“Learning environments that concentrate on conveying to students what scientists already know do not promote inquiry. Rather, an emphasis on inquiry asks that we think about what we know, why we know, and how we have come to know.” (National Research Council, 2000, p.5-6)
Simply, WISE projects aims to promote scientific inquiry by progressively working through with a student in a technology-enhance learning environment. Writing from SKI and WISE theorist strongly believes that learning is a personal and social construct where learners cycle through a process to assess, modify and revise current cognitive representations using technology-enhanced learning environment.
Key WISE prioritize are:
- Making learning accessible
Many theoriets believe that students can better access information when it is more interesting and personal(Linn, Clark, & Slotta, (2003); Gobert, Snyder & Houghton (2002)). In addition to this definition, Gobert, Snyder & Houghton (2002) believe that in order to make learning more accessible, the discussed topic and the way in which it is presented should be appropriate for their individual age and skill level.
- Making thinking visible
Another recurrent theme of the WISE pedagogy is to make thinking visible. Often, this materializes as comparing and contrasting previous assumptions, critiquing the views of others and using digital organizational tools and visualizers. More importantly, these visual modes of representation should be interactive.
- Making learning a social process
Scholars who write about WISE believe that students should take advantage of social cognition. Students’ work should utilize asynchronous or synchronous tools to solicit peer review and response.
Given this premise, here are some modifications for a WISE project to allow the WISE priorities to be made more prominently. Using “Thermodynamics Challenge” as the cornerstone from the WISE library, a few supplementary activities are added and some modification to the platform of the WISE activity. More noticeably, the supplementary activities and change in the documenting platform promotes more visible thinking and ensuring a stronger peer learning culture.
This is a project-based assignment promoting a stronger understanding about the way in which heat moves and the role of insulation.
Introduction:
In the selected WISE project, it entices the students by reimagining their roles as consultants to recommend materials for cups to preserve the temperature of its contents.
Addition: Plicker Questions
In order to better identify students’ prior knowledge and misconceptions, quick response activities allow teachers to easily assess students’ thoughts. The advantage of using Plicker is that it generates a visualization of the recorded feedback in real time. This also supports learning as a group. First, educators can survey students about the kinds of materials for cups that they have used previously for hot and cold drinks. Then, after students complete the 1.5 activities in WISE (i.e. students are asked to choose to use the same or different material), ask students this identical question on Plicker, then show results and prompt a whole class discussion.
Modification: Google Documents
Instead of using the embedded digital notebook, students should complete their work on Google Docs as it can be easily shared and students can directly comment and annotate on the shared work. This also helps promote a network of peer support.
Then, students should continue to follow the WISE project outline and explore with the computer interactive simulation to assess the interaction between the different types of material and time. Using computer simulation is a time saving method to observe the efficiency of the preservation of heat. Next, students should continue to follow the WISE project outline to design, plan and run their experiment (i.e. 1.6 – 1.8).
Modification: Google Documents
Notably, this TELE is lacking further support for scaffolding during the knowledge reconstruction, reflection & negotiation stages. Students are tasked to review and annotate on two other students’ work. Using the ‘Suggestion’ mode, learners should comment and edit on other students’ work in order to make thinking more visible and accessible. More importantly, Google Documents allow students to comment on specific ideas and details (i.e. lines/parts). Addition, this promotes the idea that learning is a social process. In order to enhance the knowledge reconstruction, teacher should also comment in suggestion mode to help bridge evidence to theory.
Addition: T-chart (Offline)
To make thinking more visible, students should create their own pre and post experiment T-chart to rank the efficiency of the preservation of temperature. Students should first record their predicted ranking and then re-rank the variables after their experiment. This organizer helps students compare their original thoughts and new findings.
Addition: Case studies
This WISE is lacking quality content scaffolds to help students rational their findings. Questions prompts are a good start, however, some students may fail to see the connections in the evidence. The goal of the conclusion of an inquiry is to “seek alternative hypotheses to explain anomalies or unexpected findings, and consider the applicability and impact of the findings to other organisms, theories, and domains” (Kim & Hannafin, 2011, p.406) To make better recommendations and to help fully explain their findings, students should review case studies about insulation in animals and homes. For example, students can watch short youtube clips (e.g. How an igloo keeps you warm; How do Whales, Penguins, and Polar Bears Keep Warm?)
Addition: Sharing Recommendations
Lastly, one area of improvement in the TELE is that students require more support to compare and contrast their recommendations. Again, students should review and assess their peers’ recommendations.
Ultimately, technology should be utilizied as an intellectual partner to promote scientific understanding and and discovery. In general, this WISE project that inquires about thermodynamics provides a sound foundation to investigate the relationship between different types of materials and temperature preservation. However, this WISE project on thermodynamics requires some modification in order to making thinking more visible and accessible and to enhance the social learning culture. To fully utilize this WISE project, educators can add content scaffolds and include more sharing and commenting options.
Discussion Questions
What are other digital tools to enhance learning via social means?
What are your thoughts about the relationship between scaffolding tools and WISE pedagogy?
