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Computer-Supported Collaborative Modeling Activities to Promote Science Learning

Mon, April 25, 9:45 to 11:15am PDT (9:45 to 11:15am PDT), Division Virtual Rooms, Division C - Section 3a: Learning Environments Virtual Paper Session Room

Abstract

Computer-supported online collaboration is one promising assessment approach as online discussion affords learners the opportunity to share ideas, reflect on their team members’ contributions as well as their own contributions, and develop new ideas or convince others to change ideas through negotiation. Many theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of active participation and collaboration among students in promoting the effectiveness of online learning, however most of them focus on discourse analysis of the collaborative processes. Other interactions, such as actions in shared workspace, contribute to the complex depth of peer collaboration in addition to discourse and enables inclusivity and equity in collaborative learning or assessment environment. In the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) community, it is encouraged to collect multi-modal evidence in collaborative activity design through which students organize their chat utterances, behaviors, and gestures to foreground the meaning making of collaborative interactions and group cognition (Stahl, 2006). In the context of science learning, collaborative modeling activities are beneficial for students to develop critical competencies of using modeling practices to learn about and demonstrate scientific conceptual understanding. Looking into collaborative interactions as students co-construct a scientific model requires leveraging frameworks of scientific modeling practices, collaborative learning, and developmental levels of disciplinary core ideas.
In this presentation, we will share a design approach that allows student groups to own the agency of expressing their sense-making of the evaporation phenomenon through collaborative drawing and discourse. Through a crowd source study, we collected about 160 dyads’ data as they worked on a collaborative modeling activity. Each individual student contributed to the collaborative construction by applying the core idea of the structure and properties of matter and their engagement of the modeling practice. Modeling science phenomena enables students to develop and demonstrate rich conceptual understanding of science. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) explicitly identifies modeling as one essential practice. The visual models constructed by students can provide evidence about what students know and can do in science. The collaborative construction process provides evidence about how students work together to co-construct a team product through iterative sharing, negotiation and regulation. We applied a learning progression for the matter core idea and a collaborative analysis framework to explore the relationship between students’ collaborative interactions and the quality of their modeling product. We will share several typical patterns in students’ actions and discourses and discuss potential interpretations of these patterns.

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