Jennifer L. Chiu

Evidence for effective uses of dynamic visualisations in science curriculum materials

Dynamic visualisations capture aspects of scientific phenomena that are difficult to communicate in static materials and benefit from well-designed scaffolds to succeed in classrooms. We review research to clarify the impacts of dynamic visualisations and to identify instructional scaffolds that mediate their success. We use meta-analysis to synthesise 47 independent comparisons between dynamic and static materials and 76 comparisons that test the effect of specific instructional scaffolds. These studies show that dynamic visualisations are better than static visuals at promoting conceptual inferences about science, consistent with the success of inquiry instruction in science. To realise this potential of dynamic visualisations, instruction needs to help students use the dynamic visualisation to make sense of their own ideas. Scaffolds that are most successful include prompts for reflection, prompts to distinguish among parts of the visualisation, visual cues that identify salient features, multiple visualisations presented sequentially, and interactive features that govern the pacing of activities. We extract guidelines from this research to help researchers plan future studies of visualisations, designers create and refine instructional materials using visualisations, and practitioners customise instruction that features visualisations.

The Role of Self-monitoring in Learning Chemistry with Dynamic Visualizations

This chapter explores ways to help students monitor and regulate their learning of difficult chemistry concepts. Dynamic visualizations can illustrate complex, unobservable phenomena such as bond breaking and bond formation. To develop robust, integrated understanding when learning with visualizations, students need cognitive understanding of the phenomena as represented in the visualization. They also need metacognitive skills to decide whether they understand the visualization and determine when to revisit the visualization to clarify their interpretations. We investigate the development of integrated understanding using the Technology-Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) chemical reactions inquiry unit that combines the pedagogical support of the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) with dynamic visualizations from Molecular Workbench. Our first study combining judgments of learning and explanation prompts revealed that visualizations may fail to add new ideas because they are often deceptively clear. Students typically overestimated their understanding of visualizations while gaining only superficial ideas. In our second study we refined both cognitive and metacognitive guidance to encourage students to distinguish and reflect upon their ideas. The results suggest that strengthening self-monitoring skills can overcome deceptive clarity and lead to coherent understanding. These studies suggest that the metacognitive skills of monitoring understanding of complex visualizations and determining when to return to the visualization contribute to the development of integrated understanding and can be supported by careful design of technology-enhanced instruction. The notion of metacognition applied in this study refers to monitoring and evaluating one’s understanding, to the regulation/control function of metacognition, and to the self-knowledge functions of metacognition.

Professional Development and Teacher Change: The Missing Leadership Link.

Professional development in science education aims to support teacher learning with the ultimate goal of improving student achievement. A multitude of factors influence teacher change and the effectiveness of professional development. This review of the literature explores these factors and identifies school and district science leaders as a critical factor missing from current professional development models. School and district leaders play a significant role in the planning and implementation of professional development, as well as providing ongoing leadership to support teacher change. Considering this role, school district leaders are not just a contextual factor, but rather an integral part of the process and should be integrated into and considered part of any professional development model in science education.

The effects of augmented virtual science laboratories on middle school students' understanding of gas properties

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize authentic scientific practices such as developing models and constructing explanations of phenomena. However, research documents how students struggle to explain observable phenomena with molecular-level behaviors with current classroom experiences. For example, physical laboratory experiences in science enable students to interact with observable scientific phenomena, but students often fail to make connections to underlying molecular-level behaviors. Virtual laboratory experiences and computer-based visualizations enable students to interact with unobservable scientific concepts, but students can have difficulties connecting to actual instantiations of the observed phenomenon. This paper investigates how combining physical and virtual experiences into augmented virtual science laboratories can help students build upon intuitive ideas and develop molecular-level explanations of macroscopic phenomena. Specifically, this study uses the Frame, a sensor-augmented virtual lab that uses sensors as physical inputs to control scientific simulations. Eighth-grade students (N?=?45) engaged in a Frame lab focused on the properties of gas. Results demonstrate that students using the Frame lab made progress developing molecular-level explanations of gas behavior and refining alternative and partial ideas into normative ideas about gases. This study offers insights for how augmented virtual labs can be designed to enhance science learning and encourage scientific practices as called for in the NGSS. Combining virtual and physical labs has potential to promote science learning.Minimal research exists on augmented virtual technologies in authentic classrooms.Students use physical controls of the Frame to manipulate rich, virtual simulations.Pilot tests show student improvement on explanations about gas properties.

Knowledge Integration and Wise Engineering.

