into modules with clearly defined learning objectives that enable concurrent finegrained assessment. Such assessment allows individual students to track their learning; instructors are empowered to administer targeted remedial instruction to individuals and to discern larger patterns of challenges faced by the class. The power of computer medium is harnessed in providing, for example, discovery-learning that integrates questions with simulations, demonstrations of procedures, and opportunities for learners to practice skills while receiving hints and feedback