Grounded and Transferable Knowledge of Complex Systems Using Computer Simulations

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This project concerns the use of interactive computer simulations to teach scientific concepts governing complex adaptive systems. The formal principles underlying these systems are applicable across a wide range of domains. Although the broad applicability of these principles speaks to their importance, it also represents a challenge to educators to convey these principles in a way that students can appreciate the principle at a sufficiently abstract level that the student can transfer the principle across superficially unrelated domains. The current research addresses the question of when and how do have students transfer what they have learned about scientific principles to new situations. Our proposed research explores methods for teaching students about scientific principles in a manner that leads to grounded yet transportable knowledge. A central inquiry of this proposal concerns the relation between the superficial, concrete details through which a phenomenon is presented, and the abstraction of deeper scientific principles underlying the phenomenon.Our experiments explore the role of perceptually-based simulations in fostering students' scientific understanding. By observing how active exploration of one simulation benefits understanding of a subsequently presented simulation based on the same principle, we can assess whether the scientific principle has been successfully abstracted. Experiments will explore the roles of graphical concreteness, narrative contextualization, language specificity, and diagrams on students' implicit and explicit knowledge of scientific principles. One research outcome will be prescriptions for how and when concrete and highly contextualized materials should be used, compared to idealized and decontextualized materials. One line of research focuses on the language that accompanies interactive computer simulations by manipulating the concreteness and abstractness of words. These experiments explore how best to use words to foster transferable knowledge: by gradually introducing increasingly abstract language, by combining abstract language with concrete visuals (or vice versa), or by using concrete but metaphorically related words.A second line of experiments aims to give participants first-person experiences with scientific principles to test whether they promote spontaneous transfer across analogous situations. Using the scientific principle of Signal Detection Theory, we will compare direct experience with a signal detection task with explicit instruction. Further experiments will determine if the advantages of experience vs. instruction are modulated by the perceptual concreteness of the simulations, and the narrative richness of the training scenario.The scientific goal of the inquiry is to gain an understanding of how perceptual experience can lead to abstract conceptual understanding, and how conceptual understanding can change perceptual experience. The practical goal is to translate this understanding into general educational principles for integrating computer simulations into classroom activities.