Recent efforts in engineering education focus on introducing engineering into secondary math and science courses to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education (NAS, 2010). Infusing engineering into secondary classrooms can increase awareness of and interest in STEM careers, help students see the relevance of science and math in their everyday lives, and increase STEM literacy. This paper describes how the knowledge integration framework provides researchbased guidelines to help secondary students develop and connect science and engineering concepts. Results from technologyenhanced curriculum units demonstrate how instruction based on knowledge integration principles and patterns using the Webbased Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) can infuse engineering into existing secondary science classrooms. This paper explores how the knowledge integration framework can guide curriculum development and assessment of engineering concepts and habits of mind.

WISEngineering: Supporting precollege engineering design and mathematical understanding

Introducing engineering into precollege classroom settings has the potential to facilitate learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts and to increase interest in STEM careers. Successful engineering design projects in secondary schools require extensive support for both teachers and students. Computer-based learning environments can support both teachers and students to implement and learn from engineering design projects. However, there is a dearth of empirical research on how engineering approaches can augment learning in authentic K-12 settings. This paper presents research on the development and pilot testing of WISEngineering, a new web-based engineering design learning environment. Three middle school units were developed using a knowledge integration learning perspective and a scaffolded, informed engineering approach with the goal of improving understanding of standards-based mathematical concepts and engineering ideas. Seventh grade math students from two teachers in a socioeconomically diverse and low-performing district participated in three WISEngineering units over the course of a semester. Students significantly improved their mathematical scores from pretest to posttest for all three projects and on state standardized tests. Student, teacher, and administrator interviews reveal that WISEngineering projects promoted collaboration, tolerance, and development of pro-social skills among at-risk youth. Results demonstrate that informed engineering design projects facilitated through the WISEngineering computer-based environment can help students learn Common Core mathematical concepts and principles. Additionally, results suggest that WISEngineering projects can be particularly beneficial for at-risk and diverse student populations.

Teaching Engineering Design with Digital Fabrication: Imagining, Creating, and Refining Ideas

Digital fabrication uses next-generation computer-controlled manufacturing systems to translate electronic designs into 2D and 3D physical objects. Advances in technology are making educational applications and classroom use of digital fabrication increasingly feasible. The combination of digital fabrication with engineering design integrates mathematics, science, and engineering concepts into a highly motivating context. Students can use digital fabricators to quickly prototype ideas and create sophisticated designs that satisfy mathematics- and science-based criteria and constraints, encouraging students to imagine, invent, collaborate, and construct solutions to complex and authentic problems.

Collaboration and knowledge integration

We draw on three examples from the Technology Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) project to show how collaborative activities designed following knowledge integration patterns contribute to science learning. By knowledge integration we refer to learners sorting out their many, often contradictory, ideas to develop coherent understanding. Research on instruction suggests four interrelated processes that jointly lead to integrated understanding: eliciting current ideas, adding new ideas, evaluating ideas, and sorting out ideas. These processes characterize design patterns that promote knowledge integration. We describe how knowledge integration patterns informed the design of collaborative activities for Chemical Reactions and report on the value of heterogeneity in small groups. We describe how teachers learned from each other while refining an on-line teachers guide for Asthma. We describe how teachers engaged in collaborative customization of the plate tectonics unit and show that the revised unit resulted in improved student learning.

Kinesthetic Investigations in the Physics Classroom

Creating investigations that allow students to see physics in their everyday world and to be kinesthetically active outside of the traditional physics classroom can be incredibly engaging and effective. The investigations we developed were inquiry investigations in which students engaged in concrete experiences before we discussed the abstract concepts and derived the mathematical relationships. 1 In this article, we describe the approach to inquiry used and an explanation of kinesthetic investigations in general. We then provide a description of several of the investigations and some examples of how students responded to them.

Instructional support and implementation structure during elementary teachers’ science education simulation use

ABSTRACT This investigation sought to identify patterns in elementary science teachers’ computer simulation use, particularly implementation structures and instructional supports commonly employed by teachers. Data included video-recorded science lessons of 96 elementary teachers who used computer simulations in one or more science lessons. Results indicated teachers used a one-to-one student-to-computer ratio most often either during class-wide individual computer use or during a rotating station structure. Worksheets, general support, and peer collaboration were the most common forms of instructional support. The least common instructional support forms included lesson pacing, initial play, and a closure discussion. Students’ simulation use was supported in the fewest ways during a rotating station structure. Results suggest that simulation professional development with elementary teachers needs to explicitly focus on implementation structures and instructional support to enhance participants’ pedagogical knowledge and improve instructional simulation use. In addition, research is needed to provide theoretical explanations for the observed patterns that should subsequently be addressed in supporting teachers’ instructional simulation use during professional development or in teacher preparation programs.