Science Learning

Research on the use of technology to support science learning reveals promise to improve learning and potential pitfalls. Technology offers promise for increasing science inquiry and is a major component of science education reforms and standards. In inquiry activities, students intentionally address challenging science questions by engaging in complex, sustained, reflective reasoning to design solutions, test ideas, revise solutions, critique ideas, and collaborate with others.

The focus here is on technologies including scientific visualizations, statistical modeling, real time data collection, dynamic modeling software, and collaborative environments that support inquiry practices. This discussion highlights uses of technology that are integrated into an inquiry-based, science curriculum and often delivered using a learning environment, to help students engage in substantial scientific reasoning. Technology research seeks applications that help students develop a coherent understanding of science rather than fragmented ideas, and that set students on a path toward lifelong learning.

Many researchers and software designers have identified pitfalls of technology use. Often technology distracts learners with glitzy animations or colorful photographs that not only do not connect to the ideas that students hold, but also reinforce perceptions of science as inaccessible, irrelevant to personal concerns, or inscrutable. Internet sites and software designed to transmit information can deter students from viewing scientific sources critically. Applications like word processors or spreadsheets designed for business may require valuable classroom time to learn yet not contribute to understanding of science. Software designers are just beginning to develop robust applications that contribute to students' understanding by capitalizing on both late twentieth-century research on learning and iterative design studies conducted in settings where learning takes place.

Consistent with the rapid change in educational technologies, this article presents criteria for selecting promising technological tools that are synthesized from research on effective uses of technology and describes applications that exemplify these criteria and have supporting empirical research to demonstrate effectiveness in the classroom. The purposes is to seek benefits in terms of student learning gains, student engagement in scientific practice, or teacher professional development using a range of methodologies, and the criteria are based on reviews of studies featuring general comparisons, studies based on iterative design, and case studies of student learning.

Engaging Students in Scientific Inquiry Activities

Technological resources can help students in inquiry activities, such as researching a complex question, building explanations, testing ideas, and refining understanding of the world. Applications that support modeling phenomena, visualizing, or collecting data also support inquiry. Emphasized are highlight modeling and simulation, visualization, and real time data collection.

Modeling and simulation environments. Modeling and simulation environments allow students to perform "what if" experiments or simulate experiments that would be difficult, impossible or dangerous to perform using real-world materials. Learners typically manipulate computer-based objects to see how they react under different conditions. Models represent complex scientific situations like an ecosystem or the world of Newtonian physics. Students construct or manipulate models to make conjectures, test ideas, and explore rules underlying scientific phenomena. Modeling and simulation environments generally fall within two types, either content based or open ended.

The software program Interactive Physics is an example of a content-based modeling environment. Interaction Physics provides a simulation environment and libraries of simulations for physics curricula. This program allows students to conduct controlled, simulated experiments without costs in time and materials. Students readily repeat experiments, change values of variables, and explore parameters of experiments. Students interact with their simulations in real time, and display measurements graphically in a variety of ways. Research demonstrates that students improve their physics understanding when interacting with modeling tools.

Open-ended, simplified modeling environments include Model-It, which is based on a more complex precursor, STELLA (Structural Thinking Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation). Using Model-It, students can readily construct qualitative and quantitative models. Students define objects and factors within a system and build relationships between factors. Students "run" their models and monitor changes by viewing indicators or graphs. The design and use of Model-It in high school and middle school science classrooms is the focus of research at the University of Michigan. Model-It supports learners by allowing students to use personally meaningful images, providing information in qualitative, quantitative and graphical form, and prompting students for explanations. Case studies show that students use several higher order cognitive tasks when creating models with Model-It, including identifying causal relationships and elaborating upon explanations. Students learn the scientific content that forms the basis of their models as well as ideas related to the nature of science, including purposes of modeling.

Visualization software. Visualization software provides students with access to scientific visualizations such as molecular models or geographic information systems. For example, World Watcher uses scientific visualization software and historical data to help students recognize patterns in weather data by translating numerical data, such as temperature, to a palette of colors and displaying results on a world map. The software allows students to annotate data, make predictions, and perform sophisticated analysis by overlaying data sets. A Global Warming Project, an eight-to-ten-week unit intended for students in grades seven to ten, involves teams of students advising world leaders on issues countries may face due to global warming. The World Watcher formative classroom research reveals the challenges that students face in interpreting complex data and suggests ways to reduce complexity to support inquiry.

Real-time data collection software. An important technological support for science learning connects sensors to a computer, calculator, or handheld Personal Digital Assistant (like a Palm Pilot or Visor), and allows students to record real-time data about their environment. Common probes include temperature, voltage, and motion sensors. Researchers have studied the use of probes in computer-based labs and microcomputer-based labs, showing how real-time graphing helps students understand complex scientific phenomena. The use of probes in an inquiry environment assists student in distinguishing between important scientific concepts, such as heat and temperature.

