Collaborative research: From the learner's perspective: Unpacking the why and how of model-based learning about biological systems

协作研究：从学习者的角度来看：揭示基于模型的生物系统学习的原因和方式

• 批准号: 1420321
• 负责人: Jennifer Momsen
• 金额: $ 21.8万
• 依托单位: North Dakota State University Fargo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1420321&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; learner; perspective; Unpacking

The purposes of this study are to promote and understand how undergraduate students learn foundational biology ideas in introductory biology courses. It will implement and study an innovative approach, which has students learn biological explanations by modeling phenomena as biologists do. The approach directs students to think about structures, behaviors and functions in nature, and to write these out and discuss them. This study will explore in detail student reasoning while they do this and how they learn. The project has potential not only to advance the field's ability to measure student competencies that are valued in recent science education standards documents (e.g., NGSS), but also to advance the field's understanding of how student "modeling ability" develops in a particular discipline. In this way, it can provide an important foundation for other research on the learning of modeling practices in science. Moreover, because the innovations take place in an introduction to biology course and introduction to biology is required for a large number of college majors, the project can be transformative for a large number of students across the country. This study will be conducted in a pre-designed undergraduate biology course across four universities, two public and two private, serving diverse populations. The aims are: (1) propose systems thinking skills needed by biology students, by (a) getting feedback from academics, and reviewing; (2) to examine more closely student thinking during their activities by (a) recording group discussions, (b) conducting clinical interviews with a subset of students, and (c) collecting student drawings in response to different prompts than they have used previously that help the instructors better understand what students are thinking; (3) conduct open-ended comparisons between other assessments and their assessments of student models; (4) compare outcomes when students are provided different visual representations as feedback (split-plot design); and (5) make comparisons between different demographic groups.

本研究的目的是促进和了解本科生如何在生物学导论课程中学习基础生物学概念。它将实施和研究一种创新的方法，让学生像生物学家一样通过建模现象来学习生物学解释。该方法引导学生思考自然界的结构、行为和功能，并将其写下来进行讨论。这项研究将详细探讨学生在学习时的推理以及他们是如何学习的。该项目不仅有潜力提高该领域衡量学生能力的能力，这些能力在最近的科学教育标准文件（例如，NGSS）中得到了重视，而且还能促进该领域对学生“建模能力”如何在特定学科中发展的理解。从而为其他科学建模实践学习的研究提供了重要的基础。此外，由于创新发生在生物导论课程中，而生物导论是许多大学专业的必修课，因此该项目对全国各地的大量学生来说可能具有变革性。这项研究将在四所大学（两所公立大学和两所私立大学）预先设计的本科生物学课程中进行，为不同的人群提供服务。目标是：(1)提出生物学学生所需的系统思维技能，(a)从学者那里获得反馈，并进行复习；(2)通过(a)记录小组讨论，(b)对一部分学生进行临床访谈，以及(c)收集学生的图纸，以回应不同的提示，帮助教师更好地了解学生的想法，从而更仔细地检查学生在活动中的思维；(3)将其他评估与其对学生模型的评估进行开放式比较；(4)比较不同视觉表征作为反馈（分块图设计）的结果；(5)对不同人口群体进行比较。