Supporting Flexibly Adaptive Design of Innovative Science Curricula

Bridging Web-based Science Learning with Outdoor Inquiry using Palm Computers
Sherry Hsi, Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, The Concord Consortium
Judith Collison and Carolyn Staudt, The Concord Consortium

 Bridging Philosophy, Curriculum, and Context Through Curriculum Adaptation: A Case Study of Teacher Warrants for Change in Enactment Using the Water Curriculum
Kim Williams, Ken Rose, Jennifer Schwartz, and Nicole Wong, Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools, Northwestern University
Jonathan Singer, Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools, University of Michigan

 Setting the Stage: Engaging Students in Water Quality
Jonathan Singer, Ann Rivet, Rebecca Schneider, Joseph Krajcik, Karen Amati, and Ron Marx, The University of Michigan

 Online and Midstream: The Design of Flexibly Adaptive Tools for Understanding Water Quality
Eric Baumgartner, Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, University of California, Berkeley
Sherry Seethaler, Britte Cheng, Ernest Lo, and James Slotta, University of California, Berkeley

 Multiple Views on Collaborative Curriculum Design: Looking for Synergy
James Gray, Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, SRI International

 Chair: Marcia Linn, U.C. Berkeley
Discussant: Joseph Krajcik, University of Michigan

 Each project has focused on overlapping areas of innovation to support student inquiry and improve student understanding of aquatic ecosystems in K-12 settings. Support for teaching and learning includes visualization and modeling tools, real-time data collection using electronic probes and mobile computers, data sharing programs, Internet-based annotation tools, and assessment supports that inform students about their own understanding, teachers about their instruction, and parents about their child's progress.

 While each of these projects has pursued their own objectives, the unifying feature across these efforts is the innovative use of learning technologies and the high level of interaction among designers as they share ideas and collaboratively design curricular resources. This coordinated collaboration has developed across research projects as well as within a given project, and is an important characteristic of ongoing work at both the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies and the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools. Such as approach places an emphasis on the design of modular curricula, flexible instructional frameworks, interoperable technology components, and shared, embedded assessments.

 Our hypothesis is that this kind of collaboration among a community of designers will result in more robust curricula, accelerate design cycles, and aid in the process of sharing and localizing curricula in new contexts. We call this approach "flexibly adaptive curriculum design."

 In this structured poster session, each project will describe the needs of their particular research site and the curricular goals, design decisions, and ways in which the project capitalized on community resources and shared knowledge. Within the context of specific case studies and empirical classroom studies, the projects will raise key challenges in cross-institutional collaboration and suggest specific learning technologies and new practices needed to embark on synergistic partnerships. The purpose of these discussions is to share, critique, and reflect upon this collaborative model to help inform the process of how other institutions can also share information and how pieces of one instructional program might be modularized and incorporated into another instructional program. The audience for this session includes researchers, teachers, and curriculum developers who are looking for insights into new ways of designing instructional materials that promote high quality and efficiency.

 Total Time: 2 hours
The session begins with a short introduction by the chair, who will frame the session and discussion (10 minutes). Each participant will then present the results of their research study in a concurrent poster session (40 minutes). Presenters focus on their particular innovation, results from design experiments, classroom studies, and/or work in schools. Once the group reassembles, the discussant will share and summarize his observations, points of synergy, and key challenges (20 minutes). The chair will then pose a series of questions to the presenters (20 minutes):

• What intellectual and technological resources did you draw from in your research?
• What barriers did you encounter in trying to re-use materials, tools, or assessments?
• How did you negotiate different cognitive perspectives and instructional frameworks?
• What pivotal events or mechanisms facilitated collaboration within and outside your research group or institution?

Expanding New Methods of Technology-embedded Assessment and Instruction

 In this presentation, we will discuss the design, development and effect of a new assessment method we added to a problem based inquiry unit designed around water quality. Prior research has focused on a more formative assessment approach and focused on how the assessment is used in a classroom. This involves embedding assessments into instruction to increase students1 motivation and help them track progress over time. We have developed two new innovations in pursuit of this goal. First, we place students in the role of teacher to help a virtual character (computer agent) learn more about issues related to water quality. This provides students with an opportunity to evaluate what they know and don1t know. A second innovation is an online assessment method that allows students to access resources while trying to help the virtual agent answer questions about water quality. This environment motivates students because they view it as an opportunity to learn more and to help someone else learn. Both have shown positive effects on students becoming better learners.

