The CoVis Project: Building a Large-Scale Science Education Testbed

This paper describes the construction and research program of the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project. a testbed for exploring science education reform with telecommunications technology. The CoVis testbed is contrasted with other forms of cdu-cational research in an " e c o l o ~ y of paradigms." which argues that testbeds are in fact a new setting for research with different requirements and challenges for the researcher. Two extended examples of telecommunications research are provided as examples of the kind of research that testbeds are ire11 suited to explore. The first example is the evolution of videoconferencing in the CoVis testbed. The second example is the design and development of a networked proup-ware application sailed the Collaboratory Notebook. :' The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation through grants RED-9454729 and MDR-9253462. and the Illinois State Board of Higher Education. under the Eisenhower Program. The authors would also like to thank the students and teachers of the CoVis project for their support and participarion in this work. and give special acknowledgment to the members of the CoVis research team [ for their many contributions to the work described, and to the teachers and students. aithout whom none of this work would have been possible. In addition. the CoVis project would not have been possible without the contribution of individuals from Ameritech. Bellcore. the Exploratorium. the CoVis is first and foremost an extended design exercise in that we (teachers , science practitioners, and researchers alike) are attempting to engineer an environment where the people in a community of schools can create and implement project-based science curricula (Ruopp et al.. 1993) enhanced by computing and communications technology for day-today use. A more "authentic" form of science teaching and learning than traditionally found in science classrooms is in the foreground of the CoVis design effort. We envisioned a "collaboratory" (Finholt & Olson. 1997: Lederberg & Uncapher. 1989) of classrooms where the teachers and students in them are learning science by doing science in connection with communities of science and science educators (Pea, 1993a). Heeding pedagogy first. we have been investigating characteristics of the technical and social infrastructure that make it possible for participants to discover compellin,o questions, and to investigate them in ways that are personally meaningful. The infrastructure goal is to enable a form of learning-by-doing supported by a rich array of technology that allows people in …