Complex Science Content and Integrated Understanding

Technology can help students make sense of standards-based complex topics and provide a window on science in the making to illustrate science inquiry. To enable students to gather, organize, and display information, technology can combine visualization, modeling, and real-time data collection with a full curriculum. Ideally science instruction encourages students to build a more coherent understanding of science and to apply ideas from one domain to the next. Processed applications such as simulations depend on the curriculum and the teacher to emphasize connections. Whole curricula can support integrated understanding when well designed and complemented by a thoughtful teacher.

For example, Constructing Physics Understanding (CPU), a National Science Foundation-funded project, encourages robust physics understanding by connecting laboratory and computer-based materials to elicit students' ideas, guide students to modify ideas, and help students apply target ideas to new situations by using simulations.

The Virtual High School (VHS) allows teachers in a consortium to use online materials and collaborative tools to create specialty Net Courses online for students at other schools that belong to the consortium. VHS offers a wide range of courses, but science selections include ethnobotany, evolutionary genetics, paleontology, astronomy, and bioethics. VHS research helps teachers redesign courses and enhance inquiry by supporting inquiry-based teaching online.

Supporting Peer Learning

Research shows benefits when students productively specialize and tutor their peers. To support peer learning, software offers some group and individual activities, specifies how groups should work together, and accommodates the contributions of individuals to the group.

For example, software can support geographically separated students in sharing quantitative and qualitative data that are location dependent and/or time-sensitive, including weather, astronomical, or water quality data. Synchronized collaborative programs provide the tools and curricula to organize students over large distances. Synchronized collaborative programs range from days to weeks to a semester, and work best when several classrooms use them simultaneously and share findings. The programs use communication technologies including email and discussion forums to coordinate activity and discussion. For example, in One Sky Many Voices students serve as "resident experts" and communicate with other sites to compare local environments. Participation encourages scientific discussion and debate, asking questions, and presenting evidence to students in distant classrooms.

Several programs use software, including electronic probes to facilitate group data collection and analysis. For example, the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) project has three major goals: "to enhance the environmental awareness of individuals throughout the world; to contribute to scientific understanding of the earth; and to help all students reach higher levels of achievement in science and mathematics" (GLOBE Teacher's Guide, Program Overview). Through GLOBE, elementary to high school students around the world investigate earth science, including atmosphere, hydrosphere, land use, and soil. Scientists and students partner to collect and use data to gain a better understanding of global environmental processes. Providing online tools and materials, GLOBE uses high quality satellite photos and graphical representations of temperature, climate, and land use data. Students add findings to the Student Data Archive and use an Internet-based forum called GLOBEMail to communicate with schools and scientists. GLOBE is effective in improving student achievement in key mathematics, science, and geography skills. Students and teachers also report more interest and awareness of environmental issues and believe their data contributes to scientific research.

Recognizing Relevant Experiences, Diverse Contributions to Science, and Autonomy

Effective instruction should connect students' complex and varied ideas from prior observation and instruction, and introduce new scientific ideas. Technology can help students make connections, test their ideas against normative ones, and sort out varied perspectives on a topic.

To promote independent inquiry, technology-enhanced environments can prompt students to reflect on their progress and critique solutions proposed by others. Effective software should invite diverse students to engage in science by providing a variety of ways to learn (discussion, projects, reading, designing, debating), and by using students' views and experiences as a springboard to further learning. Software can support students in refining ideas, developing interest in new scientific topics, and carrying out sustained, complex projects.

In the early twenty-first century, learning environments are emerging to meet this challenging criteria. Computer-based learning environments combine curricula, classroom activities, and assessments into packages designed to improve teacher effectiveness and to provide cognitive and social supports for students who are conducting inquiry projects. Learning environments incorporate results of cognitive research including hint giving, prompts for reflection, and connections to online discussions. They free teachers to tutor individuals, identify common theories, and monitor progress.

The Web-based Integrated Science Environment (WISE), a browser-based application, offers a library of middle school and high school activities that enable students to critique real-world "evidence" from the Internet, compare scientific arguments, and design solutions to scientific problems. WISE projects offer inquiry activities that are personally relevant to students. These activities present multifaceted, interdisciplinary scientific issues, introduce scientific methodology, and encourage students to gain lifelong learning skills, including the ability to critique websites and support conclusions with appropriate evidence. The WISE technology provides an organizational structure helping students to reflect upon their learning, take notes, sort evidence, and discuss arguments online with peers. Many WISE projects involve hands-on data collection, online modeling of observations, or design activities. WISE provides scientific evidence, differing points of view, and visualizations (e.g., images, diagrams, animations or models). Students perform all work collaboratively, and are assessed in terms of their notes, arguments, models, and designs. WISE draws upon extensive cognitive and educational research, summarized by Marcia Linn and Sherry Hsi, to explore how computer technology can guide and support students' understanding.

Benefits

There is widespread agreement that students benefit from learning with and about technology in science. Nevertheless, effective incorporation of information technologies into the curriculum has been controversial, difficult, and demanding. Finding ideal uses of technology in science instruction remains an active research area, and the technology itself is a "moving target," as new projects emerge on a regular basis. The recommendations in this entry capture current practices and research findings, and require regular revision as new tools and new research results become available. The best gift science teachers can give this generation of students is to offer them courses and tools that enable them to become life-long science learners and to add new technological resources regularly to their repertoire.