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Summaries of KIE Research Findings
The challenge of developing an electronic learning environment
that truly scaffolds knowledge integration activities has been
met by ongoing research activities. Our classroom studies of KIE
have enabled successful refinement of our technology design. More
importantly, perhaps, we have extended our understanding of knowledge
integration: how it occurs in the classroom, and how best to support
it as educators. Some examples of research findings include:
- Searching The Internet. We were able to improve students' performance in the search activity,
particularly for those having trouble locating relevant sites,
by pooling relevant sites located by other students into the publically
accessible KIE Collaborative Search Page (CSP). Similary, we were able to scaffold the search process of searching using a Design Library that contained sites where the annotations refered to specific
design strategies. Contact Alex Cuthbert for more information on this work.
- Online Peer Review. Publishing student work on the Internet is motivational for students.
We can use peer review to encourage revision and refinement of
ideas. In addition, the types of critiques students make can provide
an assessment measure for open-ended projects that require the
use of scientific justifications. Contact Alex Cuthbert for more information on this work.
- Advance Organizers. As part of KIE, students often work with very complex evidence
from Web sites. One approach in supporting students as they interpret
and apply this information has been to include information about
the content, structure, or source of the information in the description
for that piece of evidence. Our research shows that students who
received the advanced organization were more critical of the evidence
and were more successful in interpreting and applying the evidence
to the project at hand. Contact Jim Slotta for more information on this work.
- The Influence of Media. Web evidence often makes use of multimedia representations of
content. We studied some of the instructional effects of media
by presenting different students with text and multimedia isomorphs
of the same scientific evidence. Most of the text-multimedia pairs
were interpreted significantly differently, pointing to a strong
influence of media representations in general. Multimedia representations
did not lead students to cite more "correct" scientific ideas,
although it did encourage them to cite more ideas in general,
which can be helpful in encouraging a group of students to brainstorm
and consider alternative explanations for phenomena.Contact Phillip Bell for more information on this work.
- The Role of Authority. Not all scientific evidence on the Web is created equal. Unlike
a refereed journal or edited textbook, information on the Web
can come from virtually anyone. Thus, when students search out
relevant evidence for their project, they should be encouraged
to consider the source from which the evidence derives, but this
is an educational challenge. We have carried out research where
evidence was presented to students under the guise of two different
authors -- one a University professor and another an avid hobbyist.
We found that although students can identify the relevant characteristics
of these two different sources before and after a project, it
does not influence how they interpret the information from the
sources during the project. Contact Doug Clark for more information on this work.
- Prompting for Reflection. Prompting students to reflect significantly increases knowledge
integration in science projects. In early studies, two types of
prompts were contrasted--"activity prompts" and "self-monitoring
prompts." Prompts focusing on the steps of the activities helped
students complete all the pieces of a project, while prompts for
self-monitoring encouraged students to demonstrate an integrated
understanding of the relevant science. Contact Elizabeth Davis for more information on this work.
- Effects of Reflection. Building on the above-mentioned work, we found that students
respond to self-monitoring prompts for planning and reflection
in varied ways, and that students who actually reflect on their
ideas achieve significantly better final products than those who
do not. Contact Elizabeth Davis for more information on this work.
- Learning through Electronic Discussion. Students can listen to the teacher and to ideas of others in
class discussions. In asynchronous electronic discussion, students
have the benefit of reflecting before making a comment, extending
the ideas of peers, and revising their own explanations. Research
indicates that electronic discussions can be designed to support
productive discourse for science learning. Students participate
more in electronic discussions compared to face-to-face class
discussions. Moreover, girls more likely to participate in science
discussions when comment anonymity was an option. Contact Sherry Hsi for more information on this work.
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