 In addition to a new assessment method, our curriculum focus and materials have expanded with the help of our colleagues in the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT). Our previous materials covered many import issues from the use of indicators in science measurement to the interdependence of factors within a river ecosystem. Berkeley's materials had a stronger focus on the systems level of an ecosystem and their goal in the spring of 1999 was to help students create a visual representation of this system. With this in mind, we expanded our instruction and assessments to focus even more on causal relationships between interdependent factors. This year our students created concept maps to demonstrate the evolution of their understanding of interdependence. We also created an interactive simulation that tested students1 ability to use a concept map as a tool to explain the influence of one factor on another over time. Also, through the efforts of colleagues at Concord and ImagiWorks, we are exploring the use of low-cost probeware with palm computers to augment our field trips performed as a culminating experience for our middle schools students.

 Currently, our collaboration with the other institutions within CILT has been extremely helpful in pursing multiple innovations within a given period of time. In the past our resources limited our scope of research. With the added support from others we1ve been able to increase the learning potential of the students, effectiveness of teacher1s instruction, and scope of our research.
 
 

Bridging Web-based Science Learning with Outdoor Inquiry using Palm Computers

We are exploring the role of ubiquitous, low-cost computers to transform science learning. In the Alameda Creek Project, a novel handheld technology designed to support real-time data collection has been linked to Web-based curricula for promoting integrated understanding of aquatic ecosystems. Students investigated "What is the health of Alameda Creek?" and drew conclusions based on Internet research, water quality field monitoring, data modeling, data sharing, and class discussions. Using pocket computers and digital probes, students took notes and measured factors like water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. In the spring of 1999, 10th grade biology students participated in the three-week unit in which the curricula and assessments were developed using a flexibly adaptive design approach. Results from multiple methods of assessment indicate conceptual gains in subject matter knowledge and more elaborated models of water quality.

 How did this project fare in making use of distributed expertise and synergistic research across multiple institutions and sectors? The Alameda Creek Project drew from NSF projects like the Web-Integrated Science Environment, the Foundations of Science Project, Science Learning in Context, Project GREEN, and others. The embedded approach to assessment from Vanderbilt Stone's River Mystery projects served to rethink embedding learning assessments in Web and portable computer formats. The first project spawned several more studies using Palm computers with elementary and middle school students. Synergy was also fostered with industry partners. For example, Palm Computing donated handheld computers so that we could explore their educational potential. Likewise, ImagiWorks, a recent start-up, provided a hardware device as curricular activities to connect Palms with digital probes. For both Palm Computing and ImagiWorks, our research results will help inform their companies' education product development.
 
 

Bridging Philosophy, Curriculum, and Context Through Curriculum Adaptation: A Case Study of Teacher Warrants for Change in Enactment Using the Water Curriculum

Jonathan Singer, Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools, University of Michigan
This poster describes the challenges and dilemmas faced by two teachers as they enacted a project-based science middle school curriculum unit ­ "Water." This work provides an example of teacher learning, teacher warrants for change, and the tacit assumptions made visible that can be used to construct a base for the adaptation of curriculum. This study is a part of a joint curriculum portability and adaptation project of two institutions ­ Northwestern University and The University of Michigan ­ which represent the core university partnerships represented in The Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS). Both programs have a long history of creating robust materials for inquiry-based science classrooms.

 The Chicago Public Schools teachers described in this study had previous experience in collaboratively designing and in enacting project-based science curriculum in conjunction with Northwestern University. They held tacit theories regarding curriculum design rationale, curriculum format, student skills, and classroom management vis-a-vis project-based science. The Water unit represented a contrastive case opportunity for the teachers because it was designed in work circles comprised of Detroit Public Schools teachers and LeTUS- University of Michigan researchers. Through analysis of video artifacts, field notes, student focus groups, and teacher interviews we will show how the philosophical differences, tacit assumptions, and contextual constraints underlying creation and adaptation of the curriculum influenced Chicago teacher warrants' for changes to the Water unit.
 
