Geoscience Environmental Education - Web-Accssible Instrumented Systems

托格森教育研究支持在课堂上创造一个吸引学生的现实环境的关键重要性。情境学习的理论，锚定教学等教学方法，以及成功的高中，UG地球科学努力，都建议学生参与到将学习置于科学家、政治家和/或公民的真实实践中的“宏观背景”中。这增加了学生发现地球科学知识作为解决自己现实世界中问题的工具的有用性的可能性；也就是说，他们将发现信息的理由并能够将学习从课堂转移到自己的生活中。商业上可用的环境探测器将安装在校园池塘中，清楚地展示(在每日时间尺度上)这些小而普通的池塘中化学/生物/物理的耦合作用。一个涉及大学社区内和周围的水问题的固定问题将作为学生开发、识别和量化这一耦合系统的动态的背景。这个可通过网络访问的数据流(带有科学家日记评论)将作为UG和HS课堂问题/例子的上下文，演示耦合的系统动力学和独立探究，并为本科生荣誉论文创造独特的机会。这样的体验将使学生有机会将这些体验与他们在受控实验室实验中所做的观察联系起来，这些实验量化了离散的过程，并导致对环境系统在更大时间尺度和更大空间尺度上的规模和时间响应的认识。通过使用来自www.mySound.uConn.edu的流数据，比较镜塘到布里奇波特港和长岛湾的过程和时间尺度，将促进知识的转移。项目管理将采取按目标管理的方法。形成性评估依赖的衡量标准将包括目标和时间表的完成情况、在线网站统计数据、教师变量(实施忠诚度)和学生变量(知识、态度和行为，包括兴趣、自我效能和地学内容成就)。形成性评价方法包括教师和学生调查、学生解决问题的情景人工制品、课程成绩、教师访谈和学生访谈。形成性评价将由项目组成员进行，结束性评价将由外部评估员进行。

0002993TorgersenEducational research supports the critical importance of creating a realistic context in the classroom that is engaging to students. Theories of situated learning, instructional approaches such as anchored instruction, and successful high school, UG geoscience efforts, all recommend that students be engaged in a "macro-context" that situates learning in the authentic practices of scientists, politicians, and/or citizens. This increases the probability that students will detect the usefulness of geoscience knowledge as a tool for solving problems in their own real world; that is, they will detect the information's raison d'etre and be able to transfer learning from the classroom to their own lives. In order to 1) provide opportunities to learn, 2) provide the tools to extrapolate from personal experience (the best learning tool) 3) appreciate the scientific/economic couplings and feedback loops that affect their daily lives and 4) appreciate the temporal response of coupled systems, and 5) mindfully engage both undergraduate and high school students in construction of understanding concerning coupled dynamic environments across multiple scales (lab water, pond water, and the waters of Long Island Sound), the PIs will acquire and install an Instrumented Environmental Laboratory (InEnLab) at the University of Connecticut. Commercially available environmental probes will be installed in campus ponds that clearly demonstrate (on a daily timescale) the coupled interactions of chem./bio/phys within these small, commonplace ponds. The data streams (T, cond., O2, pH, etc., every 15 minutes) from these in situ probes will be directly connected to the Internet and available in real time through (e.g., www.myPond.uconn.edu) modeled after an existing www.mySound.uconn.edu . An anchored problem involving water issues in and around the University community will serve as a context for students to develop, identify and quantify the dynamics of this coupled system. This web-accessible data stream (with scientist diary comments) will then serve as a context for UG and HS classroom problems/examples, demonstrations of coupled system dynamics and independent inquiry as well as create unique opportunities for undergraduate honors theses. Such experiences will afford students an opportunity to inter-relate these experiences with observations they make during controlled laboratory experiments that quantify discrete processes and lead to an appreciation of the magnitude and temporal response of environmental systems over larger time scales and larger space scales. Transfer of knowledge will be stimulated by comparison of the processes and time scales in Mirror Pond to Bridgeport Harbor and Long Island Sound using streamed data from www.mySound.uconn.edu. Project management will take a management-by-objectives approach. Formative evaluation dependent measures will include completion of objectives and timelines, online website statistics, instructor variables (implementation fidelity) and student variables (knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors including interest, self-efficacy, and geoscience content achievement). Formative evaluation methods will include teacher and student surveys, artifacts of student problem solving on the scenario, course grades, teacher interviews and student interviews. The formative evaluation will be conducted by project team members and the summative by an external evaluator.