Reference
Gobert, J., Snyder, J., & Houghton, C. (2002, April). The influence of students’ understanding of models on model-based reasoning. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, Louisiana. This is a conference paper. Retrieved conference paper Saturday, October 29, 2013 from: http://mtv.concord.org/publications/epistimology_paper.pdf
Inquiry in Science and in Classrooms.” National Research Council. 2000. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9596.
Kim, M. C., & Hannafin, M. J. (2011). Scaffolding problem solving in technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs): Bridging research and theory with practice. Computers & Education, 56(2), 403-417.
Linn, M., Clark, D., & Slotta, J. (2003). Wise design for knowledge integration. Science Education, 87(4), 517-538. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.10086/abstract
Hey Alice! I really enjoyed your post, and your modified activity. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t access your project through the link you provided. Your detailed escription made up for that, though, so I’ll make some comments about that!
First and foremost I loved how you leveraged what’s good about the WISE platform then extended it with external tools where you identified shortcomings. I found this very clever and showed that you carefully thought through how to reimagine the existing activity!
Specifically I liked how WISE functioned almost as the instruction manual or guidebook, assumedly allowing the teacher to act more as a guide-on-the-side, while pulling from in-fashion digital tools such as Plicker and Google Docs to enhance the experience. I noticed you primarily incorporated these tools in order to allow students to 1) collaborate, 2) learn from each other, 3) receive immediate feedback and 4) make their learning (and accompanying misconceptions) visible. So clever!
Having students make connections between the thermodynamics activity using videos of real-life situations would likely go a long way toward enhancing student learning. As I can’t access your activity I can’t tell how you incorporated this case study. Were students given much direction on which case studies to review, or how to determine the most crucial information from the suggested videos?
Finally, your choice of incorporating a T-chart just made so much sense. It may sound silly, but when someone chooses “offline” tech for activities I always think to myself “… of course!!” The tool is simple, effective, and fits the task perfectly. It reminds me that just because tech can allow for complex activities doesn’t mean simple offline tools aren’t the best choiuce for a given task.
As for your question about enhancing learning via social means I’d recommend wandering through Instagram for a while using relevant hashtags: #thermodynamics, #insulation, and the like. I’m sure you could come up with more creative ones than me, but using a similar technique for physics helped my students make sense of things like Lenz’ Law through videos created by students just like them.
Second, to me it seems scaffolding is the crux of WISE; WISE couldn’t exist without it, so not only are they related, but WISE is literally built on scaffolding through SKI.
Oh, and I forgot to direct you to this!
http://energy.concord.org/energy2d/
It’s got AMAZING applets for visualizing thermodynamic process!
Hi Scott,
Thank you for the resource! Have you used this with your students? What are there feedback? How did you incorporate this tool?
Alice
Hey Alice, yup, I used the tool with them. It was a bit of a special case because it was a class of only 2 students, so it was more like tutoring. Very student-centred, exploring all sorts of stuff when questions arose because I had the time to do so. Students seemed to really enjoy using the tool. I had them each use a Surface pro 3 to explore them. The first time they saw the simulations they literally said “Whoa!”; they were shocked that such tools existed. it’s really a huge jump from the pencil and paper learning methods they were used to – in a good way.
I was teaching thermodynamics, specifically heat transfer, so I incorporated the tool by teaching all the common concepts through them. Conduction, convection, radiation were all taught using various tools from this site as manipulatives. Seeing the heat transfer happen in “real time”, supplemented by clear visuals such as temperature-related colour changes and swirling convection currents really helped solidify the theoretical concepts as a true-to-life event. Both of them aced all assessment items related to these topics and I think the tool played a large part in that success. I’d love to try it again with a larger classes if I get the chance, and gauge student understanding of the topic before and after using solid tools such as a survey.
Dear Scott,
Neat! I think there is inherent value of seeing action in real-time. This sounds like a valuable tool to inspect the science behind the visuals.
Thank you for sharing!
Alice
Dear Scott,
Thank you for your in-depth analysis. You always go above and beyond what is expected. I strongly believe that there is still a place for offline options. It is about balancing technological tools that students can handle and manage. Organizers were once new forms of ‘technology’. According to the WISE model, offline options makes learning more accessible. Specifically, making things tangible and physical allows misconceptions to be further exposed. In this design, I am imagining writing each material on strip of paper and then arranging it on a magnetic white board.
Indeed, topical hashtags makes it easy to curate information either through twitter or instagram. I know you can now do votes in instastories, how about using that method as a way to publicly rank the types of materials?
As for scaffolding, I agree that it is central to the WISE pedagogy. Kim’s (2011) description clearly categorizes the different types of scaffolds. I find that students often require more reflection scaffolds. Although this usually happens at the end of an inquiry, however, I think that this step is usually where persistent misconceptions are found.
Thank you for sharing the link! The visualisations are memorising and easy to understand.
Alice
Hello again!
Very cool idea with publicly ranking materials using hashtags… I did not know voting in instastories was possible (I guess I’m not so young anymore), I’ll have to check those out!