On April 10th, Professor Sten Ludvigsen of the University of Oslo will present "Learning with, and coordination between, representations in science and mathematics: “What should I do next?”".
In science and math, learning involves the development of the capacity to use and follow procedures and understand specific concepts and conceptual systems. In areas like DNA analysis and geometry (surface/volume ratio), representations are a key resource for learning new concepts. To develop an understanding of concepts, students must unpack the meanings inscribed in the representations and select and coordinate between such meanings in order to perform tasks and solve problems. Such unpacking is not cognitively trivial and is contingent upon how the knowledge becomes framed and talked about in the activities. In a series of studies in the Science Created by You (SCY) project, we investigated how students developed a conceptual understanding of specific concepts in science and math (e.g., DNA and geometry). In SCY, we designed four missions to study this issue. Overall, we asked one guiding research question: How does students understanding of concepts change during an SCY-Mission?
When: 10 April, 11.00am - 12.30pm. (Arrive at 10.45am for refreshments.)
Where: Education Building (A35), Room 230.
This seminar will be available live online at http://webconf.ucc.usyd.edu.au/seminar-room2
]]>
Sten is currently the scientific leader of NATED, the National Graduate Research School in Educational Science in Norway. His long-term interest is in the relation between; social interaction, cognition and representations, and how people change their understanding of concepts (in specific domains). He has specialized in research on the use of digital knowledge representations and the relationship between co-located and distributed settings.
In this talk, Sten will focus on the analysis of one of the cases: the forensic medicine mission (DNA). "SCY consists of computer-based learning environments based on an inquiry model. The environment includes software that scaffolds content construction and social regulation, simulations, and tools for peer and teacher feedback and assessment. In the SCY learning environments, students learn about science topics in the context of a socio-scientific problem in which they have to produce a solution in the form of an artifact, but also, on the road to this solution, students produce different kinds of intermediate artifacts (so-called Emerging Learning Objects, or ELOs). The research design consists of design-based studies in natural contexts over 20 hours and experimental studies over a few hours. The students were 16–17 years old. Methods used were pre-post tests, log data, interviews, and video observation. The pre- and post-test items were developed and tailored for the curriculum in the SCY-missions. The studies were conducted in five countries: Cyprus, France, Estonia, the Netherlands and Norway.
The results from pre- and post-tests show that the students’ understanding improved significantly in the SCY-Missions. To understand how and why these changes were produced, we combined and analyzed the data from logs, video observation and interviews. In order to analyze the students’ actions as emerging properties, we used an analytic framework which makes it possible to connect social interaction and artifacts at multiple levels: individual, social interaction, and institutional. A key analytic concept to connect the three levels is learning trajectory. The talk will focus on (a) how this concept was used in the analysis of the mission described above and (b), how the students developed procedural and conceptual knowledge."
]]>
Join us on the 15th of May for a CoCo Seminar by Joanne Arciuli titled “Statistical learning: What is it and why might it be of interest to clinicians and educators?”.
For readers based outside Australia, in the next few weeks you can see STL lead researcher, Professor Michael Jacobson, present in various cities around the globe on virtual learning environments and the use of technology for learning in science.
Join us on the 24th of April for a CoCo seminar by Simon Crook titled “The Digital Education Revolution: Initial data analysis of teacher and student reported use of laptops in year 10 science”.
