Paul Horwitz

Integrating Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, and Evaluation in a Technology-Supported Genetics Learning Environment

This article describes an extended collaboration between a development team and an evaluation team working with GenScope, an open-ended exploratory software tool. In some respects, this was a routine evaluation, documenting substantial gains (of roughly 1 SD) in genetics reasoning ability in all but 1 of 17 classes, despite challenges presented by school computer-lab settings. Relative to matched comparison classes, larger gains were found in technical biology and general science courses but not in college prep or honors biology courses. In other respects, our effort illustrates the value of new views of assessment, technology, and research. The alignment of a sophisticated research assessment and simple classroom assessments shed light on initial failures, spurring revision. By refining the GenScope activities and extending the classroom assessments, we supported worthwhile whole-class discourse around the shared understanding of the software. A follow-up study in a laptop-equipped classroom yielded the absolute and relative gains (3.1 SD and 1.6 SD) that proponents of such innovations have long promised. In retrospect, the strengths and weakness of the study illustrate the value of newer “design-based” approaches to educational research.

Examining the Relationship Between Students' Understanding of the Nature of Models and Conceptual Learning in Biology, Physics, and Chemistry

This research addresses high school students’ understandings of the nature of models, and their interaction with model‐based software in three science domains, namely, biology, physics, and chemistry. Data from 736 high school students’ understandings of models were collected using the Students’ Understanding of Models in Science (SUMS) survey as part of a large‐scale, longitudinal study in the context of technology‐based curricular units in each of the three science domains. The results of ANOVA and regression analyses showed that there were differences in students’ pre‐test understandings of models across the three domains, and that higher post‐test scores were associated with having engaged in a greater number of curricular activities, but only in the chemistry domain. The analyses also showed that the relationships between the pre‐test understanding of models subscales scores and post‐test content knowledge varied across domains. Some implications are discussed with regard to how students’ understanding of the nature of models can be promoted.

Learning Genetics from Dragons: From Computer-Based Manipulatives to Hypermodels

This chapter addresses an issue central to the design of educational technology: the extent to which one should explicitly guide the student as opposed to simply creating an open-ended tool for discovery and experimentation. The basis for the discussion is the experience of the lead author, described in an earlier publication, regarding the use of a program called GenScope. GenScope offered students a multilevel model of genetics, ranging from DNA to populations, wherein manipulations made at any one level could affect other levels, much as a change in one cell of a spreadsheet may cause a “ripple effect” on other cells down the line. In common with other general-purpose computer models, GenScope embodied no specific educational agenda. The chapter describes a more recent program, BioLogica, which augments the functionality of GenScope by monitoring and logging students’ actions, providing online, context-sensitive scaffolding, and situating student activities within a context of real-world examples. We present results from a 5-year program of research conducted with BioLogica in high school biology classes throughout the United States.

Teaching ‘Evolution readiness’ to fourth graders

We describe a National Science Foundation-funded project called ‘Evolution Readiness’ that used computer-based interactive models as well as hands-on activities to help fourth grade students learn Darwins model of natural selection as the process primarily responsible for evolution. The inclusion of ‘readiness’ in the title is important to keep in mind. A full understanding of evolution would require the acquisition of a detailed model of how information is encoded in DNA, interpreted in cells, and manifested in organisms and species. To understand the evidence presented by the fossil record and its implications for evolutionary theory would require an appreciation of the immensity of geologic time as well as a substantive introduction to geology and paleontology. These topics are not easily accessible to ten-year-olds, but we have found that children can successfully perform virtual experiments that explore the connection between the interdependence of species and their remarkable adaptations and recognize the latter as arising gradually from small variations that affect reproductive success. Working in three school districts, located in Texas, Missouri, and Massachusetts, we implemented a curriculum unit covering 16 class periods. In each state the elementary science standards include all the concepts we cover, but traditional curricula do not attempt to integrate these concepts or to use them to explain observations of the natural world. We compared students who had used our materials to a baseline cohort taught by the same teachers but exposed only to the traditional curriculum. The treatment students outscored the baseline students, demonstrating the feasibility of teaching young students the fundamental concepts behind the theory of evolution and thus preparing them to deepen their understanding when they next encounter the topic.

Teaching Teamwork: Electronics Instruction in a Collaborative Environment

ABSTRACT The Teaching Teamwork Project is using an online simulated electronic circuit, running on multiple computers, to assess students’ abilities to work together as a team. We pose problems that must be tackled collaboratively, and log students’ actions as they attempt to solve them. Team members are isolated from one another and can communicate only through an online chat channel, but modifications to the circuit made by any team member, insofar as they alter the behavior of the circuit, can affect measurements made by the others. We log all relevant student actions, including calculations (using an online calculator), measurements (using an online multimeter), inter-student communications, and alterations made by the students to the circuit itself. Automated analysis of the resulting data sheds light on the problem-solving strategy of each team, sometimes with surprising results.

Evolution Is a Model, Why Not Teach It That Way?

This chapter describes the author’s Evolution Readiness project1and the teaching materials it has produced. These materials present themselves to students as engaging video games built on a manipulable model that embodies natural selectionas an explanatory mechanismfor the adaptations of organisms to their environments. The games offer challenges that guide students’ progress from reasoning about individuals to exploring the behavior of populations of organisms over many generations. One goal of this work is to create the technological base required to support an approach to biology education based on natural selection. The teleological aspect of biology—the fact that organisms appear to be designed for particular purposes—is not treated very well in the traditional US K-12 curriculum which mostly deals with data (what do we see when we observe the living world?) rather than process (how did it get that way?). This is hardly surprising, given that the processes responsible for adaptation are slow acting, indirect, and difficult to observe. We describe the design principles behind the creation of interactive learning activitiesthat can overcome these problems and, in symbiosis with textbooks, laboratory experiments, and field observations, help students to hone their biological reasoning skills.