This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will address the need for high quality, innovative educational software that will enable elementary school children to learn effectively about mathematical principles - through active experimentation and manipulation - at a low cost. The major objectives of this effort are to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the development of such educational mathematics software and to test the relative effectiveness of such software against conventional classroom """"""""math lab"""""""" materials. As such, the research in this Phase will be devoted to developing a set of representative mathematical activities for the computer, and then to measuring student learning and motivation using these computer-based materials on the one hand, or traditional materials, on the other. It is expected that the effort will yield promising approaches for the design of commercially- viable educational software products for the teaching of mathematics. Further, it is expected that the design techniques and process employed in this project can potentially be leveraged for the design and development of educational software products for other domains as wells.
