Collaborative Research: Improving Representational Competence by Engaging with Physical Modeling in Foundational STEM Courses

这个项目是Whatcom社区学院工程和数学学院以及西华盛顿大学心理学学院的合作项目。该项目将研究如何帮助学生培养表征能力，这是在STEM领域取得成功所需的关键技能。该项目将设计与3D打印机创建的物理模型相关的学习活动，并评估这些活动对学生学习的影响。通过创建学生可以掌握在手中的3D模型，教师可以帮助学生在课堂上学习关键概念。如果这些3D模型帮助学生获得数学技能，并在其他STEM课程中使用这些技能，学生可能更有可能成功并毕业。该项目将测试这种3D模型方法，并将帮助研究人员了解如何为来自各种背景的工程和其他STEM学生的成功做好最好的准备。该项目有可能增加获得学位的STEM学生的数量和多样性，并在工程和其他高要求的STEM领域获得未来的就业机会。该项目将与其他机构共享3D模型的设计和相关教材。全国各地的教师将能够将这些工具添加到现有课程中，而无需创建新课程或更改整个课程，从而创建一种简单有效的方法来帮助STEM学生更好地学习。越来越多的研究表明，发展良好的空间技能是表征能力发展的先决条件（即，学科专家能够在适合学习、交流或解决问题的概念的不同表征之间流畅地移动）。此外，众所周知，这些空间技能可以通过有针对性的训练来提高。随着3D打印技术的出现，教师们有了一个强大的工具，可以随时为针对特定学习目标的学习活动开发物理模型。项目团队将开发和评估物理建模活动和支持课程，这些课程专门设计用于发展表征能力。在三年的资助下，该项目提出了三个目标：(1)开发物理模型和相关的学习活动，这些活动嵌入了在静力学和积分学的多个内容领域中培养表征能力的实践；(2)在静力学和积分学的传统课程背景下，评估模型和活动对提高表征能力的有效性；(3)确定建模活动的特征，使其对所有学习者和/或学习者的子群体有效。该项目将为这些班级开发可复制的建模课程，包括一系列活动和模型设计。该项目还将提供一个标题和分类法，用于对基于模型的学习活动的各种属性进行分类，作为将该框架应用于其他学科的案例研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is a collaboration between Whatcom Community College engineering and math faculty and Western Washington University psychology faculty. The project will investigate how to help students develop representational competence, a key skill needed for success in STEM fields. The project will design learning activities connected to physical models created by 3D printers and assess the impact of these activities on student learning. By creating 3D models that students can grasp in the hands, teachers may be able to help students learn key concepts in the classroom. If these 3D models help students gain skills in math and use those skills in other STEM courses, the students may be more likely to succeed and graduate. This project will test this 3D model approach and will help researchers understand how to best prepare engineering and other STEM students from a variety of backgrounds for STEM success. This project has the potential to increase both the number and diversity of STEM students who earn a degree and gain future employment in engineering and other high demand STEM fields. The project will share designs for the 3D models and related teaching material with other institutions. Teachers across the country will be able to add these tools to existing courses without the need to create new courses or change entire programs, creating a simple and efficient way to help STEM students learn better.A growing body of research indicates that well-developed spatial skills are prerequisite to the development of representational competence (i.e. the fluency with which a subject expert can move between different representations of a concept as appropriate for learning, communicating or problem solving). Additionally, it is known that these spatial skills can be improved through targeted training. With the advent of 3D printing technologies, faculty have a powerful tool readily available to develop physical models for learning activities that target specific learning goals. The project team will develop and assess physical modeling activities and supporting curriculum specifically designed to target development of representational competence. With three years of funding, this project proposes three goals: (1) Develop physical models and associated learning activities that embed practices thought to develop representational competence in multiple content areas in Statics and Integral Calculus; (2) Assess the effectiveness of the models and activities on improving representational competence in the context of traditional coursework in Statics and Integral Calculus; and (3) Identify the characteristics of modeling activities that make them effective for all learners and/or subgroups of learners. The project will develop replicable modeling curriculum for these classes with sets of activities and model designs. The project will also make available a rubric and taxonomy to classify various attributes of model-based learning activities, serving as a case study for applying this framework to other disciplines.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.