EXP: Collaborative Research: Empowering Learners to Conduct Experiments

该项目旨在通过改变基本动力学，并将重点放在一个与广大受众相关的科学领域：设计和开展社会和行为科学实验，来改变目前科学研究方法的教学做法。科学探究是推动社会进步和增进我们对世界理解的关键。社会科学和行为科学课程的主要目的是为未来的研究人员做准备，但对学生成为研究的关键消费者的期望最低。了解研究人员使用的科学方法和实验方法对于建立有效评估学生将在媒体和科学渠道中遇到的研究的能力是必要的。如果以探究经验为基础，学生对科学探究的理解会大大增强；然而，由于教学实验设计的挑战以及参与者的获取和招募问题，获得科学研究经验的机会有限，即使是在研究方法课程中也是如此。如果没有这些经验，高等教育中的学生很难充分理解科学探究。为了解决学习如何进行研究的常见障碍，该项目正在设计一个灵活的、基于计算机的平台，以协作、基于叙事、引人入胜并受到建构主义理论的启发，以使用人工智能(AI)支持来促进学习。在这个项目中开发的平台将作为一种新型建构主义研究环境的模型，使学习者能够利用技术来创建、修改和复制实验，招募参与者，并分析他们的结果以了解世界。以设计为基础的研究方法将分两个周期运作；在每个周期中，将部署一个经修订的模块和一套工具。这导致了两个主要的研究贡献：(1)使用混合方法，理论和教育的贡献是研究高等教育中的学生学习进行实验研究的过程，以及关于人工智能辅助、合作、叙事和出于好奇心、探索和反思而开展的活动的作用。(2)技术贡献是一套创新的、人工智能辅助的场景创建工具，使学习者能够创建实验，并允许我们了解智能、协作、引人入胜的、基于叙事的平台如何支持高等教育中的学生设计和进行社会科学和行为科学实验。有了这个系统，与典型的面对面实验室实验中使用的大学生池相比，创建、运行、复制和建立研究并接触到更广泛的受众将更容易。因此，该平台将使改变社会科学研究实践成为可能，甚至有可能促进新的科学发现。

This project seeks to transform current practices in the teaching of scientific research methods by shifting the fundamental dynamics and focusing in a scientific domain that is relatable to a broad audience: designing and conducting social and behavioral science experiments. Scientific inquiry is key to making societal progress and improving our understanding of the world. Social and behavioral science programs are largely designed to prepare future researchers, but have a minimum expectation that students become critical consumers of research. Understanding the scientific method and the experimental methods used by researchers is necessary for establishing an ability to effectively assess the research that students will encounter in both the media and scientific outlets. Student understanding of scientific inquiry is significantly enhanced when anchored in inquiry experiences; however, opportunities for scientific research experiences are limited, even in research methods courses, due to the challenges of teaching experimental design and problems regarding access to and recruitment of participants. Without these experiences, students in higher education struggle to fully understand scientific inquiry. To address common barriers to learning how to conduct research, this project is designing a flexible, computer-based platform to be collaborative, narrative-based, engaging, and inspired by constructionist theories to facilitate learning with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) support. The platform developed in this project will serve as a model of a new genre of constructionist research environments, that enable learners to leverage technologies to create, modify, and replicate experiments, recruit participants, and analyze their results to learn about the world. The design-based research approach will operate in two cycles; in each cycle, a revised module and set of tools will be deployed. This results in two major research contributions: (1) Using mixed-methods, the theoretical and educational contribution is to study the process by which students in higher education learn to conduct experimental research, and about the roles of AI assistance, collaboration, narrative, and activities motivated by curiosity, exploration, and reflection. (2) The technological contribution is an innovative, AI-assisted set of scenario creation tools that empower learners to create experiments and that allow us to understand how an intelligent, collaborative, engaging, narrative-based platform can support students in higher education in designing and conducting social and behavioral science experiments. With this system, it will be easier to create, run, replicate, and build upon studies and to reach out to a broader audience than the pool of university students used in typical in-person laboratory experiments. As a result, the platform will make it possible to transform social science research practices and even has the potential to foster new scientific discoveries.