Visualizing to Integrate Science Understanding for All Learners (VISUAL)

动态可视化-交互式，基于计算机的模型，模拟和科学现象的虚拟实验-为学生理解科学概念提供了替代途径。 特别感兴趣的是那些使看不见的过程可见的可视化，以及那些支持对复杂现象进行探究的可视化。 关于动态可视化的教育价值的研究一直是矛盾的和不确定的。 这项研究提供了模块和评估，以获得证据，为学生如何处理动态视觉数据，并整合他们所看到的，他们知道。 该项目分三个阶段进行。 第一个18个月的阶段是研究可视化如何改善具有广泛学科知识，背景，信仰和空间经验的学生的科学学习。 第二阶段为期24个月，研究在课程材料中嵌入可视化与实践活动相结合的成功策略，使所有学生都能学习复杂的科学主题。 为期18个月的最后阶段旨在展示如何通过为新主题和课程开发可视化来推广实践和网络学习工具，使其更容易在不同的环境中使用。 四十初中和高中科学教师和他们的学生在五个不同的地区参加了可视化应用于物理科学学习的研究。 这些研究以现有的工作和工具为基础，但将根据需要开发新的工具和材料。

Dynamic visualizations - interactive, computer based models, simulations, and virtual experiments of scientific phenomena - provide alternative pathways for students to understand science concepts. Of special interest are those visualizations that make unseen processes visible and those that support inquiry around complex phenomena. Research concerning the educational values of dynamic visualizations has been contradictory and inconclusive. This study provides modules and assessments to obtain evidence for how students process dynamic visual data and integrate what they see with what they know. The project proceeds in three phases. The first 18 month phase is to study how visualizations can improve science learning for students with a wide range of disciplinary knowledge, background, beliefs, and spatial experience. The second phase lasting 24 months investigates successful strategies to embed visualizations, combined with hands-on activities, in curriculum materials to enable all students to learn complex science topics. The last phase of 18 months works to show how practices and cyberlearning tools can be generalized to be more easily used in different environments by developing visualizations for new topics and curricula. Forty middle and high school science teachers and their students in five diverse districts participate in the study of visualizations applied to the learning of physical science. The studies build on existing work and tools, but new tools and materials are to be developed as needed.