Effects of Generation and Critique of Visual Representations on Understanding Energy in Chemical Reactions

• In Event: Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning SIG: Paper Session 1: Questioning Issues in Instruction

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of the generation and critique of representations on learning. It utilizes design-based research to compare the effects of generation and critique on student reasoning in terms of energy. Two versions of a web-based inquiry project are designed to introduce energy in explosive chemical reactions. One asks students to generate representations of the energy in an explosion, the other asks them to critique a standard representation. The project was tested in two 11th grade general chemistry classrooms (n=46 students) over five hours of instructional time. Results indicate that both interventions lead to statistically significant learning gains, however the representation generation group improved slightly more.

Author

• Hillary Lucille Swanson, University of California - Berkeley