Sadhana Puntambekar

Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry

The authors argue that design-based research, which blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments, is an important methodology for understanding how, when, and why educational innovations work in practice. Design-based researchers’ innovations embody specific theoretical claims about teaching and learning, and help us understand the relationships among educational theory, designed artifact, and practice. Design is central in efforts to foster learning, create usable knowledge, and advance theories of learning and teaching in complex settings. Design-based research also may contribute to the growth of human capacity for subsequent educational reform.

Problem-Based Learning Meets Case-Based Reasoning in the Middle-School Science Classroom: Putting Learning by Design(tm) Into Practice

This article tells the story of the design of Learning by Design(tm) (LBD), a project-based inquiry approach to science learning with roots in case-based reasoning and problem-based learning, pointing out the theoretical contributions of both, classroom issues that arose upon piloting a first attempt, ways we addressed those challenges, lessons learned about promoting learning taking a project-based inquiry approach, and lessons learned about taking a theory-based approach to designing learning environments. LBD uses what we know about cognition to fashion a learning environment appropriate to deeply learning science concepts and skills and their applicability, in parallel with learning cognitive, social, learning, and communication skills. Our goal, in designing LBD, was to lay the foundation in middle school for students to be successful thinkers, learners, and decisionmakers throughout their lives and especially to help them begin to learn the science they need to know to thrive in the modern world. LBD has students learn science in the context of achieving design-and-build challenges. Included in LBDs framework is a set of ritualized and sequenced activities that help teachers and students acclimate to the culture of a highly collaborative, learner-centered, inquiry-oriented, and design-based classroom. Those ritualized activities help teachers and students learn the practices of scientists, engineers, and group members in ways that they can use outside the classroom. LBD is carefully crafted to promote deep and lasting learning, but we have learned that careful crafting is not enough for success in putting a collaborative inquiry approach into practice. Also essential are fostering a collaborative classroom culture in which students want to be engaged in deep learning and where the teacher sees herself as both a learner and a facilitator of learning, trusts that with her help the students can learn, and enthusiastically assumes the roles she needs to take on.

Tools for Scaffolding Students in a Complex Learning Environment: What Have We Gained and What Have We Missed?

This article discusses the change in the notion of scaffolding from a description of the interactions between a tutor and a student to the design of tools to support student learning in project-based and design-based classrooms. The notion of scaffolding is now increasingly being used to describe various forms of support provided by software tools, curricula, and other resources designed to help students learn successfully in a classroom. However, some of the critical elements of scaffolding are missing in the current use of the scaffolding construct. Although new curricula and software tools now described as scaffolds have provided us with novel techniques to support student learning, the important theoretical features of scaffolding such as ongoing diagnosis, calibrated support, and fading are being neglected. This article discusses how to implement these critical features of scaffolding in tools, resources, and curricula. It is suggested that if tools are designed based on the multiple levels of the student understanding found in a classroom, tools themselves might be removed to achieve fading.

Analyzing collaborative interactions: divergence, shared understanding and construction of knowledge

One of the most important facets of collaborative learning is the interaction between individual and collaborative learning activities - between divergent perspectives and shared knowledge building. Individuals bring divergent ideas into a collaborative environment. While individuals bring their own unique knowledge and perspectives, the second important aspect of collaborative learning is how they move from seemingly divergent perspectives to collaborative knowledge building. This is clearly a social process among group members who could adopt various strategies for resolving differences including asserting dominance, acquiescing, or some form of reciprocal sense making. An important aspect of collaborative learning is the move from assimilation to construction, i.e., creating new understandings based on the discussions that they have had. Documenting this change from divergence to collaborative knowledge building to possible construction is therefore important in understanding the nature the collaborative interactions. In this paper we discuss our analysis of the process of collaborative interactions based on three dimensions - divergence of ideas, collaborative knowledge building and construction. Our aim was to document as well as to understand how collaborative interactions develop over time: whether students raise new issues (ideas) more frequently as they become more familiar with the discussion and discussants, and whether shared knowledge building becomes richer over time, and subsequent evidence that students were able to construct their own understanding based on their interactions with others. Our analyses were conducted in the context of an online graduate course conducted using the learning environment that we designed, CODE, (Constructivist, Distributed learning Environment). In this paper, we will first describe the design of CODE. We will then describe a study in which CoDE was used to offer an online graduate course in learning theories. We then discuss our analyses of both individual and collaborative learning as it progressed through the duration of the course.

Intra-group and intergroup: an exploration of learning with complementary collaboration tools

In this paper, we explore the learning that occurred in two types of collaborative learning environments in a seventh grade life sciences classroom: an intragroup environment and an intergroup environment. Students used both types of collaboration tools, each tuned to the needs of the task they were doing within or across groups. We found that the learning outcomes in the two collaborative settings were different. During the intragroup collaboration, students focused more on the structure and behavior of the designs. The inter-group environment on the other hand, led them to discuss the function/s of their models, ask for and provide justifications for the functions. We discuss the results and suggest integration of the inter and intra group tools.

An integrated approach to individual and collaborative learning in a web-based learning environment

In this paper we will discuss the design of a web based interactive learning environment. We will focus on the cognitive and collaborative tools that we are developing for students learning at a distance. We have adopted a constructivist, problem based approach for our design. An essential element of making this approach work is to integrate the individual and collaborative learning as well as the affordances and scaffolding provided by the different tools. We will discuss the design principles, the tools and the framework for integrating individual and collaborative learning.

Helping students learn ‘how to learn’ from texts: Towards an ITS for developing metacognition

Intelligent tutoring systems have most frequently concentrated on imparting domain knowledge. However, there is another important aspect to learning. This is the meta level knowledge abouthow to learn a domain. Metacognition is a very important feature of learning. It consists of being aware of and regulating ones own cognitions.Good students have full control over their learning and see it as a planful and purposive activity. They reflect on their learning activities, are aware of a variety of strategies, and they oversee and monitor the application of these strategies, i.e. they are proficient in metacognitive activities. This paper describes a computer based system that helps students to learn these important self regulation skills. Students work with the system in pairs, and they can use it with any text from which they wish to learn. Apart from being used as a study aid, the system is being used as a tool to gather data about students learning processes.

Adaptive Navigation for Learners in Hypermedia Is Scaffolded Navigation

Adaptive navigation support can be of great help in large hypermedia systems supporting learners as well as users searching for specific information. A wide variety of adaptive mechanisms have been implemented in existing adaptive hypermedia systems that provide better and better suggestions to the user what hyperlinks to follow. We suggest that adaptive navigation support should scaffold a learner in an educational hypermedia system to select the appropriate links. We show that this implies that selecting a link is an educationally relevant activity that should not always be reduced to a trivial task by powerful adaptive mechanisms. It follows that learners require sometimes different kinds of adaptive navigation support than users looking for information. Finally, we will suggest how to extend current mechanisms to provide scaffolded navigation support to learners.

Moving Toward a Theory of CSCL

In this paper we look across research projects and research perspectives to address the issue of theory-building in the context of CSCL. We propose that successful collaborative learning is a function of shared goals leading to a shared understanding. Shared understanding however, is mutually determined by factors such as the nature of the tool (e. g., CSILE), the context in which learning occurs and the role of the teacher/facilitator.

Learning with digital texts

Readers now encounter many texts used for learning in digital formats.Tested relationships among navigation, comprehension, prior knowledge and learning.No significant relationship between comprehension ability and navigation behaviors.No significant relationships between prior knowledge and navigation or learning.Goal-related concept visits were positively related to coherent page transitions. Currently of great significance to the study of reading and text comprehension is the fact that learners now encounter many texts in digital formats. While making navigation decisions during reading digital texts, readers need to comprehend both the individual texts and the relationships among sources in the overall structure of the digital text environment. Prior knowledge and reading comprehension ability may impact the ways in which students are able to utilize the structure of the digital text system in order to navigate through the text content. This study further investigated the relationships among reading comprehension ability, prior content knowledge, navigation behaviors in a system of digital texts, and learning outcomes. We found no significant relationship between comprehension ability and navigation behaviors. Further, there were no significant relationships between prior knowledge and navigation or learning. Goal-relevant concept visits were positively related to coherent page transitions, and the proportion of time spent reading about goal-relevant concepts was significantly positively related to learning outcomes. We discuss these results in relation to some key areas for instruction, such as helping students to reflect on prior knowledge and plan their navigation strategies, and further research in terms of utilizing digital text structures to improve comprehension.