We have developed a disciplinarily integrated game (DIG) to support students in interpreting, tra... more We have developed a disciplinarily integrated game (DIG) to support students in interpreting, translating, and manipulating across formal representations in the domain of Newtonian kinematics. In this study, we seek to understand what game play looks like in a classroom context with particular attention given to how students leverage internal and external scaffolds to progress through the game and deepen their conceptual knowledge. We investigate the following questions: (1) In what ways do students interact with the game, with each other, and with their teacher when they play SURGE Symbolic in a classroom environment? (2) How do game scaffolds, both within and outside of the game, support or impede student learning and game play? (3) What are the implications of these observations for teachers and game designers? We found that although most students used internal scaffolds in some way to assist their game play, many found that these scaffolds were insufficient to get through challenges. They quickly sought help from external resources available to them outside the game to help them advance in the game. The source of information they needed to make progress came from various people or resources outside the game, what we are calling "knowers."
This poster explores the levels of reasoning articulated in (a) the spontaneous faceto-face colla... more This poster explores the levels of reasoning articulated in (a) the spontaneous faceto-face collaborations that naturally occurred in classrooms where students were all playing a single-player game designed to support learning of Newtonian mechanics and (b) in online forums that were created for the students to share hints and strategies about each level in the game. Interestingly, levels of articulated reasoning were very low in face-to-face interactions but much higher in the online forums.
EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2007
Conceptual change researchers have made significant progress on two prominent but competing theor... more Conceptual change researchers have made significant progress on two prominent but competing theoretical perspectives regarding knowledge structure coherence. These perspectives can be broadly characterized as (1) knowledge-as-theory perspectives and (2) knowledge-as-elements perspectives. These perspectives can be briefly summarized in terms of the following questions. Is a student's knowledge most accurately represented as a coherent unified framework of theory-like character (e.g.
International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 2017
Disciplinarily-integrated games represent a generalizable genre and template for designing games ... more Disciplinarily-integrated games represent a generalizable genre and template for designing games to support science learning with a focus on bridging across formal and phenomenological representations of core science relationships (Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth, 2015; Clark, Sengupta, & Virk, 2016; Sengupta & Clark, 2016). By definition, disciplinarily-integrated games (DIGs) are therefore multirepresentational systems with the affordances and challenges associated with that medium. The current paper analyzes the DIG structure through the focal parameters framed by the DeFT framework (Ainsworth, 2006) to synthesize effective design considerations for DIGs in terms of the specific design and intended functions of the representations themselves as well as the overarching environment and activity structures. The authors leverage the literatures on embodied cognition, adaptive scaffolding, representations in science education, and learning from dynamic visual...
International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 2017
In this paper, techniques of statistical computing were applied to data logs to investigate the p... more In this paper, techniques of statistical computing were applied to data logs to investigate the patterns in students' play of The Fuzzy Chronicles, and how these patterns relate to learning outcomes with regards to Newtonian kinematics. This paper has two goals. The first goal is to investigate the basic claims of the proposed Two-System Framework for Game-Based Learning (or 2SM) (Martinez-Garza & Clark, 2016) that may serve as part of a general-use explanatory framework for educational gaming. The second goal is to explore and demonstrate the use of automatically collected log files of student play as evidence through educational data mining techniques. These techniques could also find general use, and this paper offers a demonstration of plausible methods and processes that are suited for game play data. These goals were pursued via two research questions. The first research question examines whether students playing The Fuzzy Chronicles showed evidence of dichotomous fast/slo...
International Journal of Designs for Learning, 2016
We have iteratively designed and researched five digital games focusing on Newtonian dynamics for... more We have iteratively designed and researched five digital games focusing on Newtonian dynamics for middle school classrooms during the past seven years. The designs have evolved dramatically in terms of the roles and relationships of the formal representations, phenomenological representations, and control schemes. Phenomenological representations can be thought of as the “world” representations that depict the actual actions and motion of a game as they occur (i.e., the central representations in most recreational games). Formal representations highlight the disciplinary relationships of interest from a pedagogical perspective (such as vector arrows, graphs, and dot traces). Our initial design perspective focused on highlighting the formal physics relationships within popular game-play mechanics. This perspective prioritized a commitment to the phenomenological representations and controls of recreational games, specifically marble-genre games. We designed formal representations aro...
