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

这个项目是由Whatcom社区学院工程和数学系与西华盛顿大学心理学系合作完成的。该项目将调查如何帮助学生发展表征能力，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。通过创建学生可以在手中掌握的3D模型，教师或许能够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最好地让工程学和其他STEM学生为STEM的成功做好准备。该项目有可能增加STEM学生的数量和多样性，这些学生获得学位并在未来获得工程和其他高需求STEM领域的就业机会。该项目将与其他机构共享3D模型和相关教材的设计。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，从而创建了一种简单有效的方式来帮助STEM学生更好地学习。越来越多的研究表明，良好发展的空间技能是发展表征能力(即，学科专家可以在不同概念的不同表征之间流利地移动，以适合学习、交流或解决问题)的先决条件。此外，众所周知，这些空间技能可以通过有针对性的培训来提高。随着3D打印技术的出现，教师们有了一种强大的工具，可以随时为针对特定学习目标的学习活动开发物理模型。项目小组将开发和评估物理建模活动和专门为发展表征能力而设计的辅助课程。通过三年的资助，这个项目提出了三个目标：(1)开发物理模型和相关的学习活动，嵌入实践，以培养静力学和积分学中多个内容领域的表征能力；(2)在传统的静力学和积分学课程背景下，评估模型和活动在提高表征能力方面的有效性；以及(3)确定建模活动的特点，使其对所有学习者和/或学习者小组有效。该项目将为这些班级开发可复制的建模课程，并提供一套活动和模型设计。该项目还将提供一个标准和分类来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 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.