Abstract. Progress on the pedagogy and technology of educational uses of
modeling can be speeded by the development of common perspectives
on how learning occurs with and about models, and on how modeling
tools can support or fail to support the needs of potential
educational users. Development of these perspectives will lead to
easier and more effective creation and adoption of learning
activities with modeling, and to the development of more useful tools.
Group Contact: Clayton Lewis.
Andy DiSessa
Allen Cypher
Vanessa Colella
Carlos Garcia
William Conrad
Ken Hay
Jennifer Discenna
Janice Gobert
Linda Hahner
Pamela Jennings
Raul Zaritsky
We want to create two sharable frameworks to support continued work
in modeling in education. The first framework will organize our ideas
about how people learn from modeling activities, creating over time a
body of theory to guide instructional design in this area. The second,
related, framework will help users of modeling technology map their
goals onto available tools, and help tool developers understand
what pedagogical needs are not well met by current tools.
The group brings together tool developers, tool users, and people
interested in the theory of learning from, with, and about models.
Thus we feel able both to think and talk in useful abstractions about
the issues, and to ground the discussion in a variety of active case
study experiences.
We plan three kinds of communication. (1) Development of initial
versions of both frameworks. (2) Elaboration of the frameworks by
collective critical discussion of case studies. This process
would be aided by the development of orienting "clinical questions"
that would speed the process of relating a new case study to the
frameworks, and identifying the key issues on which a case study can
shed light. (3) Sharing the evolving frameworks with key audiences,
to include (U) people who want to use modeling tools and need to know
which tools to consider, what they can expect from them, how much
effort would be needed to accomplish their goals, and how activities
with models can effectively address their learning goals, (B) people
who are building modeling tools, and need to understand how their
tools might relate to the users' educational goals, and (T) people
interested in the theory of learning with, from, and about models.
A variety of supports are possible for these communications,
including workshops, online communication and repositories,
coordinated seminars, joint paper preparation, sessions at key
conferences for different audiences, including NSTA, SIGGRAPH,
AERA, Ars Electronica, and others.
Participation (in some form) should be open to a wide range of
interested parties, including people form industrial labs, teachers,
computer technologists, scientists, and educational theorists.
Our dissemination needs relate to the community tools thread, while
our theoretical and practical goals connect with those of the
assessment thread.
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