Research suggests thatself-explanation functionality can effectively support learningin the conte... more Research suggests thatself-explanation functionality can effectively support learningin the context of digital games. Research also highlights challenges, however,in balancing and integrating the demands and abstraction of self-explanation functionality with the demands and structure of the game. These challenges are particularly true for games that are, themselves, cognitively more complex. The current study presents an approach that adapts the abstraction of self-explanation prompts based on a player's performance. The results demonstrate that students in this condition (a) scored significantly higher on the post-test than students whose selfexplanation prompts were not adaptively adjusted and were always abstract and (b) scored higher, but not significantly so, than students who did not receive the self-explanation functionality. Analyses of gameplay metrics suggest that trade-offs in terms of progress through the game may explain some aspects of these post-test comparisons. Analyses also demonstrate that both self-explanation conditions significantly outperformed the navigation-only comparison conditionon agameplay metric that suggests deeper model-based thinking.
Research suggests that designing for an external audience may support conceptual understanding by... more Research suggests that designing for an external audience may support conceptual understanding by offering students increased opportunities to reframe perspectival thinking in ways that support domain-specific reasoning. While this argument is theoretically compelling, to our knowledge, it has not been empirically tested in terms of comparing the conceptual growth of students designing computational models for an external audience to the conceptual growth of students designing computational models for a classroom audience of their teacher and peers. In a constructionist agent-based computational modeling environment, we compare the conceptual understanding, artifact quality, and discourse of 6th grade students designing models of tides primarily for an external audience of younger students (i.e., designing for 5th graders) to the conceptual understanding of 6th grade students designing models for a classroom audience. We found that students who designed for an external audience of younger children displayed greater conceptual growth about the mechanisms that cause tidal bulges as evidenced by students' pre-post assessments, models, and user guides/reports. Our analysis of classroom discourse suggests that designing for an audience of younger children may have facilitated domain-specific reasoning in whole-class discussions by creating opportunities for shifts between students' own perspectives and the perspectives of their anticipated audience.
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2007
In recent years, information and communication technology has established new opportunities to pa... more In recent years, information and communication technology has established new opportunities to participate in online learning environments around the globe. These opportunities include the dissemination of specific online learning environments as well as opportunities for learners to connect to online learning environments in distant locations. These dissemination and distance learning scenarios create potential challenges, however, in terms of the cultural differences in the internal scripts that learners of different cultures bring to these environments. This article considers these issues and challenges specifically for online environments focusing on argumentative knowledge construction. It discusses the importance of cross-cultural research in this area and proposes that a collaboration script perspective may prove extremely valuable for this research.
ABSTRACT This 2nd edition of the book includes contributed chapters, some by authors of the 1st e... more ABSTRACT This 2nd edition of the book includes contributed chapters, some by authors of the 1st edition and some new contributors. It contains an overview of current research on quality professional development, fourteen professional development programs that provide real-life models on providing professional learning experiences to current or future teachers to carry out constructivist, inquiry-based teaching and include end-of-chapter questions to help the reader relate to their own context, and a readers guide to help use the book in professional learning communities and other collaborative settings.
Instructional Techniques to Facilitate Learning and Motivation of Serious Games, 2016
Recent reviews of quantitative research suggest that some but not all digital games add value whe... more Recent reviews of quantitative research suggest that some but not all digital games add value when used as pedagogical tools. A more sophisticated cognitive theory of learning is required to guide the advance of educational games through improvements in design, scaffolding, and assessments. This chapter extends and improves existing mental model-based hypotheses about learning in games, particularly in terms of science learning and seeks to conceptualize simulation and game-based learning within a more general two-system theory of human cognition.
Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2016
Computational thinking (CT) parallels the core practices of science, technology, engineering, and... more Computational thinking (CT) parallels the core practices of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and is believed to effectively support students' learning of science and math concepts. However, despite the synergies between CT and STEM education, integrating the two to support synergistic learning remains an important challenge. Relatively, little is known about how a student's conceptual understanding develops in such learning environments and the difficulties they face when learning with such integrated curricula. In this paper, we present a research study with CTSiM (Computational Thinking in Simulation and Modeling)-computational thinking-based learning environment for K-12 science, where students build and simulate computational models to study and gain an understanding of science processes. We investigate a set of core challenges (both computational and science domain related) that middle school students face when working with CTSiM, how these challenges evolve across different modeling activities, and the kinds of support provided by human observers that help students overcome these challenges. We identify four broad categories and 14 subcategories of challenges and show that the human-provided scaffolds help reduce the number of challenges students face over time. Finally, we discuss our plans to modify the CTSiM interfaces and embed scaffolding tools into CTSiM to help students overcome their various programming, modeling, and science-related challenges and thus gain a deeper understanding of the science concepts.
International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 2015
Although interview formats support rich data collection in conceptual change studies, interview f... more Although interview formats support rich data collection in conceptual change studies, interview formats limit sample sizes. This study explores the possibility of using constructed-response formats as an alternative or supplement for collecting similarly rich data across larger pools of subjects in conceptual change studies. While research in physics education has successfully employed a variety of constructed-response formats to explore important questions, less research has explored the comparability and interchangeability of the data collected through constructed-response and interview formats. The current study compares analyses of data collected using both constructed-response and interview formats across a common pool of subjects. At its core, the current study explores the degree to which the data sets collected through the constructed-response and interview formats support similar inferences when coded with the rubrics from a recent series of studies on knowledge structure coherence. The results suggest that larger samples of students can be analyzed using the constructedresponse format for this type of study. Future research is recommended to explore minor but significant differences that were detected in terms of tertiary variables that contribute to the focal outcome variables.
International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 2015
Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of two explanation-based approaches for increasin... more Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of two explanation-based approaches for increasing learning in educational games. The first involves asking students to explain their answers (self-explanation) and the second involves providing correct explanations (explanatory feedback). This study (1) compared self-explanation and explanatory feedback features embedded into a game designed to teach Newtonian dynamics and (2) investigated relationships between learning and individual differences. The results demonstrated significant learning gains for all conditions. There were no overall differences between conditions, but learning outcomes were better for the self-explanation condition after controlling for the highest level completed by each student. Analyses of individual differences indicated that certain threshold inhibitory control abilities may be necessary to benefit from the self-explanation in games.
International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 2015
Students playing digital learning games in the classroom rarely play alone, even in digital games... more Students playing digital learning games in the classroom rarely play alone, even in digital games that are ostensibly "single-player" games. This study explores the patterns of physics reasoning that emerge in face-toface and online forum collaboration while students play a physics-focused educational game in their classroom. We observed five increasing levels of explicit articulation of physics reasoning across interactions in the face-toface and online forum interactions. Additionally, we found that students were much more likely to explicitly articulate formal physics reasoning in their online forum interactions than they were in their face-to-face interactions. We discuss multiple possible explanations for these patterns of articulation in terms of differences in timing of interactions, affordances of medium, classroom scripts, and social norms. The findings and discussion extend our understanding of the structuring and contributions of peer interactions to student learning in digital learning environments in the classroom.
Digital games can make unique and powerful contributions to K-12 science education, but much of t... more Digital games can make unique and powerful contributions to K-12 science education, but much of that potential remains unrealized. Research evaluating games for learning still relies primarily on pre-and post-test data, which limits possible insights into more complex interactions between game design features, gameplay, and formal assessment. Therefore, a critical step forward involves developing rich representations for analyzing gameplay data. This paper leverages data mining techniques to model learning and performance, using a metadata markup language that relates game actions to concepts relevant to specific game contexts. We discuss results from a classroom study and identify potential relationships between students' planning/prediction behaviors observed across game levels and improvement on formal assessments. The results have implications for scaffolding specific activities, that include physics learning during gameplay, solution planning and effect prediction. Overall, the approach underscores the value of our contextualized approach to gameplay markup to facilitate data mining and discovery.
Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth (2015) and Sengupta and Clark (submitte... more Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth (2015) and Sengupta and Clark (submitted) propose disciplinarily-integrated games as a generalizable template for supporting students in interpreting, manipulating, and translating across phenomenological and formal representations in support of a Science as Practice perspective (Pickering, 1995; Lehrer & Schauble, 2006). To explore the generalizability of disciplinarily-integrated games, this chapter proposes other hypothetical examples of disciplinarily-integrated games in physics, biology, chemistry, and the social sciences. We explore disciplinarily-integrated games in three categories, beginning with the category involving the nearest and simplest transfer of the template and extending to the category involving the furthest and most complex transfer: (1) time-series analyses with Cartesian formal representations, (2) constraint-system analyses with Cartesian formal representations, and (3) other model types and non-Carte...
Approaches and Strategies in Next Generation Science Learning
There is now growing consensus that K12 science education needs to focus on core epistemic and re... more There is now growing consensus that K12 science education needs to focus on core epistemic and representational practices of scientific inquiry (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007; Lehrer & Schauble, 2006). In this chapter, we focus on two such practices: argumentation and computational modeling. Novice science learners engaging in these activities often struggle without appropriate and extensive scaffolding (e.g.
Growing bodies of research have investigated how digital games might be used as pedagogical tools... more Growing bodies of research have investigated how digital games might be used as pedagogical tools and separately, how playing commercial games influences basic cognitive capacities or skills. The goal of the present research is to draw from these separate lines of research to ask how changes in basic cognitive capacities and formal learning gains may be related. The present study employed a game in which a ship moves through different environments using forces. The game teaches the basic relationships between objects and forces in Newton's Laws of Motion. Students played one of two versions of the game. The predictive version encouraged planning and reflection, by allowing students unlimited time to place forces along a path. In the real-time version, forces immediately affected the player when selected. The results suggest that learning was equivalent across the versions, but changes in attentional capacities may differentially contribute to learning between versions.
Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - CSCL'07, 2007
CSCL includes a wide range of scenarios that integrate individual and collaborative learning. Scr... more CSCL includes a wide range of scenarios that integrate individual and collaborative learning. Scripts have repeatedly proven useful for guiding learners to engage in specific roles and activities in CSCL environments. The effective mechanisms of scripts in stimulating cognitive and collaborative processes, however, are not yet well understood. Moreover, scripts have been shown to be somewhat inflexible to variations in needs across individual learners, specific groups, and classroom constellations. In this symposium, we present research on how scripts impact sociocognitive processes. The symposium additionally focuses on how CSCL environments can be orchestrated through flexible scripts that adapt to meet the special requirements at the classroom, small group, and individual levels. Orchestrating learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL CSCL covers a range of scenarios in which learners both interact with each other supported by technology and engage in phases of individual learning activities, e.g., computer-mediated learners individually access specific resources before communicating through an asynchronous discussion board with each other (Dillenbourg & Fischer, 2006). But learners seem to rarely draw on CSCL's potential to engage in specific learning activities both on the cognitive and the social level. Hence, CSCL often benefits from socio-cognitive structuring, for example, in the form of scripts that guide learners' interactions (Fischer, Kollar, Mandl, & Haake, 2007). While scripts generally aim to facilitate specific socio-cognitive learning activities, scripts may have different foci and granularities leading researchers to distinguish between macro-and micro-scripts (e.g., Dillenbourg & Jermann, 2007; Kobbe et al., in press). Micro-scripts focus on specific activities of learners and may, for instance, prompt learners to build their arguments in a specific way or instruct students how to collaborate effectively. Macro-scripts rather support the teacher to implement CSCL scenarios within the classroom orchestrating individual and collaborative learning phases (e.g., by suggesting individual preparation before entering discussion). There is some need to better understand how micro-and macro-scripts can be tuned to orchestrate learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL. First, to understand how and when CSCL should encompass collaborative and individual learning activities, the effects of scripts on processes and outcomes of collaborative and individual computer-supported learning need to be investigated. Second, to understand how scripts should orchestrate learning activities on the social and the cognitive level, macro-scripts should be investigated that guide learners through the different individual and collaborative learning activities.
