CAETI Project Abstract
Title: Supportive Inquiry-Based
Learning Environments (SIBLE)
Performer(s):
Louis M. Gomez
School of Education and Social Policy
Northwestern University
2115 North Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Ben Loh
Northwestern University
Brian J. Reiser
Northwestern University
Roy Pea
Northwestern University |
Cluster: EAGIL
Contact Information:
Phone: 847-467-2821
Fax: 847-467-1930
email: gomez@ils.nwu.edu
Phone: 847-467-1337
email: bloh@nwu.edu
Phone: 847-467-2205
email: reiser@nwu.edu
Phone: 847-467-1190
email: pea@ils.nwu.edu
|
1. Instructional Focus:
Content areas/topics: Not content specific; can be adapted to wide variety of activities. One example activity will be provided in Plate Tectonics (See Scenario, below). Another sample activity may be developed in Limnology, the study of physical, chemical, geological, and biological aspects of lake systems and other bodies of fresh water.
Process skills: Open ended iterative inquiry, project oriented. Causal explanations, reasoning, and interpretation of data. Process support for reflection.
2. Target Population: Middle and secondary school students and teachers.
3. Summary Description: "Inquiry" is widely touted as a good approach to teaching science. Having students work on open-ended projects is one way to foster inquiry learning. The problem with projects is that it is very easy for the students to focus only on the final artifact. There is little time spent on reflection, and the process of inquiry is not valued.
The performers will implement an integrated system of software and curricular content to foster reflection in inquiry-based learning through open-ended projects. The software is intended to be used by students as they work on science projects, using the notion of a "progress portfolio" to structure the tools and the tasks that students engage in.
A progress portfolio is like a "progress report" in that it documents the changing activities of the student over time. However, it is a "portfolio" in the sense that the artifact documenting the change is not a teacher-generated report card with grades, but a student generated narrative history of their changing ideas. It consists of multiple artifacts in different mediums (e.g. written reports, data, spreadsheets, charts, plans, sketches, diagrams, physical models, etc.), accompanied by the students' reflections on how each artifact contributes to the explorations that they went through on their way to their final product. These artifacts represent milestones in the inquiry process.
It is also not simply a "portfolio" because the underlying purpose of a progress portfolio is not necessarily to demonstrate ability or mastery of some particular skills by documenting various finished products. Rather, the purpose is to document the iterative process that went into generating the finished product. This is similar to the way in which "showing your work" on a math problem captures the stages, processes, and ways of thinking that the student went through in arriving at their solution. Information about the process of investigation makes it easier for the student to reflect on their own work, to identify successes, errors and omissions, backtrack, and pursue alternative paths of inquiry. In essence, students document the history of an idea: changes and revisions in their thinking, models, and explanations. Thus, there is a shift in focus from valuing the final product to valuing the changing process that went into generating that final product. For instance, "dead-ends" are not just simply "dead-ends" but are a vital part of the larger web of knowledge that constitutes an explanation or theory. There are two points here: a) the process is more important than the product; and b) the product is not a static finished object, but an ever-changing object.
The software itself will be tightly integrated into the curricular activities. We envision an information system with user defined templates and a hypermedia linking structure that will allow students to create a narrative structure of the history of their thinking from the elements of project inquiry (e.g. evidence, interpretations, conclusions, etc.) through straightforward linking, pasting, reorganizing, annotating, and other manipulation of media (e.g. written reports, data, spreadsheets, charts, plans, sketches, diagrams, physical models, etc.). The software will allow teachers to help students in structuring their project activities through creating customized assessment rubrics and progress milestones.
One example project, Plate Tectonics, will be included with the software. The example project will include supporting materials (electronic data, software, activity guides, examples of student projects, etc.).
4. Training and Staff Development:
- Teacher prerequisite skills/knowledge needed: Experience conducting open-ended or project-based activities.
- Student prerequisite skills needed: General computer skills.
- Training needed/provided: Ideally, teachers will collaborate with the performers on the design of the curriculum and environment throughout the development and implementation phases. This process of co-development should familiarize teachers with the performer's software and curriculum. If there is a need for it, teachers can attend a short (2 day) workshop to become familiar with the techniques of using the software. This should be followed by a one year period during which teachers will take part in ongoing professional development activities as part of an on-line community of teachers. In addition, paper and online-based teacher guides will be provided to support teachers in implementing the projects.
- Technical support needed/provided: Technical support of the software will be provided by the performers via telephone, email, or video conferencing. Requirements of the hardware will not go beyond a standard computer and network setup (with internet access), therefore, hardware support is the responsibility of the schools.
5. Technological/Resources Needed: Each student group (2 - 5 students) will need access to a late-model Macintosh (68040 processor) or PowerMacintosh computer with a minimum of 8MB RAM, 12MB of RAM would be better. Disk: approximately 25MB of free disk space per machine. Display: standard 16Ó RGB Monitor Resolution (832x624, 256 colors) minimum; projection screen (LCD panel) and/or larger screen sizes (1024x768 or larger) are recommended to facilitate discussions, but not necessary. CD-ROM drives may also be useful for gathering data (single speed drives are adequate). Communications/Networks: TCP/IP.
