DIP: Collaborative Research: Transforming Science Learning with an Interactive Web Environment for Data Sharing and Visualization

在这个网络学习设计和实施项目中，马萨诸塞州洛厄尔大学(UML)和非营利性合作者马萨诸塞州剑桥市的机器科学公司正在研究一个网络平台的课堂实现，该平台帮助初中和高中教师让他们的学生参与协作科学探究。这项技术--网络传感器实验互联网系统(ISENSE)--提供了用户贡献的课堂活动的共享储存库，如桌面科学实验、环境分析、工程项目和调查，以及这些活动产生的数据。该系统的特色工具使教师和学生能够创建自己的实验，上传和标记数据，以及配置和共享数据的动态视觉表示。马萨诸塞州和新罕布夏州的学区参与了这项为期四年的研究。来自每个学区的教师参加每年一度的暑期专业发展研讨会，并在将iSENSE整合到他们的科学教学中方面得到项目团队的持续支持。教育工作者在学年期间参加后续会议，报告他们的经验并交流最佳做法。最有希望的方法被记录为课程计划，并与更大的iSENSE社区共享。在整个项目中，来自UML教育研究生院的研究人员正在收集形成性数据，为系统改进和课程开发提供信息，回答有关在课堂上整合和使用网络支持的学习技术的问题，并进行总结性评估，以确定该项目对学生学习和科学教学实践的影响。项目交付成果包括一套iSENSE课程计划，与参与的教育工作者密切协商制定，以及对iSENSE数据收集和可视化技术的几项重大改进，以及一套指导方针和与培养数据科学家和将网络支持的学习技术整合到课堂上的指导方针的理由。特别是，项目合作伙伴正在为Android和iOS移动设备开发数据收集和可视化应用程序。在iSENSE网站上，社区建设功能正被整合到系统中，使用户能够像Twitter或Facebook那样“跟踪”彼此的系统活动。为了培养社区意识，鼓励学生和教师在实验、数据集和保存的可视化内容中添加评论。这使他们能够提出与正在进行的实验有关的问题，共享资源，提出进一步的调查建议，并批评彼此的工作。由于iSENSE整合了许多新兴的网络学习技术，包括交互数据可视化、在线社区建设功能和移动计算平台的使用，该项目对网络学习领域具有广泛的潜在影响。该项目团队正在调查与网络学习技术的互动和在线合作如何改变学生对科学数据和科学本质的思考方式。该团队还在研究网络学习资源，如用户贡献的网络内容、基于网络的软件工具和移动计算平台，如何提高科学教学实践。与此同时，调查人员试图确定在技术、专业发展和课程方面需要哪些资源，以有效支持将复杂的学习技术纳入课堂，以支持课堂上的科学实践和学习。

In this Cyberlearning Design and Implementation Project, the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) and a non-profit collaborator, Machine Science Inc. of Cambridge,Massachusetts, are studying classroom implementations of a web platform that helps middle school and high school teachers engage their students in collaborative scientific inquiry. This technology -- the Internet System for Networked Sensor Experimentation (iSENSE) -- provides a shared repository of user-contributed classroom activities, such as tabletop science experiments, environmental analyses, engineering projects, and surveys, together with the data generated by these activities. The system features tools that enable teachers and students to create their own experiments, upload and tag data, and configure and share dynamic visual representations of the data.School districts in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are participating in the four-year study. Teachers from each district attend annual summer professional development workshops at UML and receive ongoing support from the project team in integrating iSENSE into their science teaching. Educators participate in follow-up meetings during the academic year to report their experiences and exchange best practices. The most promising approaches are documented as lesson plans and shared with the larger iSENSE community. Throughout the project, researchers from UML's Graduate School of Education are collecting formative data to inform system refinement and curriculum development and to answer questions about integration and use of cyber-enabled learning technologies in classrooms, and conducting a summative assessment to determine the project's impact on student learning and science teaching practice.Project deliverables include a set of iSENSE lesson plans, developed in close consultation with participating educators, together with several significant enhancements to the iSENSE data collection and visualization technology and a set of guidelines and justifications for those guidelines pertaining to developing data scientists and to integrating cyber-enabled learning technologies into classrooms. In particular, the project partners are developing data collection and visualization apps for Android and iOS mobile devices. On the iSENSE website, community-building features are being integrated into the system, giving users the ability to "follow" each other's system activity, in the manner of Twitter or Facebook. To foster a sense of community, students and teachers are encouraged to append comments to experiments, data sets, and saved visualizations. This enables them to ask questions relating to ongoing experiments,share resources, suggest further investigations, and critique one another's work.Because iSENSE incorporates many emerging cyberlearning technologies, including interactive data visualizations, on-line community-building features, and the use of mobile computing platforms, the project has broad potential implications for the cyberlearning field. The project team is investigating how interacting with cyberlearning technologies and collaborating on-line changes the way students think about scientific data and the nature of science. The team is also examining how cyberlearning resources, such as user-contributed web content, web-based software tools, and mobile computing platforms, can enhance science teaching practice. At the same time, the investigators seek to identify what resources are needed, in terms of technology, professional development, and curriculum, to effectively support incorporation of sophisticated learning technologies in support of science practice and learning in the classroom.