Abstract
Why has technology become prevalent in science education without fundamentally improving test scores or student attitudes? We claim that the core of the problem is how technology is being used. Technologies such as simulations are currently not used to their full potential. For instance, physiology simulations often follow textbooks by sequentially exposing individual systems such as the circulatory and respiratory systems one at a time, leaving out essential comprehension of system interactions. Moreover, the standard computer lab hides students behind large monitors and ignores the social aspect of learning. We have created a new kind of infrastructure, called Collective Simulations to provide engaging inquiry-based science learning modules that uniquely combine social learning pedagogies with distributed simulation technology. This infrastructure creates immersive learning experiences based on wirelessly connected computers and enables radically different classroom learning experiences that engage students and teachers simultaneously. Collective Simulations allow students to learn about the intricacies of interdependent complex systems by engaging in discourse with other students and teachers. As part of our Mr. Vetro Collective Simulation, students learn about physiology through technology-enhanced role-play. Each group controls physiological variables of a single organ on their computer. A central simulation gathers all the data and projects the composite view of a human. In an example activity, the heart and lung teams collaborate to adjust parameters and reach homeostasis. Results from formal evaluation studies demonstrate a positive impact on scientific inquiry, student learning, and students’ interest in personal health issues. This article describes Mr. Vetro and its underlying architecture and presents the evaluation results.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
An interactive flyer can be found at: http://agentsheets.com/research/c5/documents/interactive%20flier/c5-flier.html.
Pearson/Benjamin Cummings Interactive Physiology from http://www.aw-bc.com/info/ip/
Available at http://www.colorado.edu/sei/class/
References
Adams, W. K., Perkins, K. K., Dubson, M., Finkelstein, N. D., & Wieman, C. E. (2004). The design and validation of the colorado learning attitudes about science survey. Paper presented at the 2004 Physics Education Research Conference, Boulder, CO, USA.
Adamson, A. E., Banks, D., Burtch, M., Cox III, F., Judson, E., Turley, J. B., et al. (2003). Reformed undergraduate instruction and its subsequent impact on secondary school teaching practice and student achievement. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(10), 939–958.
Arias, E., Eden, H., Fischer, G., Gorman, A., & Scharff, E. (1999). Beyond access: informed participation and empowerment. Paper presented at the Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL’99), Stanford, CA, USA.
Benford, S., Rowland, D., Flintham, M., Drozd, A., Hull, R., Reid, J., et al. (2005). Life on the edge: supporting collaboration in location-based experiences. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’05), Portland, OR, USA.
Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(2), 141–178.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University.
Cherry, G., Ioannidou, A., Rader, C., Brand, C., & Repenning, A. (1999). Simulations for lifelong learning. Paper presented at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), Atlantic City, NJ, USA.
Colella, V. (2000). Participatory simulations: Building collaborative understanding through immersive dynamic modeling. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(4), 471–500.
Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. (2005). Rising above the gathering storm: Energizing and employing America for a brighter economic future. Washington: The National Academies.
Cummings, P.B. Interactive physiology, from http://www.aw-bc.com/info/ip/
Danesh, A., Inkpen, K. M., Lau, F., Shu, K., & Booth, K. S. (2001). Geney: Designing a collaborative activity for the palm handheld computer. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’01), Seattle, WA, USA.
Deguchi, A., Yamaguchi, E., Inagaki, S., Sugimoto, M., & Kusunoki, F. (2006). CarettaKids: A system for supporting children’s face-to-face collaborative learning by integrating personal and shared spaces. Paper presented at the Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2006), Tampere, Finland.
Diehl, E. (1990). Participatory simulation software for managers: The design philosophy behind microworlds creator. European Journal of Operations Research, 59(1), 203–209.
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2004). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Epstein, J. M., & Axtell, R. (1996). Growing artificial societies. Cambridge: MIT.
Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom. Porthsmouth: Heinemann.
Hampton, E., & Rodriguez, R. (2001). Inquiry science in bilingual classrooms. Bilingual Research Journal, 24, 417–434.
Hill, J., & Flynn, K. (2006). Classroom instruction that works with English language learners. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Huang, C. (2004). Virtual labs: E-Learning for tomorrow. PLoS Biol, 2(6). Available at http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0020157.
Hutchins, E. L. (1990). The technology of team navigation. In J. Galegher, R. E. Kraut, & C. Egido (Eds.), Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological foundations of coorperative work (pp. 191–220). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Hutchins, E. L. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge: MIT.
Keyser, D. (2010). A comparative analysis of student learning with a collaborative computer simulation of the cardiopulmonary system. Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA 2010), Denver, CO, USA.
Luhn, L. (2010). The influence of a cardiopulmonary computer simulation on teacher practice and opportunities for student inquiry. Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA 2010), Denver, CO, USA.
Mandryk, R.L., Inkpen, K.M., Bilezikjian, M., Klemmer, S.R., & James A.L. (2001). Supporting children’s collaboration across handheld computers. Paper presented at the Extended Abstracts of CHI, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seattle, WA, USA.
Metcalf, S. J., & Tinker, R. F. (2004). Probeware and handhelds in elementary and middle school science. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 13(1), 43–49.
Michael, J. (2001). In pursuit of meaningful learning. Advances in Physiology Education, 25(3), 145–158.
Michotte, A. (1962). The perception of causality. Andover: Methuen.
Morehead, N. (2001). Handheld computers earn high marks. Federal Computer Week Magazine, July 2, 2001. Available at http://fcw.com/articles/2001/07/02/handheld-computers-earn-high-marks.aspx
National Research Council. (1996). National Science Education Standards. Washington: National Academy.
National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics (2008). Chapter 7. Science and technology: Public attitudes and understanding. Science and Engineering Indicators 2008.
National Science Foundation, Task Force on Cyberlearning (2008). Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge. A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation: National Science Foundation. Available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08204/nsf08204.pdf
Norcini, J. (2003). Clinical review: ABC of learning and teaching in medicine—work based assessment. BMJ—British Medical Journal, 326, 753–755.
Oppenheimer, T. (2003). The flickering mind: The false promise of technology in the classroom and how learning can be saved. Toronto: Random.
OECD: Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Programme for International Student Assessment (2003). PISA 2003 technical report.
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas. New York: Basic.
Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine. New York: Basic.
Perkins, K. K., Barbera, J., Adams, W. K., & Wieman, C. E. (2006). Chemistry vs. physics: A comparison of how biology majors view each discipline. Paper presented at the 2006 Physics Education Research Conference, Boulder, CO, USA.
Piaget, J. (1972). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic.
Piaget, J. (1990). The child’s conception of the world. New York: Littlefield Adams.
Piburn, M., Sawada, D., Falconer, K., Turley, J., Benford, R., & Bloom, I. (2000). Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP). The RTOP rubric form, training manual and reference manual containing statistical analyses (available from http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.Edu/AZTEC/rtop/RTOP_full/PDF/ ).
Prensky, M. (2006). Don’t bother me Mom–I’m learning! St. Paul: Paragon.
Repenning, A., & Ambach, J. (1997). The agentsheets behavior exchange: Supporting social behavior processing. Paper presented at the CHI 97, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Extended Abstracts, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Repenning, A., & Ioannidou, A. (2005). Mr. Vetro: A Collective Simulation framework. Paper presented at the ED-Media 2005, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Montreal, Canada.
Repenning, A., & Ioannidou, A. (2006). AgentCubes: Raising the ceiling of end-user development in education through incremental 3D. Paper presented at the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC’06), Brighton, United Kingdom.
Repenning, A., & Ioannidou, A. (2007). X-expressions in XMLisp: S-expressions and extensible markup language unite. Paper presented at the ACM SIGPLAN International Lisp Conference (ILC 2007), Cambridge, England.
Repenning, A., & Ioannidou, A. (2008). Agent warp engine: formula based shape warping for networked applications. Paper presented at the 2008 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2008), Napoli, Italy.
Repenning, A., Ioannidou, A., Rausch, M., & Phillips, J. (1998). Using agents as a currency of exchange between end-users. Paper presented at the WebNET 98 World Conference of the WWW, Internet, and Intranet, Orlando, FL, USA.
Repenning, A., Ioannidou, A., & Phillips, J. (1999). Collaborative use & design of interactive simulations. Paper presented at the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Conference (CSCL’99), Stanford, CA, USA.
Repenning, A., Ioannidou, A., Dättwyler, C., Luhn, L., & Repenning, N. (2010). Mr. Vetro: Assessing a Collective Simulation framework. Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR), Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), In Press.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday.
Shafer, M. C., & Foster, S. (1997). The changing face of assessment. Principled Practice in Math and Science Education, 1(2), 1–8. (Retrieved Nov 5, 2009 from http://ncisla.wceruw.org/publications/newsletters/fall97.pdf).
Short, D., & Echevarria, J. (2004). Teacher skills to support English language learners. Educational Leadership, 62(4), 8–13.
Simon, H. A. (1981). The sciences of the artificial (2nd ed.). Cambridge: MIT.
Stoddart, T., Pinal, A., Latzke, M., & Canaday, D. (2002). Integrating inquiry science and language development for english language learners. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 664–687.
Thompson, J., & Celva, E. (2005). 2005-2006 Colorado student assessment program (CSAP) demonstration packet: Science grade 10. Colorado Department of Education, Unit of Student Assessment. Available at http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/documents/csap/released_items/sci_demo_g10_2005.pdf
U.S. Department of Education (2003). The nation’s report card: Science 2000. (NCES 2003-453, by C. Y. O’Sullivan, M. A. Lauko, W. S. Grigg, J. Qian, and J. Zhang). Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1980). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University.
Webb, D. C. (2010). Collective Simulations as a context for student scientific inquiry: Effects on student attitudes and beliefs towards science. Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Denver, CO, USA.
Webb, D. C., Romberg, T. A., Burrill, J., & Ford, M. J. (2005). Teacher collaboration: Focusing on problems of practice. In T. A. Romberg & T. P. Carpenter (Eds.), Understanding math and science matters (pp. 231–251). Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Wilensky, U., & Stroup, W. (1999). Learning through participatory simulations: Network-based design for systems learning in classrooms. Paper presented at the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL’99), Stanford, CA, USA.
Wolberg, G. (1994). Digital image warping. IEEE Computer Society.
Wolberg, G. (1996). Recent advances in image morphing. Paper presented at the 1996 Conference on Computer Graphics International (CGI’96), Pohang, Korea.
Yager, R. (Ed.). (1995). Constructivism and learning science. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources (grant numbers 1R43 RR022008-01 and 1R43 RR022008-02) and previously by the National Science Foundation (grant number DMI SBIR 0232669). Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ioannidou, A., Repenning, A., Webb, D. et al. Mr. Vetro: A Collective Simulation for teaching health science. Computer Supported Learning 5, 141–166 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-010-9082-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-010-9082-8