Title: Active Illustrations, Modeling Workbenches
Performer(s):
Ken Forbus
The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Northwestern University
1890 Maple Avenue
Evanston, IL 60201
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Cluster: EAGIL
Contact Information:
Phone: 847-491-7699
Fax: 847-491-5258
email: forbus@ils.nwu.edu
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1. Instructional Focus:
Content areas/topics: Science and engineering education
Process skills: Interactive, engaged learning; individualized instruction through mentoring and tutoring; constructivist learning approaches.
2. Target Population: Students in middle to high school; the authoring environment is aimed at teachers.
3. Summary Description:
Active Illustrations help students learn science by enabling them to experiment with simulated phenomena and systems, receiving feedback in the form of conceptual explanations, as well as simulated behaviors and numerical values. The software will be able to explain the consequences of students' experiments in intuitive, qualitative terms, illustrating how specific responses are ultimately governed by general laws and principles. Active Illustrations can be used as stand-alone learning tools, as a medium to include in hypermedia systems, and as virtual artifacts in shared virtual learning environments.
Modeling Workbenches help students learn science by building, testing, and refining models. Given a phenomena or system, the software will help a student build a model, test this model against the original example and suggest new examples to challenge it, then coach students in revising, extending, and refining their models.
4. Training and Staff Development:
- Teacher prerequisite skills/knowledge needed: Knowledge of the domain to be learned, familarity with using programs under Microsoft Windows.
- Student prerequisite skills needed:
- Active Illustrations: Assumes students are capable of reading graphs (or will use this to improve their skills).
- Modeling Workbench: Assumes students are
- Training needed/provided: Some experience with using the software before using it as a teaching tool would be very beneficial.
- Technical Support needed/provided: We will provide whatever support we can to teachers using our software.
5. Technological/Resources Needed:
Both kinds of software require Micrsoft Windows, either Windows 95 or Windows NT. It is possible that the software can be run under Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups with the appropriate Win32s extensions, but we have not tested the software on those versions of Windows. A 90mhz or faster pentium with 32MB of RAM is preferred. Active Illustrations may be operable with smaller amounts of RAM. If MOO-based versions of Active Illustrations are desired, the appropriate CAETI MOO software clients and connectivity are required.
6. Intended Outcomes:
Students: By learning science via modeling (i.e. the application of principles to understanding phenomena) this software will help students articulate, test, and refine models. Coaching students in forming physically accurate mental models and in formulating mathematical models will help them to better understand both the phenomena being modeled and the process of science.
Teachers: None specified.
7. Instructional Time Required: Depends on the kind of activities the software is embedded in. Active Illustrations should be useful for simulation laboratories, where the student can quickly try out a variety of circumstances to formulate and test conjectures about how a phenomena works.
8. Role of the Pilot Teacher(s): Teachers will use the software to engage students in scientific investigations.
9. Example(s) of Use of This Product (Scenario):
Active Illustrations: (1) A student would like to test hypotheses about how some aspect of weather-related phenomena, such as evaporation, works. Using an Active Illustration, the student can quickly explore a variety of (simulated) environments to set up and run experiments. (2) A student would like to understand how a steam engine works, so a simulated engine could be modified to see how its performance changes as a consequence. An instructor who wants to show students how a refrigerator works puts together a simulation, using off-the-shelf models, with initial conditions that illustrate the phenomena she wants to communicate.
Modeling Workbenches: A student is curious about how people can walk on hot coals and not be hurt. This leads into a discussion of thermal phenomena, specifically the difference between temperature and internal energy and the concept of thermal capacity. The discussion ranges across a variety of phenomena, including moderating effects of large bodies of water on local weather, why metal spoons are safer to use in sampling soup, and how heat pipes work.
