ADVANCED COMPUTING FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

“科学教育之先进计算”计画提出利用并建立最先进的计算技术，以建构一个通用的科学学习环境。该环境将提供强大而独特的计算工具集成，专门针对科学学科学生的需求。它旨在开发一种通用的语言和学习环境，支持学生努力提出和回答广泛的科学兴趣问题，并在模拟环境中进行测试。拟议的工作是创新的，因为它促进了一种学习和科学探究的风格，这在目前基于计算机的科学学习环境中是不存在的。这是通过利用编程语言作为科学论述的载体，利用抽象作为处理复杂性的手段，并结合高质量的图形和动画功能来实现的。它的目的是用一个虚拟实验室来补充完整的科学课程，允许实验，否则可能是不可能的或需要令人望而却步的资源。与传统系统相比，学生的参与并不局限于课程作者事先预期的途径。建议的工作很重要，因为它通过激励和鼓励学生在探索先进科学的重要和有趣的主题时应用他们的知识和发展他们的科学探究技能，解决了科学教育中普遍存在的问题。这项工作假设计算机编程语言作为一种科学话语语言是有用和强大的。这一论断将通过在发育生物学高级课程、大学新生课程和高中生物课程中评估不同师生计算背景情况下环境的有效性来验证。//

The Advanced Computing for Science Education project proposes to utilize and build upon state of the art computing technology to construct a general purpose science learning environment. The environment will provide a powerful and unique integration of computing tools that is specifically targeted to the needs of students in a scientific discipline. It seeks to develop a general language and learning environment that supports student efforts to pose and answer broad classes of questions of scientific interest and to test them in a simulated environment. The proposed work is innovative in that it promotes a style of learning and scientific inquiry that is not available in current computer-based learning environments for science. This is accomplished by utilizing a programming language as a vehicle for scientific discourse, exploiting abstraction as a means of dealing with complexity, and incorporating high quality graphics and animation capabilities. It is intended to supplement a complete science curriculum with a virtual laboratory that allows experimentation which may otherwise be impossible or require prohibitive resources. In contrast to traditional systems, student participation is not limited to avenues that have been anticipated in advance by the author of the lesson. The proposed work is important because it addresses widely perceived problems of science education by motivating and encouraging students to apply their knowledge and develop their skills of scientific inquiry in exploring important and interesting topics of advanced science. This work postulates that a computer programming language is useful and powerful as a language of scientific discourse. This assertion will be tested by evaluating the effectiveness of the environment in situations of varying teacher-student computing backgrounds in an advanced course in developmental biology, freshman college course, and in a high school biology course. //