We have developed a disciplinarily integrated game (DIG) to support students in interpreting, tra... more We have developed a disciplinarily integrated game (DIG) to support students in interpreting, translating, and manipulating across formal representations in the domain of Newtonian kinematics. In this study, we seek to understand what game play looks like in a classroom context with particular attention given to how students leverage internal and external scaffolds to progress through the game and deepen their conceptual knowledge. We investigate the following questions: (1) In what ways do students interact with the game, with each other, and with their teacher when they play SURGE Symbolic in a classroom environment? (2) How do game scaffolds, both within and outside of the game, support or impede student learning and game play? (3) What are the implications of these observations for teachers and game designers? We found that although most students used internal scaffolds in some way to assist their game play, many found that these scaffolds were insufficient to get through challenges. They quickly sought help from external resources available to them outside the game to help them advance in the game. The source of information they needed to make progress came from various people or resources outside the game, what we are calling "knowers."
This poster explores the levels of reasoning articulated in (a) the spontaneous faceto-face colla... more This poster explores the levels of reasoning articulated in (a) the spontaneous faceto-face collaborations that naturally occurred in classrooms where students were all playing a single-player game designed to support learning of Newtonian mechanics and (b) in online forums that were created for the students to share hints and strategies about each level in the game. Interestingly, levels of articulated reasoning were very low in face-to-face interactions but much higher in the online forums.
EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2007
Conceptual change researchers have made significant progress on two prominent but competing theor... more Conceptual change researchers have made significant progress on two prominent but competing theoretical perspectives regarding knowledge structure coherence. These perspectives can be broadly characterized as (1) knowledge-as-theory perspectives and (2) knowledge-as-elements perspectives. These perspectives can be briefly summarized in terms of the following questions. Is a student's knowledge most accurately represented as a coherent unified framework of theory-like character (e.g.
International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 2017
Disciplinarily-integrated games represent a generalizable genre and template for designing games ... more Disciplinarily-integrated games represent a generalizable genre and template for designing games to support science learning with a focus on bridging across formal and phenomenological representations of core science relationships (Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth, 2015; Clark, Sengupta, & Virk, 2016; Sengupta & Clark, 2016). By definition, disciplinarily-integrated games (DIGs) are therefore multirepresentational systems with the affordances and challenges associated with that medium. The current paper analyzes the DIG structure through the focal parameters framed by the DeFT framework (Ainsworth, 2006) to synthesize effective design considerations for DIGs in terms of the specific design and intended functions of the representations themselves as well as the overarching environment and activity structures. The authors leverage the literatures on embodied cognition, adaptive scaffolding, representations in science education, and learning from dynamic visual...
International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 2017
In this paper, techniques of statistical computing were applied to data logs to investigate the p... more In this paper, techniques of statistical computing were applied to data logs to investigate the patterns in students' play of The Fuzzy Chronicles, and how these patterns relate to learning outcomes with regards to Newtonian kinematics. This paper has two goals. The first goal is to investigate the basic claims of the proposed Two-System Framework for Game-Based Learning (or 2SM) (Martinez-Garza & Clark, 2016) that may serve as part of a general-use explanatory framework for educational gaming. The second goal is to explore and demonstrate the use of automatically collected log files of student play as evidence through educational data mining techniques. These techniques could also find general use, and this paper offers a demonstration of plausible methods and processes that are suited for game play data. These goals were pursued via two research questions. The first research question examines whether students playing The Fuzzy Chronicles showed evidence of dichotomous fast/slo...
International Journal of Designs for Learning, 2016
We have iteratively designed and researched five digital games focusing on Newtonian dynamics for... more We have iteratively designed and researched five digital games focusing on Newtonian dynamics for middle school classrooms during the past seven years. The designs have evolved dramatically in terms of the roles and relationships of the formal representations, phenomenological representations, and control schemes. Phenomenological representations can be thought of as the “world” representations that depict the actual actions and motion of a game as they occur (i.e., the central representations in most recreational games). Formal representations highlight the disciplinary relationships of interest from a pedagogical perspective (such as vector arrows, graphs, and dot traces). Our initial design perspective focused on highlighting the formal physics relationships within popular game-play mechanics. This perspective prioritized a commitment to the phenomenological representations and controls of recreational games, specifically marble-genre games. We designed formal representations aro...