 

Setting the Stage: Engaging Students in Water Quality

 "What is the Quality of My Water?", a curriculum project developed at the University of Michigan as part of the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS), continues to be revised using the foundations of Project-Based Science. The water quality project illustrates a number of principals that we have developed as part of LeTUS. Each project revolves around a driving question that relates to student experiences and encompasses substantial science content matched to local and national standards. In addition, the projects emphasize student inquiry and collaborative learning supported by innovative learning technologies. These projects have been extensively enacted in Detroit Public Schools over the past three years.

 This poster presentation addresses how we develop curriculum features to engage students in the water quality and other project-based science modules. Several contextualizing features are integrated into the project. These include engaging students in the driving question as it relates to their local environment, sustaining a focus on the Rouge or Detroit Rivers which runs through the heart of Detroit, and strategies to support the development and investigation of students1 own questions about what they need to know in order to understand issues surrounding water quality. A river walk, where students visit and observe a section of the Rouge River, serves as the primary anchoring event of the project. This experience, in context of the driving question, helps both to contextualize the project to the students1 lives and to serve as a common anchoring experience throughout the project.

 In development and revision of this water quality project we have drawn upon the resources of many organizations and institutions, and have developed collaborative relationships both within LeTUS and now with CILT and its partners. In this presentation we also discuss the beneficial opportunities provided by these partnerships, and address ways in which we will work to further expand and enrich these opportunities with this and other curriculum projects.
 
 

Online and Midstream: The Design of Flexibly Adaptive Tools for Understanding Water Quality

 This poster discusses the challenges of designing curricula for learning about stream water quality and focuses in particular on the design of one visualization tool. As part of the Web-based Integrated Science Environment (WISE) project, we have developed an online curriculum, "Strawberry Creek," for engaging students in inquiry about the water quality of local streams. In this unit, students explore online evidence about water quality in preparation for a visit to a stream, where students make observations, collect water samples and measure several water quality factors, such as pH, dissolved oxygen, and fecal coliform. To support student reasoning about the relationships among causal factors and water quality indicators, we have designed a causal mapping tool that allows students to represent causal relationships among water quality factors. Students use this tool to build, compare and critique iterative models of water quality over the course of the project.

 We will discuss how the design and formative assessment of this tool has been influenced by prior research (e.g. Novak's concept maps and dynamic modeling tools such as Model-It and Stella), as well as through collaboration with other research groups, particularly those within the CILT community. We will report on how our pilot studies and collaborations with other researchers has led us to redesign the tool and its context of use to better inform students of their own understanding by providing greater opportunities for formative assessment. Finally, we will outline the critical features of WISE that support the design of modular curricula that teachers can adapt for their own classrooms, and discuss our efforts to make this tool and this curriculum broadly available for teachers and researchers to adapt to their own settings.
 
 

Multiple Views on Collaborative Curriculum Design: Looking for Synergy

 "Flexibly adaptive curriculum design" is a complex collaborative process involving the efforts of researchers, teachers, students, and industry partners. This approach aims to develop and refine high-quality instructional materials and advance the field of learning technologies. Achieving this aim relies on a collaborative, synergistic relationship among participants.

 In this session, I examine the particular collaborative processes that have shaped the CILT Synergy project as it is manifest in three sites (See project descriptions in this proposal by Baumgartner, Brophy, and Hsi). Using observational and interview data, I describe and analyze how design decisions are made, how diverse perspectives are negotiated, and the resulting learning activities and outcomes of students. In this analysis I take a sociocultural view that includes examination of individual, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural factors. For instance, I examine the interests and knowledge of individual teachers, their collegial relations with other teachers and researchers, the local school climate in terms of instructional innovation, and the wider cultural values that shape the meaning of collaboration and change in science education.

 By presenting specific examples of how different individuals and sites customized curricular material while drawing on shared models of synergy, this session will give educators ideas for localizing both the product and process of collaborative curriculum design in their own classroom or institutional contexts. Throughout, the focus will be on the role of learning technologies, and conclusions will include suggestions for further enhancement of collaborative design processes with community tools.
 
 

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation