SBIR Phase I: Understanding the Nature of Science

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将通过网络为中学和大学科学教学提供模拟。这些模拟的重点是让学生明白“科学的本质”。就科学的本质而言，认识论工程意味着科学发现的潜在逻辑和围绕数据和思想的获取和传播组织科学的方式。该项目强调了科学学习的大图景：实验和假设之间的关系，理论是模型而不是现实的观念，理论的检验是它的预测能力。大多数学生从来没有看到过这个大局。这个项目提供了一个解决方案，深入而有效地解决了科学本质中精心挑选的各个方面。在计算机控制的网络模拟中，学生将扮演科学家的角色，在小组中工作，推进（模拟的）科学学科。这些科学家的角色将给学生提供他们可以参考的经验，含蓄地或明确地，因为他们增加了对科学本质的理解。该项目的重点是仔细设计和测试模拟和它们所嵌入的课程，以确保它们尽可能有效。未来的公民需要知道科学是如何运作的。就这个项目的成功程度而言，它将有助于消除对科学知识的起源和范围的危险误解，并将为学生提供更有效地评估科学（和准科学）主张的工具。认识论工程推测，了解这一“大图景”将鼓励一些学生坚持科学，否则他们可能会因为枯燥和孤立而放弃科学。这些人包括传统上代表性不足的群体的成员。考虑到这一点，该公司选择了多种实地测试教室。该项目的技术也为了解学生对科学本质的理解创造了研究机会：在这种兴趣中，记录的是学生的行为而不是他们的观点。该项目还探讨了教育界教学和商业化的不同寻常的模式：互联网不是用来传递内容，而是用来调解模拟和促进小组间的交流，通常在一个教室内，而不是更广泛。该公司试图通过订阅来实现这一目标——这种方式在短期内对教师来说相对便宜，但将为公司提供持续的收入。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Project will deliver simulations over the web for secondary and postsecondary science instruction. These simulations focus explicitly on students coming to understand the "nature of science." By the nature of science, Epistemological Engineering means both the underlying logic of scientific discovery and the way that science is organized around the acquisition and dissemination of data and ideas. The project emphasizes the big picture in science learning: the relationship between experiments and hypotheses, the idea that theories are models and not reality, that the test of a theory is its predictive power. Most students never see this big picture. This project offers a solution, addressing carefully chosen aspects of the nature of science deeply but efficiently. In computer-moderated, networked simulations, students will take on the roles of scientists, working in groups, advancing a (simulated) scientific discipline. These scientist roles will give students experiences to which they can refer, implicitly and explicitly, as they increase their understanding of the nature of science. The project centers on careful design and testing of both the simulations and the lessons in which they are embedded-to ensure that they are as effective as possible.Tomorrow's citizens need to know how science works. To the degree to which the project is successful, it will help erase dangerous misconceptions about the origins and extent of scientific knowledge, and it will give students tools to evaluate scientific (and quasi-scientific) claims more effectively. Epistemological Engineering conjectures that learning about this "big picture" will encourage some students to persist in science who otherwise might have given it up as sterile and isolating. These include members of traditionally-underrepresented groups. The firm has chosen diverse field-test classrooms with this in mind. The technology of the project also creates research opportunities for learning about students' understanding of the nature of science: In that interest, what students do rather than their opinions is what is recorded. This project also probes unusual models for both delivery of instruction and commercialization in the education world: The Internet is not used to deliver content but rather to mediate a simulation and promote intergroup communication, usually within a single classroom rather than more widely. The firm seeks to do so using subscriptions--a way that is relatively inexpensive to the teacher in the short term, but will provide the firm with ongoing revenue.