Research suggests thatself-explanation functionality can effectively support learningin the conte... more Research suggests thatself-explanation functionality can effectively support learningin the context of digital games. Research also highlights challenges, however,in balancing and integrating the demands and abstraction of self-explanation functionality with the demands and structure of the game. These challenges are particularly true for games that are, themselves, cognitively more complex. The current study presents an approach that adapts the abstraction of self-explanation prompts based on a player's performance. The results demonstrate that students in this condition (a) scored significantly higher on the post-test than students whose selfexplanation prompts were not adaptively adjusted and were always abstract and (b) scored higher, but not significantly so, than students who did not receive the self-explanation functionality. Analyses of gameplay metrics suggest that trade-offs in terms of progress through the game may explain some aspects of these post-test comparisons. Analyses also demonstrate that both self-explanation conditions significantly outperformed the navigation-only comparison conditionon agameplay metric that suggests deeper model-based thinking.
Research suggests that designing for an external audience may support conceptual understanding by... more Research suggests that designing for an external audience may support conceptual understanding by offering students increased opportunities to reframe perspectival thinking in ways that support domain-specific reasoning. While this argument is theoretically compelling, to our knowledge, it has not been empirically tested in terms of comparing the conceptual growth of students designing computational models for an external audience to the conceptual growth of students designing computational models for a classroom audience of their teacher and peers. In a constructionist agent-based computational modeling environment, we compare the conceptual understanding, artifact quality, and discourse of 6th grade students designing models of tides primarily for an external audience of younger students (i.e., designing for 5th graders) to the conceptual understanding of 6th grade students designing models for a classroom audience. We found that students who designed for an external audience of younger children displayed greater conceptual growth about the mechanisms that cause tidal bulges as evidenced by students' pre-post assessments, models, and user guides/reports. Our analysis of classroom discourse suggests that designing for an audience of younger children may have facilitated domain-specific reasoning in whole-class discussions by creating opportunities for shifts between students' own perspectives and the perspectives of their anticipated audience.
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2007
In recent years, information and communication technology has established new opportunities to pa... more In recent years, information and communication technology has established new opportunities to participate in online learning environments around the globe. These opportunities include the dissemination of specific online learning environments as well as opportunities for learners to connect to online learning environments in distant locations. These dissemination and distance learning scenarios create potential challenges, however, in terms of the cultural differences in the internal scripts that learners of different cultures bring to these environments. This article considers these issues and challenges specifically for online environments focusing on argumentative knowledge construction. It discusses the importance of cross-cultural research in this area and proposes that a collaboration script perspective may prove extremely valuable for this research.
ABSTRACT This 2nd edition of the book includes contributed chapters, some by authors of the 1st e... more ABSTRACT This 2nd edition of the book includes contributed chapters, some by authors of the 1st edition and some new contributors. It contains an overview of current research on quality professional development, fourteen professional development programs that provide real-life models on providing professional learning experiences to current or future teachers to carry out constructivist, inquiry-based teaching and include end-of-chapter questions to help the reader relate to their own context, and a readers guide to help use the book in professional learning communities and other collaborative settings.
Instructional Techniques to Facilitate Learning and Motivation of Serious Games, 2016
Recent reviews of quantitative research suggest that some but not all digital games add value whe... more Recent reviews of quantitative research suggest that some but not all digital games add value when used as pedagogical tools. A more sophisticated cognitive theory of learning is required to guide the advance of educational games through improvements in design, scaffolding, and assessments. This chapter extends and improves existing mental model-based hypotheses about learning in games, particularly in terms of science learning and seeks to conceptualize simulation and game-based learning within a more general two-system theory of human cognition.
Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2016
Computational thinking (CT) parallels the core practices of science, technology, engineering, and... more Computational thinking (CT) parallels the core practices of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and is believed to effectively support students' learning of science and math concepts. However, despite the synergies between CT and STEM education, integrating the two to support synergistic learning remains an important challenge. Relatively, little is known about how a student's conceptual understanding develops in such learning environments and the difficulties they face when learning with such integrated curricula. In this paper, we present a research study with CTSiM (Computational Thinking in Simulation and Modeling)-computational thinking-based learning environment for K-12 science, where students build and simulate computational models to study and gain an understanding of science processes. We investigate a set of core challenges (both computational and science domain related) that middle school students face when working with CTSiM, how these challenges evolve across different modeling activities, and the kinds of support provided by human observers that help students overcome these challenges. We identify four broad categories and 14 subcategories of challenges and show that the human-provided scaffolds help reduce the number of challenges students face over time. Finally, we discuss our plans to modify the CTSiM interfaces and embed scaffolding tools into CTSiM to help students overcome their various programming, modeling, and science-related challenges and thus gain a deeper understanding of the science concepts.
International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 2015
Although interview formats support rich data collection in conceptual change studies, interview f... more Although interview formats support rich data collection in conceptual change studies, interview formats limit sample sizes. This study explores the possibility of using constructed-response formats as an alternative or supplement for collecting similarly rich data across larger pools of subjects in conceptual change studies. While research in physics education has successfully employed a variety of constructed-response formats to explore important questions, less research has explored the comparability and interchangeability of the data collected through constructed-response and interview formats. The current study compares analyses of data collected using both constructed-response and interview formats across a common pool of subjects. At its core, the current study explores the degree to which the data sets collected through the constructed-response and interview formats support similar inferences when coded with the rubrics from a recent series of studies on knowledge structure coherence. The results suggest that larger samples of students can be analyzed using the constructedresponse format for this type of study. Future research is recommended to explore minor but significant differences that were detected in terms of tertiary variables that contribute to the focal outcome variables.
International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 2015
Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of two explanation-based approaches for increasin... more Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of two explanation-based approaches for increasing learning in educational games. The first involves asking students to explain their answers (self-explanation) and the second involves providing correct explanations (explanatory feedback). This study (1) compared self-explanation and explanatory feedback features embedded into a game designed to teach Newtonian dynamics and (2) investigated relationships between learning and individual differences. The results demonstrated significant learning gains for all conditions. There were no overall differences between conditions, but learning outcomes were better for the self-explanation condition after controlling for the highest level completed by each student. Analyses of individual differences indicated that certain threshold inhibitory control abilities may be necessary to benefit from the self-explanation in games.
International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 2015
Students playing digital learning games in the classroom rarely play alone, even in digital games... more Students playing digital learning games in the classroom rarely play alone, even in digital games that are ostensibly "single-player" games. This study explores the patterns of physics reasoning that emerge in face-toface and online forum collaboration while students play a physics-focused educational game in their classroom. We observed five increasing levels of explicit articulation of physics reasoning across interactions in the face-toface and online forum interactions. Additionally, we found that students were much more likely to explicitly articulate formal physics reasoning in their online forum interactions than they were in their face-to-face interactions. We discuss multiple possible explanations for these patterns of articulation in terms of differences in timing of interactions, affordances of medium, classroom scripts, and social norms. The findings and discussion extend our understanding of the structuring and contributions of peer interactions to student learning in digital learning environments in the classroom.
Digital games can make unique and powerful contributions to K-12 science education, but much of t... more Digital games can make unique and powerful contributions to K-12 science education, but much of that potential remains unrealized. Research evaluating games for learning still relies primarily on pre-and post-test data, which limits possible insights into more complex interactions between game design features, gameplay, and formal assessment. Therefore, a critical step forward involves developing rich representations for analyzing gameplay data. This paper leverages data mining techniques to model learning and performance, using a metadata markup language that relates game actions to concepts relevant to specific game contexts. We discuss results from a classroom study and identify potential relationships between students' planning/prediction behaviors observed across game levels and improvement on formal assessments. The results have implications for scaffolding specific activities, that include physics learning during gameplay, solution planning and effect prediction. Overall, the approach underscores the value of our contextualized approach to gameplay markup to facilitate data mining and discovery.
Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth (2015) and Sengupta and Clark (submitte... more Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth (2015) and Sengupta and Clark (submitted) propose disciplinarily-integrated games as a generalizable template for supporting students in interpreting, manipulating, and translating across phenomenological and formal representations in support of a Science as Practice perspective (Pickering, 1995; Lehrer & Schauble, 2006). To explore the generalizability of disciplinarily-integrated games, this chapter proposes other hypothetical examples of disciplinarily-integrated games in physics, biology, chemistry, and the social sciences. We explore disciplinarily-integrated games in three categories, beginning with the category involving the nearest and simplest transfer of the template and extending to the category involving the furthest and most complex transfer: (1) time-series analyses with Cartesian formal representations, (2) constraint-system analyses with Cartesian formal representations, and (3) other model types and non-Carte...
Approaches and Strategies in Next Generation Science Learning
There is now growing consensus that K12 science education needs to focus on core epistemic and re... more There is now growing consensus that K12 science education needs to focus on core epistemic and representational practices of scientific inquiry (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007; Lehrer & Schauble, 2006). In this chapter, we focus on two such practices: argumentation and computational modeling. Novice science learners engaging in these activities often struggle without appropriate and extensive scaffolding (e.g.
Growing bodies of research have investigated how digital games might be used as pedagogical tools... more Growing bodies of research have investigated how digital games might be used as pedagogical tools and separately, how playing commercial games influences basic cognitive capacities or skills. The goal of the present research is to draw from these separate lines of research to ask how changes in basic cognitive capacities and formal learning gains may be related. The present study employed a game in which a ship moves through different environments using forces. The game teaches the basic relationships between objects and forces in Newton's Laws of Motion. Students played one of two versions of the game. The predictive version encouraged planning and reflection, by allowing students unlimited time to place forces along a path. In the real-time version, forces immediately affected the player when selected. The results suggest that learning was equivalent across the versions, but changes in attentional capacities may differentially contribute to learning between versions.
Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - CSCL'07, 2007
CSCL includes a wide range of scenarios that integrate individual and collaborative learning. Scr... more CSCL includes a wide range of scenarios that integrate individual and collaborative learning. Scripts have repeatedly proven useful for guiding learners to engage in specific roles and activities in CSCL environments. The effective mechanisms of scripts in stimulating cognitive and collaborative processes, however, are not yet well understood. Moreover, scripts have been shown to be somewhat inflexible to variations in needs across individual learners, specific groups, and classroom constellations. In this symposium, we present research on how scripts impact sociocognitive processes. The symposium additionally focuses on how CSCL environments can be orchestrated through flexible scripts that adapt to meet the special requirements at the classroom, small group, and individual levels. Orchestrating learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL CSCL covers a range of scenarios in which learners both interact with each other supported by technology and engage in phases of individual learning activities, e.g., computer-mediated learners individually access specific resources before communicating through an asynchronous discussion board with each other (Dillenbourg & Fischer, 2006). But learners seem to rarely draw on CSCL's potential to engage in specific learning activities both on the cognitive and the social level. Hence, CSCL often benefits from socio-cognitive structuring, for example, in the form of scripts that guide learners' interactions (Fischer, Kollar, Mandl, & Haake, 2007). While scripts generally aim to facilitate specific socio-cognitive learning activities, scripts may have different foci and granularities leading researchers to distinguish between macro-and micro-scripts (e.g., Dillenbourg & Jermann, 2007; Kobbe et al., in press). Micro-scripts focus on specific activities of learners and may, for instance, prompt learners to build their arguments in a specific way or instruct students how to collaborate effectively. Macro-scripts rather support the teacher to implement CSCL scenarios within the classroom orchestrating individual and collaborative learning phases (e.g., by suggesting individual preparation before entering discussion). There is some need to better understand how micro-and macro-scripts can be tuned to orchestrate learning activities on the social and the cognitive level to foster CSCL. First, to understand how and when CSCL should encompass collaborative and individual learning activities, the effects of scripts on processes and outcomes of collaborative and individual computer-supported learning need to be investigated. Second, to understand how scripts should orchestrate learning activities on the social and the cognitive level, macro-scripts should be investigated that guide learners through the different individual and collaborative learning activities.
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Papers by Douglas Clark