At the time Anbar wasn’t familiar with the science of teaching and learning and instructional design principles like scaffolding to build confidence and skill, personalized learning, and fine-grain feedback. He just wanted to teach better and “had an intuitive sense” that it involves active learning and that students are motivated by what feels relevant.

Following that sense led him to many collaborations and eventually to co-founding and directing Arizona State University’s Center for Education Through Exploration (ETX), which brings scientists, teachers, and technologists together to design and build digital learning experiences.

Now Anbar is co-principal investigator of REAL CHEM, chemistry courseware that pairs ETX with the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University. The REAL CHEM team includes experts from ETX and OLI who have developed a courseware that addresses core challenges in teaching and learning chemistry by creating meaningful connections between abstract concepts and real-world applications, all while maintaining the academic rigor essential for college-level chemistry.

Anbar likens the partnership to mixing chocolate and peanut butter: “They taste great together because ETX was using technology for immersive simulation-based experiences, and OLI understood the science of formative feedback and active learning.”

Today Anbar has at his fingertips a growing library of research on the science of teaching and learning that informed the development of REAL CHEM, such as a 2013 study showing that active learning leads to a 55% increase in pass rates for students in science, engineering, and math courses. Or a 2023 study that challenges the common conception that students necessarily learn at different rates. Instead, it finds that similar rates of learning for every student are possible under the right conditions.

Most of all Anbar likes to reference a comprehensive review of the learning science research in Nature that describes active learning as an ethical imperative. 

“The science gives us a clarity,” he says. “If you know of a better way of teaching, that’s what you should do. The poor success rates in introductory chemistry courses largely result from the way we teach it — large lectures, no personalization. I mean, if you made a list of ways to make learning difficult, it would look a lot like the way we teach chemistry.”

The core instructional design principles informing REAL CHEM are built into the name — Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning. Other evidence-based teaching practices informing the product design include deliberate practice and personalized feedback. Anbar and his colleagues are committed to the idea that courseware built on those practices can benefit students from all backgrounds.

One feature is cinematic videos in the courseware that help any student see themselves as a chemist and that range in tone and purpose from inspirational to procedural. But students do not simply encounter an extensive video playlist. 

“There is a tendency in online education to put a lot of the instruction in video,” Anbar says. “But the value of that isn’t clear. Videos can turn out to be just a lecture distributed differently. Our learning designers are thinking about how to use video to support good teachers.”

Another feature are Explorations that invite students to work with scenarios drawn from the real-world on a focused problem or question as a means to better understand and see the practical value of key chemistry concepts.

Meanwhile, feedback for students as they work through the courseware incorporates adaptive learning to provide individualized responses with hints and additional practice opportunities.

Many of these elements already exist in other courseware, yet low success rates in introductory chemistry persist. Anbar says the failure of the market is that courseware often doesn’t effectively blend concepts and practice. 

“Sometimes there might be a little bit of an application on the side after students slog through a unit, but by then they’re lost,” he says. “They barely understand what you’ve been talking about. 

Anbar characterizes the design of REAL CHEM as multifactorial. “We’re not just saying, ‘Here’s the feature that makes chemistry inclusive, here’s our widget that makes chemistry active, and so on,” he explains. “The courseware works because all these threads emerging from the science of teaching and learning are woven together.”