Jeremy Riel

Promoting students’ science literacy skills through a simulation of international negotiations: The GlobalEd 2 Project

Abstract Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional design approach for promoting student learning in context-rich settings. GlobalEd 2 (GE2) is PBL intervention that combines face-to-face and online environments into a 12-week simulation of international negotiations of science delegates on global science issues. Although GE2 focuses on science, it is implemented in a social studies classroom. This manuscript describes the GE2 environment and evaluates its impact on middle school students’ scientific literacy compared to a comparison group receiving normal educational practice. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analyses on GE2 and comparison groups demonstrates the significant positive impact of GE2 on two measures of scientific literacy (Socio-scientific Literacy and Scientific Inquiry), among middle-grade students from two states. Implications regarding instructional practice and future research are discussed.

The Digitally Literate Citizen: How Digital Literacy Empowers Mass Participation in the United States

From online political campaigning to Internet social clubs, the American mass participation environment has become increasingly mediated by digital technologies or tools. From social membership in groups and clubs to political participation to influencing government action, information technologies have become popular for expressing ideas and building social capital. In this thesis, I argue that digital literacy, or the ability to use electronic tools to retrieve, evaluate, and create information, has become essential for engagement in various mass participation and social activities in the United States, including those activities within the domains of social membership, civic, political, and online participation. Because of the increased use of information technologies in the public sphere, technology and information skills have become required to effectively participate socially and politically. Using data from a nationally representative survey, I illustrate several findings that indicate the strength of digital literacy skills in empowering public for social membership participation, political participation, and online social activities.

Completion, Time-in-intervention, and Movement: Relationships between Dimensions of Participation in oTPD and Knowledge Growth

In this study, we examined the effects of participation in a self-paced, online teacher professional development (oTPD) program to support the implementation of the GlobalEd 2 problem-based curriculum. We report on the effects on self- reported teacher knowledge as a result of the oTPD program as mediated by three participatory dimensions that were captured via digital interaction logfiles: course completion, time-in-intervention, and movement between the training curriculum. The results indicate that time-in-intervention is consistently positively related to teacher knowledge gains. However, the completion status of teachers in an oTPD program was not a significant predictor. In addition, deviation from curricular sequence was negatively related to teacher knowledge gains. These findings suggest that multiple participatory measures might be valuable in analyzing oTPD efficacy.