Supporting Science Learning and Teaching in Middle School Classrooms through Automated Analysis of Students' Writing

这个项目将开发一种新颖的自动化技术，为中学生和他们的老师提供关于学生对物理现象的书面解释的实时反馈。利用证据建立科学解释是产生和学习科学知识的中心做法。学生经常不理解什么是科学解释，经常对科学现象写出不完整的、非因果的描述。老师在帮助学生写讲解时经常遇到困难，因为这很复杂，很耗时。学生们以三人或四人一组的形式工作，并试验设计过山车，学生们将学习物理中的关键原理，如能量守恒以及力和运动的定律。每个学生都将获得一份电子期刊。日志中的提示和信息将组织过山车活动(支持6-8周的指导)，并为学生提供一个记录他们书面想法和解释的地方。在几轮实验和分析结束后，学生们将为他们当前的设计写下因果解释。通过使用WISE人群自动评估系统，学生将收到对他们写作的反馈。(自动WISE人群模型使用专家解释的内容评估作为分析和向学生提供反馈的基础。)教师还将使用系统中的信息来促进全班讨论和个性化支持。项目研究和开发活动将产生一个充分发展和测试的机制，为学生的科学解释提供反馈。通过自动支持跨多个作业的学生写作内容分析，该项目的创新将使教师能够更充分地将写作融入他们的作业中。最终，该项目可以帮助学生理解科学解释是如何发展和合理的，并使他们成为科学知识的更具批判性的消费者，以便他们能够在日常生活中对科学问题做出更明智的决定。该项目将采用以设计为基础的研究方法，利用明智的人群分析来开发自动化系统，并评估该系统对学生学习和教师课堂实践的影响。四个研究问题将指导这项研究：(1)WISE群体系统的反馈如何影响学生对科学现象的书面解释？(2)具有不同先验知识和阅读理解水平的学生如何从自动反馈和教师支架式教学中受益？(3)教师如何在教学过程中使用自动评估和学生解释的汇总？(4)WISE群体系统和教师反馈的脚手架如何支持学生对学习的书面解释？通过这个为期四年的项目，迭代开发过程将包括系统的设计和系统两次迭代的测试；研究学生在过山车设计和书面作业过程中的反应；使用一些经过验证的定制工具来评估学生对关键因素的理解，并评估学生使用数据评估索赔的能力。课堂研究将使用视频数据和研究人员的实地笔记来帮助理解教师如何促进智慧人群系统的使用。研究的最终结果将是测试WISE人群系统的最终版本。采用准实验设计，将班级随机分配到处理或比较条件下。调查结果将促进该领域的知识，了解将自动化系统的内容评估和反馈与教师的课堂和个人支持相结合的最佳方式，以优化学生的学习。该项目产生的材料和结果将被广泛传播，对研究人员和实践者产生重大影响。探索研究预科-12项目(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高预科-12学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)方面的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验上的证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will develop a novel, automated technology to provide middle-school students and their teachers with real-time feedback about students’ written explanations of physics phenomena. The use of evidence to build scientific explanations is a central practice by which scientific knowledge is generated and learned. Students often do not understand what a scientific explanation is and frequently write incomplete, non-causal accounts of scientific phenomenon. Teachers often have difficulties in helping students write explanations, as it is complex and time-consuming. Working in groups of three or four and experimenting with designing a roller coaster, students will learn about key principles in physics such as the conservation of energy and the laws concerning forces and motion. Each student will be provided with a digital journal. The prompts and information in the journal will structure the roller coaster activities (supported 6-8 weeks of instruction) and provide the students with a place to record their written ideas and explanations. At the close of several rounds of experimentation and analysis, students will write causal explanations for their current design. Through the use of the wise crowd automated assessment system, students will receive feedback on their writing. (The automated wise crowd model uses a content assessment of the explanations of experts as the foundation for analyzing and providing feedback to students.) Teachers will also use information from the system to facilitate full class discussions and individualized support. Project research and development activities will result in a fully developed and tested mechanism for providing feedback for students’ science explanations. Through automated support of the content analysis of student writing across multiple assignments, the project innovations will allow teachers to more fully integrate writing into their assignments. Ultimately, the project can help students understand how scientific explanations are developed and justified and make them more critical consumers of scientific knowledge so they can make better informed decisions about scientific issues in everyday life. The project will use a design-based research approach in developing the automated system using wise-crowd analysis and in assessing the impacts of the system on student learning and teacher classroom practices. Four research questions will guide the research: (1) How does feedback from the wise crowd system affect students’ written explanation of scientific phenomenon?; (2) How do students with different levels of prior knowledge and reading comprehension benefit from automated feedback and teacher scaffolding?; (3) How do teachers use automated assessment and aggregated summaries of students’ explanations during instruction?; and (4) In what ways does scaffolding from the wise crowd system and feedback from teachers support students’ written explanations of learning? Through the four-year project, an iterative development process will include the design of the system and testing of two iterations of the system; research of student responses across the progression of roller coaster design and written assignments; and use of some validated and custom instruments to assess student understanding of key forces and assessment of student abilities to use data to evaluate claims. Classroom studies will use video data and researcher field notes to help understand how teachers facilitated the use of the wise-crowd system. Research will culminate in testing of the final version of the wise crowd system. Using a quasi-experimental design, classes will be randomly assigned to the treatment or comparison conditions. Findings will advance knowledge in the field about the best ways to integrate content assessment and feedback from the automated system with classroom and individual support from teachers to optimize learning for students. Materials and results generated from the project will be broadly disseminated, resulting in significant impacts for researchers and practitioners.The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.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.