Confronting ideas in collaborative scientific discovery learning

Hannie Gijlers (1) , Ton de Jong (1)

1 Department of Instructional Technology

This study investigated how collaborative knowledge construction within a scientific discovery (or inquiry)learning environment can be assisted with tools that aim to support students' proposition generation and testing processes. Sixty-six fourth year pre-university education students participated in a kinematics learning task. The instructional goal of the learning activity was to develop students' understanding of one dimensional kinematics. All students completed a proposition test in which they could indicate their individual opinion about the truth-value of specific propositions. Subsequently, students were coupled into dyads and assigned to one of three conditions: 1) an expression builder (scratchpad), 2) a shared propositions table, and 3) a control condition. Students in the scratchpad condition were provided with an expression builder consisting of dropdown menus with pre-defined variables, and relations. The shared proposition table combined students' individual opinions about the truthvalue of a proposition into one shared proposition table that visualized differences in opinion. Students in the control condition received no extra support related to propositions. Learning outcomes were assessed using intuitive knowledge and proposition pre- and post-tests. The findings indicate that students supported with the shared proposition table improved significantly from preto post-test and discussed significantly more alternative propositions.

Mots clés: computer simulations; supportive measures

Domaines: Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain

Hannie Gijlers, Ton de Jong. Confronting ideas in collaborative scientific discovery learning. American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting 2005, 2005, Montreal, Canada. 85 p. ⟨hal-00190690⟩