Identifying Investigation Strategies Through an Online Simulation Game

• In Event: Transfer for Learning Outside the Classroom: Informal Contexts to Examine STEM Learning Skills and Strategies

Abstract

One of the goals of science education is to teach students how to identify relations between variables in a complex system. To do this, it is first important to identify effective inquiry strategies that can be taught. Computer simulations are a relatively new type of inquiry environment and they are unique because they allow learners to explore in rapid iteration. In this exploratory study, we sought to uncover strategies people use to reveal complex variable relations in open-ended inquiry using an online simulation game. In doing so, we seek to identify strategies that show potential as the focus of inquiry skill instruction.

The simulation in this study was a game designed to help teach Hooke's law, which describes the force needed to extend or compress a spring. In the game, learners aimed to safely drop goats to the bottom of a hill using springs (Figure 1). In order to achieve this goal, learners had to understand the relations between the weight of the goats and how far each spring would stretch (Figure 2). Sixteen adult learners who obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher were recruited to participate in the study. Learners received instructions to find a principle that would help them get all the goats down safely. They were considered successful if they verbally demonstrated a basic understanding of the relation between goat weight and the distance a spring stretched in a post-task interview.

Preliminary findings suggest that while all learners initially sought qualitative explanations, such as “I know this spring can safely carry a big goat and a tiny goat,” the learners that solved the challenge successfully eventually reached quantitative understandings of the simulation’s underlying principle. They did this using three strategies. First, learners used control of variables to establish relations within a single variable. They did this by varying one of two quantitative measures, distance dropped or quantity of goats, and holding all other variables constant. For example, one learner used the same type of spring to separately drop one small goat and one medium goat and used the distance dropped to arrive at the ratio between goat types. Second, learners imposed a system of mathematical units within each variable. For example, learners would frequently assign the smallest goat a base unit of “1” and use ratio comparisons to assign the medium goat and large goat a value of “2” and “3”, respectively. Third, learners used their system of mathematical units to make comparisons across variable type. For example, after discovering that a spring could safely carry three small goats, a learner would infer that this same spring could safely carry one large goat.

The results of this study highlight three strategies for exploring open-ended simulations that may be useful targets for inquiry instruction. Future studies may explore best practices to teach and assess these strategies and their potential relevance in science inquiry or computational thinking contexts. Additional studies might explore how simulation design, such as the inclusion of irrelevant variables, impacts learners’ use of inquiry strategies.

Authors

• Daniel Pimentel, Stanford University

• Stephanie Zhang, Stanford University