A Case Study of Open-Ended Scientific Inquiry in a Technology-Supported Classroom Louis M. Gomez Douglas N.

Gordin School of Education and Social Policy Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208 Patricia Carlson New Trier High School 385 Winnetka Avenue Winnetka, IL 60093 The Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis) is building an educational testbed to reform science education. The CoVis learning community uses next-generation technologies for collaboration and scientific visualization to support community formation and work-activities in high school science classrooms. An important project design goal is to create activities centered on more open-ended project-based scientific inquiries that are, at least in part, born of the students own interests and situated in the greater scientific and political world. Through a case study of a global warming unit we look to see if students appropriate the data, techniques of analysis, rules of proof, and the means to assess uncertainty held by the community around which they are basing their investigation. Introduction In the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis; Pea, 1993) we have sought to create a distributed multimedia learning environment to serve the needs of science education at the precollege level. The pedagogical focus of CoVis is project-based curricula (Ruopp et al, 1994). We have designed and now provide (since 1993-1994) school-focused communication and computing services to hundreds of students and six diverse teachers. In this paper we describe the ongoing progress of the CoVis from the perspective of a case study of a teacher's (Carlson) global warming unit and its use of designed activities to meet curricular goals and achieve integral use of technology. First, we describe CoVis in terms of technological, pedagogical, and social supports. Technological Supports One important aim of the project is to encourage teachers and students to consider access to data and information as well as access to other people as resources in the teaching and learning enterprise. Each resource does not have the same prescribed role in each classroom or learning context. Rather the role and import of a resource is defined by teachers and students given the situation at hand. The technological supports aim to enable communication with a broad range of people, including students and teachers at other schools; parents and the local community; scientists and other professionals whose work engage the concerns of the class. Another important goal of information resource is to afford access to scientific and other archival data. Communication Access The CoVis network integrates a suite of applications that support both synchronous and asynchronous communication. For electronic mail, students use the public domain TCP/IP client software Eudora

(Qualcomm). For access to Usenet news, students use NewsWatcher, a thread-based Macintosh news reader written at Northwestern. The class that is the subject of this case study also had access to a telephone and fax machine. In addition, students were encouraged to send messages via the postal service. A unique aspect of the Published in J. Greer (Ed.), Proceedings of AI-Ed 95, Seventh World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 17-24). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. Online at http://www.covis.nwu.edu/Papers/Tech-class.html. communication suite was a specially designed Collaboratory Notebook created to facilitate asynchronous project work across and within school sites (O'Neill & Gomez 1994). Desktop video teleconferencing is an important element of the CoVis testbed provided through the Cruiser application (Fish et al, 1993) to establish video teleconferencing calls. Finally, the CoVis environment allows users to collaborate synchronously through s creen sharing, whereby one user can see exactly what appears on the screen of another user. Data Access Today atmospheric and other scientists use data visualization tools and work with standard data sets routinely. These tools and data sets are mainly useful to highly specialized members of technical communities. To allow students to work with the same data sets as scientists in similar ways, we have adapted the tools used by atmospheric scientists to be appropriate for high school students. To date, we have developed three such visualization environments: The Climate Visualizer (Gordin, Polman & Pea, 1994), The Weather Visualizer (Fishman & D'Amico, 1994), and The Greenhouse Effect Visualizer (Gordin, Edelson & Pea, 1994), which coordinate a collection of data sets that include the sun's incoming radiation (insolation), the amount reflected by the earth (albedo), the temperature on Earth's surface, and the earth's outgoing radiation, to allow students to examine the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation for the earth (Greenhouse effect.) Students also had access to the World Wide Web using the Netscape browsers. They used the Web to find scientific data sets, as a source for general science information, and as a way to share their work with the broader community beyond the school. Other software components round out the testbed computers. Each machine has software for word processing, spreadsheet analysis, graphics, and animation. Pedagogical Supports The pedagogical aim of CoVis has been to encourage teachers to orchestrate their students performing openended projects. The hope is that through such projects students will become engaged in scientific questions, that is, questions that are the same or similar to those being pursued by the scientific community. The use of scientific data sets and tools within these projects is encouraged so as to further connect student work with the scientific community of practice. Underlying these goals is a sociological view of knowledge that emphasizes collaborative and cooperative social groups as the locus for the intertwined practices,

