A WISE Inquiry Project for Students ’ East - West Coast Collaboration

The paper will describe a large scale design study involving a total of 1100 middle and high school students from California and Massachusetts who collaborated on-line about plate tectonic activity in their respective location. The students, drawn from demographically diverse schools, collaborated online using WISE (Web-based Science Environment, Linn & Hsi, 2000). WISE is an integrated set of software resources to engage students in many types of scientific inquiry, including prompted reflection, electronic discussions, evidence sorting and argument mapping, collaborative search for evidence, collaborative design, and analysis (Linn, 1998b; Linn & Hsi, 2000). Following the WISE design framework, the two main pedagogical principles embodied in the present study were: Make thinking visible and help students learn from one another. In terms of making thinking visible, we engaged students in two visual modes of representation. First, using the drawing tool in WISE, students drew their models and used these models as artifacts for reiterative cycles of critique and model-revision. Secondly, students viewed a set of dynamic, runnable models of plate tectonic phenomena in order to better visualize the dynamic, causal, and temporal processes. In terms of helping students learn from one another, we engaged students in tasks in which they critiqued their learning partners’ models from the opposite coast. We did this to provide students with an opportunity to both think deeply about the domain in order to do the critiques, as well as think about how models are used as tools for communication in science. Data from 15 classrooms is described. Data analysis was focussed on primarily two areas: measuring content gains of the domain, and characterizing the nature of students’ model critiques and subsequent revisions on the basis of these critiques. Results suggest that the east-west coast collaboration was successful in promoting content learning as measured by the content gains. Additionally, students’ model-building and revision was influenced by the visualizations they viewed in the unit as well as by other content in the unit. Lastly, the model critiques of the students suggests that this is a successful way to promote reflection but that more scaffolding is necessary for the middle school students in order for students to successfully critique each others’ work. 1 This research was conducted as part of the Making Thinking Visible project which is funded by the National Science Foundation under grant No. REC-9980600 awarded to Janice Gobert. Grants for WISE were awarded to Marcia Linn by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed are those of the presenters and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.