A Multi-user virtual environment for building higher order inquiry skills in science

This National Science Foundation funded study is investigating novel pedagogies for helping teachers infuse inquiry into a standards-based science curriculum. Using a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) as a pedagogical vehicle, teams of middle school students are asked to collaboratively solve a simulated 19th century city’s problems with illness, through interaction with each others’ “avatars”, digital artifacts, tacit clues, and computer-based “agents” acting as mentors and colleagues in a virtual community of practice. This paper describes the results from the three implementations in 2004 with approximately 2000 students from geographical diverse urban areas. Results indicate that students do conduct inquiry and are motivated by that process. However, results from assessments vary depending on assessment strategy employed. Problem For decades, science educators have worked to infuse inquiry into the K-12 curriculum (AAAS 1990, 1993; NRC, 1996). For example, the National Science Teachers Association recently issued a draft position statement recommending the use of science inquiry as a method to help students understand the processes and content of science (National Science Teachers Association, 2004). This goal is problematic for teachers when juxtaposed with requirements of preparing students for the detailed science content included in high stakes testing; in many situations, this competing push forces the emphasis in science classrooms to change from inquiry-based instruction to test-preparation (Falk & Drayton, 2004). Curricula centered on both inquiry and coverage of state and national content standards would help teachers achieve both objectives. In this paper, we provide an overview of an NSF-funded curriculum project that focuses on both inquiry and standards-based content, using novel pedagogies to help low-performing students master complex inquiry skills. However, curricula such as this only partially solve the problem. In addition, in order to provide teachers and schools with incentives to cover inquiry skills as well as factual content, highstakes tests would need to include more inquiry-based questions. Unfortunately, this solution raises a different concern: Can learning from good inquiry-based projects be adequately assessed using a standardized test format? What kind of assessments will allow valid inferences about whether a student has learned how to engage in inquiry, particularly in the “front end” inquiry processes used to derive a strategy for making sense out of complexity: problem finding, hypothesis formation, experimental design? In this paper, we will discuss this conundrum and present results from our implementations that shed light on it. Theoretical Underpinnings