representational schemes, and specialized language that constitute a discipline or field of study. Past curriculum have often emphasized isolated concepts as being the heart of a field, thereby leaving aside the richer context that surrounds a practitioner. Drawing on the example that will serve as a case study below, a environmental science class studying global warming could focus on scientific concepts only (e.g., radiative balance, the greenhouse effect, and the role of clouds in regulating temperature) without engaging crucial issues that situate this field of study within the scientific community (e.g., the importance of global circulation models to predict future climate, the creation and verification of massive data sets characterizing climate and the use of scientific visualization to comprehend the data, and the difficulty of proving global warming due to the large 'natural variation' found in the complex system of climate). Hence, by allowing students to undertake guided independent work that shares focus with practitioners in the adult world students can engage the complex of techniques, principles, and inquiry projects that characterize scientific practice. In contrast, when students are led through carefully scoped and sequenced concepts they are led to an imagined and sanitized science that exists only in the schoolroom and is not rich enough to fertilize their imaginations nor sponsor the creativity which the practice of science demands. Social Supports Compared to many classroom-based research projects the CoVis Project provides comparatively little in the way of social support (i.e., there is not continuous in-classroom presence of one or more researchers). Three types of supports are provided: researcher and teacher meetings, gathering and reporting of research data, and collaborative classroom work. First, during the initial year there were regular meetings between teachers and researchers to build consensus around pedagogy, in particular, What constitutes a project? Should breadth be traded off for depth? Should the new technological tools be introduced separately or without the context of curricular activities? Should their use be mandated or encouraged? What constitutes 'proper' use of the collaboratory notebook or visualizers? These questions continue to spark debate and conversation today, though supplemented with the experiences borne from different approaches that CoVis teachers have tried. Second, CoVis researchers collect and report on a variety of research measures. Three, researchers and teachers collaborate in the design of new technologies and activities, researchers join classrooms to provide additional assistance to students doing projects or collaboratively teach -- the result of one of these efforts that is reported here. Activity Systems To explore how CoVis is changing schools a case study is provided below. We use the lens of activity theory to characterize our experience. Activity theory differs from behaviorist, cognitive, and other social science

lenses by choosing activities as the primary unit of analysis (Leont'ev 1979). Here activities include the individual(s) actions and goals; the physical environment that supports and is manipulated by the actions; the representational systems used, including language; and the social milieu or culture in which the activity takes place. An activity theory perspective embraces multiple embedded contexts or a 'Russian dolls' approach to understanding behavior in complex settings. One advantage of this approach is to provide a means to zero in on a setting as a context in order to more precisely situate the behaviors being studied. This approach is used here in the case study to describe the overall goals of the high school in which the class takes place, the goals of the teacher in creating the course, and finally within the students concerns raised within the context of the curricular unit. To provide a framework for the analysis, the following aspects of an activity theoretic analysis are described: 1. Activities exist at multiple levels (e.g., I am driving a car while I am going to Boston while I am going to a conference....). 2. Activities satisfy goals, that is, they are purposeful. For example, teachers design activity systems to help students acquire skills. 3. Activities come into being through a historical and developmental process. Social institutions and individual cognition interact to synthesize the evolving activity. 4. Activities often involve social interactions. 5. Activities are situated in a physical setting that acts to both constrain and afford certain actions. Part of this environment is often designed in that the environment has been purposefully altered to expedite or afford the activities. 6. Activities use representations and tools to organize and mediate them (e.g., computer tools for communication and information access). Reciprocally, activities shape tools through design iteration. 7. Activities and cognition exist in a dialectical relationship, whereby mental states effect the learning and practice of activities and activities effect beliefs, perceptions, and understanding of the world. Placing the nexus of concern within activities naturally leads to a consideration of how the technological, pedagogical, and social supports fostered through the CoVis Project have been drawn upon in practice by students and teachers. The Organization of Activities Activity systems provide stable structures for materials and human actors to play within. We conjecture, they provide this stabilizing force because they allow people to interpret events. For example, consider watching a video in a classroom setting. Different teachers (or the same teacher at different times) show a video for different purposes. For students to appreciate the video in the way the teacher intends they need to discern its role within the activity system the teacher is unfolding. Often, mismatches occur and meaning alignment and

negotiation are needed. In the case study we present here, video is used to motivate inquiry by providing divisive opinions. By contrast, many students have been in classrooms where video is used to provide information in place of lecture. School creates its distinctive culture through activity systems that are repeated within it (e.g., exams as a means of assessing their progress). The CoVis Testbed is a vehicle for reform partially by providing students and teachers with a palette of resources for the creation and modification of activity systems. In this paper we consider one curriculum unit as an activity system in order to characterize and analyze the use of technology, pedagogy, and social supports. Case Study: Global Warming Unit Setting To show the CoVis project using via an activity system a case study of a global warming unit that occurred in Carlson's environmental science class at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL is considered here. A CoVis researcher (Gordin) co-taught this unit, participating in designing student activities and working with students, though not in their formal assessment. An important context for any classroom activity is the school in which it takes place. New Trier High School is located in the northern suburbs of Chicago and is commonly considered one of the best high schools in the country. Its students are predominately drawn from a largely upper middle class community. A primary goal of New Trier, in which it is very successful, is to send a large percentage of their students to college . The course was created by Carlson, a former environmental chemist, who began the course in order to introduce environmental concerns as real world problems that reveal science to be a human endeavor conducted within a cultural context. The course was, in part, crafted as a response to students taking part in extracurricular environmental groups at New Trier who were sincere in their environmental zeal, but had no real understanding of the underlying science. When challenged about their views, many could responded only with anger and frustration. Hence, the goal was to help students appreciate the complexity of these issues and to be able to argue for a particular view. Activity Design Goals The global warming unit was fortuitous in that it provided the means to fulfill both the goals of environmental science and the CoVis project, in particular it provided a means to satisfy the following goals: 1. Help students understand how science relates to environmental issues and integrate the science concepts into larger, more complex, real world systems, and critically consider the socio-political and ethical consequences of scientific interpretations, drawing upon and honing a broad range of intellectual and social skills that would serve them through a lifetime of inquiry even if they do not choose careers in science.

2. Explore their successes and failures in mastering the primary scientific concepts in which the global warming controversy is often framed. 3. Provide a context for the students' use of communication resources in contacting professionals who are involved, directly or tangentially, with global warming. 4. Promote students abilities to collect and analyze data in service of investigating an issue and then later as a means of providing warrants for an argument. 5. Promote and explore the use of scientific visualization by the students to assess the ease and benefits for students in appropriating a tool which has been enormously successful within the scientific community. 6. To convince students that science is dynamic we wanted to study a theory which is itself dynamic, i.e., still in a state of flux and refinement. It is also an ideal way for students to understand that experts often disagree and that differences in opinion are not only tolerated, but encouraged as an essential driving force for further investigation. The Activity Structure The sequence of activities that took place in this curricular unit, lasting around a month, were as follows: 1. A wide ranging pre-test asking for both climatic facts and processes followed by a lecture focused through the pre-test on concepts the students did not appear to understand. 2. Two videos presenting contrasting sides of the global warming debate. After each video students wrote down the most salient questions they had. 3. Students formed into 7 project teams to do open-ended inquiry around global warming, namley: Scientific Foundations, Computer Models, Regulatory Aspects (Legal), Politics, Media (Popular press accounts), Relationship with the Third World, Research Funding. The majority of the unit was spent on students' researching and presenting these projects (approximately three weeks). 4. Utilizing a jigsaw structure students read several proposals and critical newspaper articles and then responded by proposing their own one page solution. Due to reasons of space this activity is not discussed further. 5. A structured laboratory using the greenhouse effect visualizer was performed. 6. A post-test (identical to the pre-test) was administered. Description and Analysis of Classroom Activities We divide our description and analysis of classroom activities into three categories: staging activities, openended inquiry, and student learning. Staging activities refer to means by which the teacher communicated her overall intentions for the global warming unit to students and provided opportunities for students to learn techniques and principles. These staging activities enable open-ended inquiry where students are charged with defining specific problems they will solve, choosing investigative strategies, and sources of data. Finally, in the student learning section we provide a summary of student progress. Staging Activities Videos--In an effort to move the students to a critical and social perspective on global warming

two videos were shown, which presented contrasting accounts of the evidence. The first video, part of the Race to Save the Planet series (Only One Atmosphere, 1990), presents the perspective that substantial circumstantial evidence exists indicating global warming will occur and that the consequences are severe enough that remedial action should be taken. The second video, called the Greenhouse Effect Conspiracy (199n), maintains that no definitive proof exists for global warming and also argues that an overall warming need not be dangerous to the world, hence taking protective measures against global warming is premature. Placing students' inquiry in the context of these competing positions alerts them to the need to argue for their position and produce evidence. One way to assess the impact that the videos had on students conception of global warming and their approach to its investigation comes from the questions they have following the videos. We asked each student to write the five questions that they would most like answers to following each video. These questions were then coded into the following five categories: 1. Request for evidence that global warming is occurring or to measure the extent of change. 2. Focus on methodology or the criteria for proof . 3. Focus on global warming remediation. 4. Focus on how social agendas, motives, relationships of social groups, or funding influence decision making procedures. 5. Learn about the science of global warming, including how to predict its effects, process by which it occurs, explanatory mechanism, and its consequences. These categories were selected based on the design goal of the staging activity to move the students attention to the role of evidence, proof procedures, and interplay between the technical and social. The categories were coded non-exclusively. The average number of questions coded to each category ranged from a low of 0.9 for category one to a high of 2.5 for category 5. After the first video students had mainly remediation questions (category 3, M = 1.9) and explanation questions (category 5, M=1.6), whereas after the second video the students had mainly methodology questions focusing on criteria for proof (category 2, M=1.9). The T-tests comparing the number of questions generated after video one showed categories 3 and 5 did not differ from one another, while they each differed reliably from the other categories. After video 2, category 2 differed reliably from all other categories. In the spirit in which the activity was designed, these results suggest students were moved from considering actions to solve the problem of global warming to considering criteria for whether the problem exists at all. Laboratory Experiment exploring Atmospheric Constituents--A laboratory activity to explore the infra-redspecific absorptive capabilities of certain gaseous atmospheric constituents (CO2, CH4) that are implicated in global warming was provided to students. In this lab, students could measure varying levels of

absorption, thus providing an experiential basis for understanding the greenhouse effect. This is also useful to establish that part of the theory underlying global warming is based on scientifically established evidence and that fundamental elements of the global warming theory are reasonable. Important analogical mappings implicit in the activity were missed by many students. In particular, the infra-red light provided by a specialized light was considered the sun (which produces short wave radiation) rather than the earth (which emits long-wave infrared radiation). Mismatches of this sort prevented students from gaining the full benefit from the activity that a teacher had expected. This was the only whole class data collection activity, hence it played an important role in supporting the project presentations. Greenhouse Effect Visualizer--The Greenhouse Effect Visualizer provides scientific visualizations related to the earth's energy balance. Drawing on data sets that are in regular use by climatologists doing research on global warming, the GEV can be used by students to perform novel research as well as to see basic climatic patterns illustrated. A worksheet style laboratory assignment was given to the students consisting of around ten questions, all following roughly the same form. The questions asked the student to call up selected visualizations, record specified data points, and then to consider the relationships or causes behind the data. The important part of this exercise lay almost entirely in considering the data values and attempting to make sense of their relations. The ostensible designed activity system was to collect some data in a relatively mechanical fashion and then puzzle out the relations hidden behind the data. In making sense of the questions the students were free to call up any of the GEV visualizations and inspect any data. However, the students understood a different activity system than the one intended: the students concentrated on collecting the data and only secondarily inspected it to uncover the relations that were the primary objective of the unit. Open-ended Inquiry After the staging activities students engaged in several open-ended activity groups. These groups can be roughly divided into those that focused on scientific and social issues. Science Groups--The project areas were designed to meet the goals of scientific literacy with regard to global warming as well as social, political and ethical cognizance. The three science-related topics from which the students could choose, science foundations, research, and computer modeling, were intended to motivate the students to find out 'what we know' and 'how we know what we know' about the science related to global warming. The goals for the science foundation group were to integrate well-characterized chemical, biological and physical systems into a coherent model of global warming which would be supported by data, e.g., designing an experiment to test specific phenomena or creating a model of the effect itself and

testing it. The research group was to de-mystify the process by which scientific research is funded, conducted, reviewed, evaluated and ultimately valued. This group should find statistics on the numbers of grants awarded to U.S. research institutions, budgets for each grant as well as annual totals for all grants awarded, number of applicants versus number of grants awarded, as well as information about the protocol and philosophy of peer review. The computer modeling group considers the four or five currently accepted Global Climate Models (GCMs) and identify model-specific predictions for climate change as well as reveal the basic assumptions and variables employed in each model. Towards this goal the Greenhouse Effect Visualizer was used extensively by the modeling group, as well as, a Gaia microworld called 'Daisyworld.' The students engaged in these science groups did much of what was described above with the exception of the students in science foundations group. Ironically this was the only group that did not collect and analyze data. Their decision was to present the class with a series of accepted facts from text books and selected literature from periodicals and bring them together to explain the natural greenhouse effect and global warming theory. Negative feedback variables were described, such as the effect of clouds and particulate in the atmosphere, and were used to assess the overall probability that global warming could occur. The group concluded that global warming was possible, but the theory was, as yet, not proven to their satisfaction. Their recommendation was to continue research in global climate change and keep cautious attention focused on scientific results. This group used a lecture style approach, distributing information in a top-down style and asking the students to accept their understanding without the buttressing of evidence. At the end of their presentation the discussion turned to weighing the likelihood global warming would occur, culminating in the class treating the scientific foundations group as specialists capable of providing expert advice. Social Groups--The four remaining groups, relationship to the third world, media, regulatory issues, and political issues, were created to meet the goal of increasing student awareness of social, political and ethical issues related to global warming and aid their understanding of how science is evaluated within a cultural context. The students were required to collect and analyze data to support any conclusions the group reached. The relationship to the third world group used Netscape to search for different criteria to define third world countries as well as investigate how the first and third worlds are politically and economically related through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. They used secondary data from the Global Environmental Facility to determine what level of funding global warming is currently receiving and projections into the future and made predictions about economic impacts on the third world by region according to

population, types of natural resources and structure of economies in those countries. Students developed an original and quite remarkable model of the convoluted, but essentially cyclical nature of World Bank projects which, in their opinion, served to bolster first world economies and further foster the third worlds dependence on the first world and perpetuate a Western model of progress and expansion. The media group used primary and secondary data and drew from a variety of traditional and computer resources to examine the medias influence on our perception of global warming. First, they created an original survey which was administered to students, faculty and staff at our high school and correlated results from that survey to results of surveys conducted by other institutions. Second, they executed a search of the number of global warming articles printed in U.S. papers versus articles written about other environmental topics and sorted by year to identify trends in public appetites. Third, they made extensive use of the telephone, placing calls to editors and human resources personnel to get a gross count of the number of journalists who report on environmental issues that have backgrounds in science. Fourth, they viewed environmental print and video clips and developed an original list and description of rhetorical techniques that are used to influence readers and viewers. The regulatory group found President Clinton's proposal to Congress on addressing global warming. This group undertook to discover what part of this proposal had subsequently been implemented and what part of the Clean Air Act addresses global warming. The results were disappointing to the group in that they found nothing had been implemented into law and that little of the Act treats global warming concerns. The political issues group relied heavily on the Congressional Scorecard which they accessed through the ENVIROLINK gopher server to identify historical trends in the voting records of Republicans and Democrats to substantiate their hypotheses that voting on global warming (and other environmental issues, directly or indirectly related) was highly polarized, thus falling along party lines. Student Learning Based on student interviews, the unit was highly successful in that it created a great deal of interest in the global warming issue and students reported that they learned much more within the project-based format than they would have without using open-ended projects. A pre-test was given to assess students understanding of climate and the issues related to global warming. The test was quite ambitious and ranged from asking for specific facts (e.g., what is the depth of the atmosphere?) to asking for causal explanations (e.g., why does the earth have seasons?). The same test was given at the end of the global warming curriculum unit. We observed a reliable improvement in the percentage of questions answered correctly from pre-test to post-test (23.8 vs. 34.6, t=3.52, p<0.01). Of the thirteen

questions on the test the significant improvement was associated with only three questions. The questions were: Why does the earth have seasons? , Does the moon have seasons?, and what is the greenhouse effect?. It is noteworthy that these questions were the locus of improvement because several aspects of the staging activities focused on these issues. Overall, there were eight questions where students showed improvement (though not necessarily significant) from pre-test to post-test. Data Handling--It was clear from presentations and self-report that students did not handle data well. Some of the data handling problems were: analyzing by inspection (rather than taking even a simple average in a set of numerical data), throwing out data points that do not fit, rejecting their own data and interpretations in favor of those found in the literature (without repeating experiments or repeating the analysis) and drawing conclusions that were inconsistent with data. For example, many students ignored their research finding that suggested global warming was, as yet, unproved and recommended action in their proposals that was dramatic requiring draconian economic measures. Others stated that global warming theory was inconclusive, yet they proposed taking funds from research and funneling them into education about global warming. Since data acquisition and analysis were an integral part of the project, it was important to understand why students experienced such difficulty. Overwhelmingly students stated they lacked confidence in their data gathering and analysis skills because they lacked sufficient experience in generating acquiring, or organizing data and in drawing reasonable conclusions from data. This was difficult for a science teacher to hear as we feel we provide a variety of opportunities for students to practice these skills, but taking an honest look we realize that, in fact, most science teachers do not. In the traditional curriculum, we often tell them what to expect, we tell them the parameters to be tested, we organize the data collection schemes and literally lead them to the only probable conclusion to explain the phenomenon (given the artificial context) they have just "tested". In twelve years of school, perhaps four years of science classes, they have never been expected to do original data generation or collection, nor have they been asked to decide what variables to look at, create the appropriate experimental environment to test those variables, recognize what constitutes a trend, how to identify cause and effect, how to determine whether a result is statistically different than another, how to discard data when statistically justified, how to generalize relationships from a set of data, even know what units to use or what order of magnitude is appropriate for representing the data. Another stumbling block with regard to data handling is the simple fact that data analysis is time consuming, often tedious work. Data handling also involves intellectual risk-taking which students are not necessarily comfortable doing.

Students also reported a certain skepticism about data in general, assuming the body funding the research would somehow skew the data in a way that serves their own interests. Students learn to ask questions concerning the validity of the data: Exactly what data were they gathering? Under what conditions? Were accepted research practices followed? These are all questions the students routinely ask now when confronted with data or interpretations of data. Redesign of Global Warming Curriculum Unit An attempt will be made in future to provide all-class exercises and activities which will gradually take students through individual steps of data gathering, organization and interpretation in order to bolster their confidence and increase their competence with data. This will be added as a new staging activity. To engage students in learning the techniques of data analysis special attention to motivation and relevance to future open-ended inquiry will need to be provided. Both of the staging activity laboratories were treated as rote data collection activities by the students, with insufficient attention paid to the conceptual difficulties and analogies they were designed to elicit. In the future, the atmospheric constituents lab will be re-written so the analogies being made are clearer and more explicit. Additionally, other laboratory experiences should be developed in order to reinforce scientific principles that underlie greenhouse effect and climatic processes. The Greenhouse Effect Visualizer activity could be improved by helping students understand that its central goal is not to collect data, but to pose intriguing questions that can be addressed using data. Perhaps this emphasis could be better communicated by providing some of the data directly, thereby making it clear the interesting work to be done lies in the explanation of data rather than its acquisition. Viewing the overall global warming curriculum unit as an activity system is difficult because all of the constituent activities are not clearly motivated by a single goal or unifying scenario. A potential redesign would provide a clear unifying purpose to the system of activities. In retrospect, global warming in and of itself, does not provide such a context. One example of a unifying scenario that we are investigating is a student-led international conference on global warming. In the context of the CoVis project this is a particularly appealing scenario, because CoVis classrooms around the country can collaborate via Internet-working to share the burden of collecting information and expertise world-wide. References Fish, R. S., Kraut, R. E. Root, R. W., and Rice, R. E. (1993). "Video as a technology for informal communication. Communications of the ACM," 48-61, January. Fishman, B. & D'Amico, L. (1994). Which way will the wind blow? Networked computer tools for studying the weather. In Proceedings of ED-MEDIA '94, Vancouver, B.C. Gordin, D. N., Edelson, D. C., & Pea, R. D. (January, 1995). "The Greenhouse Effect Visualizer:

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