6. Intended Outcomes:
Students: Students will learn the value of revisiting and revising their work; that a natural and necessary cycle in the process of completing long term projects (or complex problem solving) involves constant self-monitoring, reassessment, and revision. Moreover, students should also come to appreciate the learning that occurs during the doing of the project. And finally, students should learn the role of interpretation and the influence of interpretative frameworks on theirs and othersÕ interpretation of data.
Teachers: Teachers will be able to use the software which is developed to structure and support open-ended projects in their classrooms.
7. Instructional Time Required: To be integrated into pre-existing (e.g., project-oriented classroom activities) or novel activities. Example curriculum is being designed to take approximately 2 week of in-class time. In addition, students will probably be doing work outside of class.
8. Role of the Pilot Teacher(s): Teachers will be trained in the use of the software. They can also have some input into the development of the software supports and curriculum, e.g. the kinds of student projects. During the year they will take part in on-line professional development activities. The pilot teachers will have on-going communication with the research team before, during, and after the activity.
9. Example(s) of the Use of this Product (Scenario):
The teacher introduces a new long-term science project: groups of students are to apply the principles of plate tectonics theory to produce a narrative history of a region of the earth. Specifically, they are asked to describe the locations of the earthÕs plate boundaries and the direction and rate of their movements. Each student group is working on a different region of the earth.
The teacher initiates and facilitates a discussion with the class on the ways in which each group can break down the larger project task into smaller subtasks, and on the rubrics to be used to assess each groupÕs project. The milestones and rubrics generated by the class are entered into the progress portfolio. These rubrics will be used by the groups themselves to evaluate their progress as the projects evolve. Also, as new directions arise from each groups' explorations, the rubrics are changed and updated.
One group begins their exploration by referring to the project milestones that the class had agreed upon in the previous discussion. The first milestone listed is to brainstorm approaches to their project. As a way to begin the brainstorm process, the group refers back to their explorations during the pre-activity exercises to review the principles of plate tectonics and the kinds of raw data that are available to explore. There are a number of basic data types (such as topographic data, earthquake, and volcanic data) with many subtypes and data points (map resolutions; times, locations, magnitudes, and depths of earthquakes; locations of volcanoes, dates of eruptions, etc.) and various access methods (retrieving whole data sets vs. retrieving subsets of data, viewing data as tables of numbers vs. points on a map, etc.). Faced with a myriad of choices, the students decide to add just the basic data types (topographic, earthquake, and volcano) to their progress portfolio as possible "approaches" that they can take in their exploration. They also note that they don't yet quite know how to use each of the basic data types, but have decided to start by exploring the use of topographic maps to map the plate boundaries. In their portfolio, they justify this decision by stating that they expect to see "cracks" in the earth at the plate boundaries.
The members of the group then proceed to look at various topographic maps, zooming in and out to different levels of resolution (or magnification), and come to the conclusion that while there appear to be ÒcracksÓ in the crust, there arenÕt any clear plate boundaries, so they record this finding, along with the maps that they looked at, annotating the ÒcracksÓ, into their progress portfolio. They also note in the portfolio that this line of inquiry (i.e. using a topographic map to map plate boundaries) seems to be a dead-end. They also include a justification for why they think so.
The group then refers back to their lists of goals and approaches and chooses earthquake data from the list as a second line of inquiry. They are more successful with this data, plotting earthquakes (from tables indicating the locations and sizes of earthquakes) on a map of their region. On the basis of these plots, they delineate an outline of a plate. One student notices a correspondence between the map of the plate that theyÕve drawn and the topographic map that they had previously looked at, so they retrieve the topographic map from their portfolio and compare the two maps. Based on this comparison, they decide that topographic maps are good at indicating the location of ocean plate boundaries, but not of continental plate boundaries. They record this conclusion, along with a drawing indicating the correspondence between the two maps, and the tables of earthquake data that they had used, into their progress portfolio.
After a few more mini-investigations have been conducted, the teacher encourages all of the groups to get together to share their data and knowledge with each other. One group decides to collect everyone elseÕs regional maps to construct a map of the whole earth. But in putting the maps together, they realize that not everyoneÕs plate boundaries line up with each other, and that some groupsÕ boundaries look jagged while other groups' boundaries are smooth. This leads to a class discussion of data collection and mapping methods, with each group drawing upon their progress portfolios to present their data and methodologies. The class as a whole decides that they need to revise their rubrics to incorporate this tighter definition of methodology. The groups then continue their work, revising their data collection, map-making methodologies, and the maps themselves in light of the class discussion and the newly developed rubrics.
At the end of the project, the groups present their maps and findings to the class, drawing again from their progress portfolios to talk about the history of their investigations, the processes they went through (e.g. how they discovered that topographic maps were useful after all), and how they developed their final maps. Finally, all of the groups' final maps are put together into a single map and their progress portfolios are turned into the teacher.
