ScienceWare's Model-It: Technology to Support Authentic Science Inquiry
Elliot Soloway, Amanda Pryor, Joseph Krajcik, Shari Jackson, Steven J. Stratford, Michele Wisnudel , Jonathan Klein
Contact Person:
Elliot Soloway
INTRODUCTION
National organizations are calling for a new science pedagogy; the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) and the NRC (National Research Council, 1996) argue that K-12 science education needs to move beyond didactic instruction, where students engage in activities and learn about science, to a more constructivist, inquiry-based pedagogy, where students actually engage in authentic, long-term, science investigations. However, if we are going to ask students to carry out serious science investigations, we need to provide them with tools that can scaffold and support them in their investigations.
Fortunately, computers and communications technologies have progressed to the point where they can indeed be crafted to meet the unique needs of learners. Towards that end, the Hi-C Research Group at the University of Michigan in collaboration with the science teachers at Community High School in Ann Arbor have been developing a suite of tools, ScienceWare, that support students as they investigate driving questions such as “Is the Traver Creek, behind our school, safe?” Constructed by following Learner-Centered Design guidelines (Soloway, Guzdial, Hay, 1994), ScienceWare has tools that support all phases of the investigation: data gathering (RiverBank); data visualization (Viz-It); modeling (Model-It); project planning (PlanIt-Out); and, publishing findings on the Internet (Web-It). In this article, we describe Model-It, a ScienceWare tool that has been used for over three years by hundreds of students in the Foundations of Science program at Community High.
MODELING: AT THE HEART OF THE SCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE
Scientists build models; they construct abstractions from observed phenomena (i.e., data). Mathematics is typically the language in which those models are expressed. However, if we expect high schoolers (or middle schoolers) to first learn differential equations, for example, before they build models, we will have locked them out of the central enterprise of science. Our intent, then, with Model-It, is to support learners first building qualitative models, and then moving to more quantitative models as they develop the necessary expertises.
Figure 1 depicts the World View, one of the two main representation provided by Model-It, the World View. In this example, the World View's background is a photo of the Traver Creek, the stream behind their school that is being studied by the FOS students. The icons at the bottom of the window are objects that can be inserted into the World View, e.g., there is “weather,” and there is a “people” icon representing humans fertilizing the park that borders on the stream. When it rains, the fertilizer from the park gets washed into the stream, changing its levels of nitrates, dissolved oxygen, water quality, etc.
Figure 1: The World View of Model-It:
A Stream Ecosystem Model
To construct a model, students must create objects, factors that make up objects, and most importantly, the relationships between objects' factors. In the Relationship Editor (Figure 2), students build a relationship by building up an English sentence, piecing that sentence together by selecting words from drop-down menus. For example, in Figure 2 we see a student building a relationship between the nitrates (a factor) in the stream (an object) and the stream's water quality: As Stream: Nitrates increase the Stream: Water Quality increases, by more and more. (The graph on the right-hand side is linked to the text expression; the graph changes in response to the text expression. The graph is meant to help the student transition to quantitative modeling.) Now, Model-It uses differential equations to effect the student's qualitative, textually-expressed relationships.
Figure 2: The Relationship Maker:
Constructing A Dynamic Relationship Without Differential Equations
Figure 3 shows a student running their model. Meters and graphs provide rich visualizations of the dynamics of the model. As well, an independent factor's meter (in this case the Weather Rainfall factor) can be used to change the simulation during run-time.
Figure 3: Running a Model Built in Model-It
Multiple Linked Representations
Learner-centered design guidelines (Soloway, Guzdial, Hay, 1994) influenced the development of Model-It.
• In Figure 1, the photo-realistic portrayal of the particular student's stream under study is meant to provide a authentic, concrete, personalized grounding for the student; it reminds him/her of their actions (e.g., water quality monitoring) at the stream, as well as providing an anchor for the student's thinking. In fact, as pointed out below, a student can paste their own picture(s) (of a stream, of a meadow for a predator-prey model, etc.) into Model-It to represent that main theme or the various objects.
• The Relationship Editor, Figure 2, hides complexity from the student; initially the student doesn't need to know that differential equations are needed to represent relationships; in fact, once the student gains expertise they can enter a data table that represents the specific relationship instead of using text to construct the relationship.
• Multiple linked representations are used to help the student better understand the complexities of their running, dynamic models (Figure 3).
Model-It is a modeling environment, not just a simulation environment. As Mike Mouradian, one of Community High's FOS teachers, put it: “SimCity gives you SimCity. Model-It allows you to build whatever you want--SimKitchen, SimLab, SimBackyard, whatever. It doesn't restrict students to just one type of simulation, or even just one answer to a given question.”
For example, Figure 4 depicts a model of the impact of different drugs (e.g., marijuana, LSD, caffeine) on a body. Two 9th graders built this model, from scratch, in 1.5 hours. That is, they drew the icons in Clarisworks, as well as constructed the objects, factors, and all the relationships depicted in the Map View, Model-It's second major view.
Figure 4: Doug The Druggie:
Exploring Health Systems
Figure 5: Model Built By Two 9th Graders:
A Representative Model
This distinction between modeling and simulating is critical: the constructivist pedagogy underlying our effort strongly suggests that having kids build and then run their own models is cognitively more effective than running someone else's model. Or in the words of one of the 9th grade FOS students: “[Model-It] makes you think more about a real-life situation, where there's no real answer; you set it up and everything.”
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF MODEL-IT
Model-It has been used for the past three years in the Foundations of Science three year integrated science curriculum; approximately 300 students used Model-It for one to two week sessions, from once to three times during the school year. A range of systems have been explored using Model-It, e.g., stream ecosystems, predator-prey systems, climate systems, air pollution systems, and weather systems. Moreover, Model-It has been crafted and re-crafted over the three years based on student and teacher feedback, refined instructional goals, and technology changes. While there are still issues that need to be addressed (e.g., students still have trouble understanding and using feedback relationships), all our studies indicate that indeed, a large majority of students are learning the science content underlying systems under study, and they are learning a key science process: how to build a dynamic model of complex phenomena.
In one detailed study, Stratford (1996) analyzed the final models from 50 students and analyzed the video-taped conversations and interviews with eight pairs of those students. Fully 75% of the models analyzed were scientifically meaningful, e.g., had a coherent structure, included key factors and relationships, etc. For example, see Figure 5 for a representative model developed by two 9th graders, using an early version of Model-It. Moreover, six of the eight students engaged in thoughtful scientific reasoning as they worked on their models.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Quite frankly, without Model-It students in FOS would not have been able to be as successful at building dynamic models of complex systems. That is, the kinds of technology of which Model-It is an example create two opportunities: (1) they give students access to areas of science to which they literally had no access before, and (2) they support an inquiry-based pedagogy in critically important ways, e.g., with one teacher and 30 students in a class, each of whom may well be doing a different investigation, it is imperative that technology take on some of the supportive scaffolding in order to complement what is provided by teacher. The prospects, then, for meeting the high standards called for by the AAAS and the NRC, have never been better; technologies such as Model-It [1] are poised to play a key role in enhancing the all-important science education of today's youth -- to better prepare them for tomorrow's world.
References:
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993) Benchmarks for Science Literacy: Project 2061, Oxford University Press, New York
National Research Council (1996) National Science Education Standards, National Academy Press, Washington DC
Soloway, E., Guzdial, M., Hay, K., (1994) Learner-Centered Design: The Next Challenge for HCI, ACM Interactions, April.
Stratford, S. (1996) Investigating processes and products
of secondary science students using dynamic modeling software,
Ph.D. Dissertation, School of Education, University of Michigan.
[1]Model-It has been redesigned and reimplemented by Cogito Learning Media, Inc.; it is now available for both the Mac and Windows platforms. Please see Cogito's web site: http://www.cogitomedia.com or call them at 212/361-6330.
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