Abstract: The importance of collaborative and social learning processes is well established, as is the utility of external representations in supporting learners ' active expression, examination and manipulation of their own emerging knowledge. However, research on how computerbased representational tools may support collaborative learning is in its infancy. This paper motivates such a line of research, sketches a theoretical analysis of the roles of constraint and salience in the representational guidance of collaborative learning discourse, and reports on an initial study that compared textual, graphical, and matrix representations. Differences in the predicted direction were observed in the amount of talk about evidential relations and the use of epistemological categories.

: Given the explosive growth in the use of computer media for learning and the wide range of choices available to designers of online learning tools, it is crucial to understand how these design choices may influence learning. This study evaluated the influence of tools for constructing representations of evidential models on collaborative learning processes and outcomes. Pairs of participants worked with one of three representations while investigating complex science and public health problems. Dependent variables included quantity of discourse about evidential relations ("for" and "against") and two learning outcome measures. Significant effects of tools on learning processes were found, although there appears to have been insufficient time for these process differences to influence learning outcomes. Keywords: collaborative representations, representational guidance 1. Introduction The importance of social processes to learning, including the potential utility of collaborative l...

: Learning how to create, test, and revise models is a central skill in scientific reasoning. We argue that qualitative modeling provides an appropriate level of representation for helping middle-school students learn to become modelers. We describe a system we have created that uses visual representations to provide a studentfriendly notation for creating qualitative models. This system is currently undergoing pilot testing in Chicago Public School classrooms, using curricula developed in collaboration with teachers. Contact address: Ken Forbus Qualitative Reasoning Group, Northwestern University 1890 Maple Avenue, Evanston, IL, 60201, USA email: forbus@nwu.edu Voice: 847-491-7699 Fax: 847-491-5258 2 1 Introduction Modeling is a central skill in scientific reasoning. Learning to formulate, analyze, test, and revise models is a crucial aspect of understanding science, and critical to helping students become active, lifelong learners. Supporting students in articulating models of a ...

. We present a vision for learning environments, called Science Learning Spaces, that are rich in engaging content and activities, provide constructive experiences in scientific process skills, and are as instructionally effective as a personal tutor. A Science Learning Space combines three independent software systems: 1) lab/field simulations in which experiments are run and data is collected, 2) modeling/construction tools in which data representations are created, analyzed and presented, and 3) tutor agents that provide just-in-time assistance in higher order skills like experimental strategy, representational tool choice, conjecturing, and argument. We believe that achieving this ambitious vision will require collaborative efforts facilitated by a component-based software architecture. We have created a feasibility demonstration that serves as an example and a call for further work toward achieving this vision. In our demonstration, we combined 1) the Active Illustratio...

Research on "epistemological beliefs " has made important contributions to education, most fundamentally in identifying epistemology as a category of informal knowledge that may play a role in students ' knowledge, reasoning, study strategies, and participation. A perspective on students as having epistemological beliefs can provide an alternative interpretive lens for

This article explores how students ’ epistemological ideas about the nature of science interact with their conceptual understanding of a particular domain, as reflected in written explanations for an event of natural selection constructed by groups of high school students through a technology-supported curriculum about evolution. Analyses intended to disentangle conceptual and epistemic aspects of explanation reveal that groups sought plausible causal accounts of observed data, and were sensitive to the need for causal coherence, while articulating explanations consistent with the theory of natural selection. Groups often failed to explicitly cite data to support key claims, however, both because of difficulty in interpreting data and because they did not seem to see explicit evidence as crucial to an explanation. These findings reveal that students have productive epistemic resources to bring to bear during inquiry, but highlight the need for an epistemic discourse around student-generated artifacts to deepen both the conceptual and epistemological understanding students may develop through inquiry. Inquiry-based approaches to science education emphasize processes of inquiry, such as asking questions, generating and interpreting data, and forming conclusions

The importance of both social processes and of representational aids for learning is well-established, yet few experimental studies have addressed the combination of these factors. The research reported in this article evaluates the influence of tools for constructing representations of evidential models on collaborative learning processes and outcomes. Pairs of participants worked with 1 of 3 representations (Graph, Matrix, Text) while investigating complex science and public health problems. Dependent measures included (a) the content of participants ’ utterances and representational actions and the timing of these utterances and actions with respect to the availability of information; (b) a multiple choice test of the ability to recall the data, hypotheses, and evidential relations explored; and (c) the contents of a written essay. The results Do Not Copy show that representational notations can have significant effects on learners ’ interac-tions, and may differ in their influence on subsequent collaborative use of the knowledge being manipulated. For example, Graph and Matrix users elaborated on previously represented information more than Text users. Representation and discussion of evidential relations was quantitatively greatest for Matrix users as predicted, yet this came at the cost of excessive consideration and revision of unimportant relations. Graph users may have been more focused in their consideration of evidence, and the work done in the Graph representation had the greatest impact on the contents of the essays. Although limited to initial use of representations in a laboratory setting, the work demonstrates that representational guidance of collaborative learning is worthy of study and suggests several lines of further investigation.

The present widespread interest in the use of electronic media for presents an unprecedented opportunity for leveraging the computational medium's strengths for learning. However, existing software tools provide only primitive support for online knowledge-building discourse. Further work is needed in supporting coordinated use of disciplinary representations, discourse representations, and knowledge representations. This paper introduces the concept of representational guidance for discourse along with results of an initial study of this phenomenon in face to face situations. The paper then considers the requirements for supporting asynchronous online knowledge-building discourse, finding existing computer mediated communication tools to be particularly deficient in supporting artifact-centered discourse. A solution is proposed that coordinates discourse representations with disciplinary and knowledge representations. 1. Introduction There is a great deal of interest in the use of el...

The Belvedere software environment was designed to support students engaged in collaborative learning while solving ill-structured problems requiring integration of multiple sources of data to evaluate competing hypotheses or solutions. Students are posed with web-based “science challenge problems,” which present a recent or current debate in science along with on-line articles, data, and suggestions for hands-on data-gathering activities. Students use the Belvedere inquiry-diagramming facility to record hypotheses under consideration, information gathered, and the evidential relations between them. Preliminary studies with Belvedere suggest that the design of representational tools can have a significant effect on the learners’ knowledge-building discourse. However, these effects are insufficiently studied. After several years of laying the groundwork by building and deploying such software, the author and colleagues have begun such an in-depth investigation, examining the effects of textual, diagrammatic and tabular representational tools on the quality of knowledge-building discourse between learners. The paper describes the Belvedere work that led to this position, lays out a research agenda, and describes pilot studies now underway.

ABSTRACT: Science education reforms consistently maintain the goal that students develop an understanding of the nature of science, including both the nature of scientific knowledge and methods for making it. This paper articulates a framework for scaffolding epistemic aspects of inquiry that can help students understand inquiry processes in relation to the kinds of knowledge such processes can produce. This framework underlies the design of a technology-supported inquiry curriculum for evolution and natural selection that focuses students on constructing and evaluating scientific explanations for natural phenomena. The design has been refined through cycles of implementation, analysis, and revision that have documented the epistemic practices students engage in during inquiry, indicate ways in which designed tools support students ’ work, and suggest necessary additional social scaffolds. These findings suggest that epistemic tools can play a unique role in supporting students ’ inquiry, and a fruitful means for studying students ’ scientific epistemologies.