Designing Technology-Enhanced Science Inquiry

The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) is a free, open source curriculum platform with tools for teachers and students to do extended classroom-based inquiry projects. A powerful authoring environment and robust data logging system support curriculum design and research into technology-enhanced learning and instruction. RIDDLE’s current WISE projects are focused on science education, but the topic and audience of a WISE unit is up to the author’s imagination.

Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation: a DR K-12 under award #1119670.

Ongoing projects include:

Students’ collaborative learning

How can we use technology to coordinate and investigate meaningful collaborative learning in science? This question frames our ongoing design and investigation of a tool called the Idea Manager, which students use to track and share ideas over the course of an extended unit. This allows us to examine how students’ ideas evolve over the course of a unit, to study collaborative learning, and to investigate ways to support that learning.

Teacher professional development and co-design

Another project is concerned with supporting teachers in making sense of their students’ learning in order to inform classroom decisions (e.g., how to give guidance, how to pace progress). This project involves visualizing real-time student data, and designing tools for teachers, such as information dashboards, alerts, and teaching tips.

Topics

  • Middle and high school classrooms
  • Scaffolding science inquiry learning and extended design projects
  • Computer-supported collaborative learning
  • Teacher professional development
  • Supporting evidence-based teacher decision making
  • Designing information visualizations and data dashboards
  • Investigating how technology can support and reveal student thinking

Opportunities for participation:

  • Customize or design your own WISE unit on a topic of your choice
  • Collaborate on, or conduct an independent design-based research study in a classroom
  • Conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses on existing data (classroom video, student and teacher interviews and artifacts, data logs)
  • Design and/or develop new WISE technologies with WISE’s open source tools
  • Conduct clinical interviews and user studies on students’ and teachers’ uses of technology for learning and instruction

See also

Related publications

Matuk, C. & Linn, M. C. (2018). Why and how do middle school students exchange ideas during science inquiry? International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 13(3), 263-299. DOI:10.1007/s11412-018-9282-1

Matuk, C., Zhang, J., Uk, I. & Linn, M. C. (2019). A qualitative approach to graphing within a complex inquiry context: How construction and critique help middle school students to reason about cancer. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 56, 905-936. DOI: 10.1002/tea.21533

Matuk, C. & Lim-Breitbart, J. (2018, Apr 13-17). “This is what I want.” Technology co-design as a mirror on teachers’ science inquiry practices. In Collins, A. & Bagno, E. (discussants), Kidron, A. & Gerard, L. (co-organizers). Knowledge Integration: Trajectories, Opportunities and Future Directions. Poster presented at the American Educational Research Association Meeting, New York, NY.

Matuk, C., Zhang, J. & Linn, M. C. (2017). How middle school students construct and critique graphs to explain cancer treatment. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Philadelphia: International Society for the Learning Sciences.

Linn, M. C., Gerard, L., Matuk, C., & McElhaney, K. W. (2016). Science education: From separation to integration. Review of Research in Education, 40(1), 529-587.

Matuk, C., McElhaney, K., King Chen, J., Lim-Breitbart, Kirkpatrick, D. & Linn, M. C. (2016). Iteratively refining a science explanation tool through classroom implementation and stakeholder partnerships. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 7(2), 93-110.

Matuk, C., Gerard, L., Lim-Breitbart, J. & Linn, M. C. (2016). Gathering requirements for teacher tools: Strategies for empowering teachers through co-design. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 27(1), 79-110. DOI: 10.1007/s10972-016-9459-2

Matuk, C., Cocco, F., Linn, M. C. (2016). A teacher-centered approach to designing a real-time display of classroom activity. In Dillenbourg, P. (discussant), M. Tissenbaum & C. Matuk & (co-organizers). Real-Time Visualization of Student Activities to Support Classroom Orchestration (Vol. 2, pp. 1120-1127). In, ICLS’16: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (Vol. 2, pp. 1120-1127). Singapore: International Conference for the Learning Sciences.

Tissenbaum, M. & Matuk, C. (2016). Real-Time Visualization of Student Activities to Support Classroom Orchestration [Organized symposium]. In, ICLS’16: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (Vol. 2, pp. 1120-1127). Singapore: International Society for the Learning Sciences.

Uk, I., Matuk, C., & Linn, M. C. (2016). Students using graphs to understand the process of cancer treatment. In Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, (Vol. 2, pp. 721-728). Singapore: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Gerard, L. Matuk, C., McElhaney, K. Linn, M. C. (2015). Automated, adaptive guidance for K-12 education. Educational Research Review, 15, 41-58. doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2015.04.001

Gerard, L., Matuk, C. & Linn, M. C. (Eds.). (2016). Technology as inquiry teaching partner [Special Issue]. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 27(1). DOI:10.1007/s10972-016-9457-4

Matuk, C., Linn, M. C., & Eylon, B.-S. (2015). Technology to support teachers using evidence from student work to customize technology-enhanced inquiry units. Instructional Science, 43(2), 229-257. doi: 10.1007/s11251-014-9338-1

Matuk, C., Linn, M. C., Gerard, L. (2015). Supporting the WISE design process: Authoring tools that enable insights into technology-enhanced learning. In, R. Sottilare, A. Graesser, X. Hu & H. Holden (Eds.), Design Recommendations for Adaptive Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Authoring Tools (Volume 3). Orlando, FL: U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

Matuk, C. & Linn, M. C. (2015). Examining the real and perceived impacts of a public idea repository on literacy and science inquiry. In CSCL’15: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference for Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, (Vol. 1, pp. 150-157). Gothenburg, Sweden: International Society of the Learning Sciences. [Award for Best Design Paper]

Matuk, C. & Linn, M. C. (2014). Exploring a digital tool for exchanging ideas during science inquiry. In ICLS’14: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference for the Learning Sciences, (Vol. 2, pp. 895-902). Boulder: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Matuk, C., McElhaney, K., Miller, D., King Chen, J., Lim-Breitbart, J., Terashima, H., Kwan, G., & Linn, M.C. (2013). Reflectively prototyping a tool for exchanging ideas. In CSCL’13: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, (Vol 2., pp. 101-104). Madison, WI, 2013. International Society of the Learning Sciences.

McElhaney, K., Miller, D., Matuk, C., & Linn, M. C. (2012). Using the Idea Manager to promote coherent understanding of inquiry investigations. In ICLS’12: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference for the Learning Sciences, (Vol. 1, pp. 323-330). Sydney: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Matuk, C., Sato, E., & Linn, M. C. (2011). Agreeing to disagree: Challenges with ambiguity in visual evidence. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning CSCL2011: Connecting Computer Supported Collaborative Learning to Policy and Practice, (Vol. 2, pp. 994-995). Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong.