Foundations
of Science: Using Technology to Support Authentic Science Learning
Amanda Pryor, Elliot Soloway, and
the Hi-C Research Group
University og Michigan
1101 Beal Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2110
REINVENTING THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
Public education must undergo a drastic revision to adequately prepare
students for the twenty-first century. Technology is a key component for
integrating these revisions into a high school curriculum. Foundations of
Science at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a three-year,
project-based, integrated science curriculum which uses technology on a daily
basis to support students as they engage in authentic science inquiry.
In the traditional science classroom, only a portion of students walk away
with a genuine understanding of the material, and even fewer are able to apply
the concepts they have learned to events in their own lives. Foundations of
Science (FOS) has been developed in a cooperative effort between the University
of Michigan and the Ann Arbor public schools to allow all high school
students to develop a deep understanding and appreciation of science and
technology, and to help them develop into responsible, scientifically-aware
members of the community. The program integrates the traditional sequence of
earth science, biology, and chemistry into a three-year, project-based course
focusing on authentic science investigations. Authentic science means that
students use the methods and tools of real scientists to examine real-life
phenomena that have an impact on their lives and on their community.
Figure 1: Students at work in the Foundations of Science classroom.
Three science teachers at Community High School had gotten tired of trying
to explain to their students why it was important to learn outdated concepts
through outdated methods. With the traditional curriculum that they were
expected to follow, it was difficult to convey the relevance of science to
students' everyday lives. They were ready for a change.
“Students often asked us, `Why do we have to learn this?' `What good is this
going to do me?'” FOS teacher Madeline Huebel-Drake explains. “Our problem was
that we had run out of good answers because we were asking ourselves the same
questions. The traditional curriculum was not meeting the needs of our
students.”
The Community High School teachers--Madeline Huebel-Drake, Mike Mouradian,
and Liz Stern--joined forces with professors at the University of Michigan to
put together a new curriculum which would instill in students a genuine
understanding of science and its relevance to their lives, as well as train
them in the methods of the twenty-first century workplace. Professors Liza
Finkel and Joe Krajcik brought Project-Based Science to the mixture, and
Professor Elliot Soloway brought the innovative technologies of his Hi-C
(Highly Interactive Computing) Research Group. Together they formed Foundations
of Science .
In developing the Foundations of Science program, current opinions on the
teaching of science were researched (such as Project 2061, Benchmarks for
Science Literacy, A Nation at Risk, John Goodlad, Michigan Essential Goals and
Objectives for Science Education). Some common themes that emerge are that
traditional science curriculums fail to engage students in thinking for
themselves, do not foster students' ability to communicate ideas through
writing and speaking, and have little relevance to students' lives. These
problems can only be resolved in a learning situation where students are
the ones who are talking, writing, exploring, evaluating, and making decisions.
AUTHENTIC LEARNING
It is only through authentic science investigations that students will claim
ownership of the material, and gain a genuine understanding which will allow
them to apply the concepts learned in the classroom to their lives outside of
school. Authentic
science projects allow students to attain a true sense of discovery, in that
they are researching real-world problems with no pre-defined answers. The
projects have personal meaning for the students, so that they become genuinely
engaged in the topics which they are investigating. According to Ron Marx, a
University of Michigan Professor and parent of an FOS student, authentic
science gets students “much more involved in learning interesting things rather
than trying to memorize material that is of little interest to them and,
frankly, of little interest to most people in the world.”
High school students lack the resources and training necessary to conduct
authentic research on their own. Professional scientists spend years studying
the methods of scientific inquiry; in order to attain a genuine understanding
of the content in their science courses, students need to be using these
methods now. The technology embedded in the FOS classroom mediates the
scientific inquiry activities in which the students participate, allowing them
to begin to understand scientific phenomena without being intimidated by the
processes behind it. Technological resources such as the Internet provide
students with a forum in which to discuss scientific research, as well as a
database in which to search for information.
Figure 2: FOS students search the Internet for information related to their
project.
Students in FOS work in groups, on projects that incorporate many different
facets of science. For example, a project focusing on stream water quality had
students collecting biological organism data from the stream, performing
chemical tests on water samples, and doing physical assessments of the soil,
vegetation, and topology near the stream. Process skills included observation
and analysis of data, graphing, as well as continued enhancement of computer
and writing skills. Students were able to carry out the research from beginning
to end by themselves through the use of technology such as MBL
(microcomputer-based laboratory) probes and hand-held Apple Newton computers.
Figure 3. Two students perform chemical tests on water collected at the AATA
pond, assisted by their teacher, Elizabeth Stern.
When students are involved in authentic science research, understanding the
content is a necessary part of the scientific process rather than the end goal;
they must master the content in order to solve the problem at hand. Rather than
seeing science as a set of definitions and facts to be memorized, Foundations
of Science students have come to see science as a way to understand, and to
take action in, their everyday world. As one student comments, “In Foundations,
I can actually see how `science' affects my life, and how all the little bits
and pieces of things I've learned actually fit together.”
Students in FOS learn how to actually do things rather than simply
memorizing isolated factual material. Students seek out information as they
need it, from sources on the Internet, as well as on the videos, laser discs,
and CD-ROMs provided in the classroom. As one student notes, “For once I seem
to be actually teaching myself something instead of being fed information.”
Another student comments: “We actually can see and touch everything we do, we
don't have to memorize charts and recite theorems and laws, we actually see
what they are.” And yet another student: “Actually figuring things out for
yourself really helps you learn.”
Students learn to convey their understanding of the material under
investigation through presentations made to their peers, as well as to members
of the community at large. Students are allowed to express this understanding
in more than just the traditional paper-report format. Students are encouraged
to incorporate movies, sound, and pictures into their presentations. Many
students choose to create HyperCard stacks which contain original movies or
slideshows with songs of favorite musicians playing in the background.
Multimedia tools allow students who have trouble with, or are bored by, basic
written reports to explore different ways to express their level of
understanding. This form of presentation allows students to make the knowledge
their own, and to present it in a way that demonstrates their understanding and
expertise.
“I used to find science quite boring,” one FOS student admits. “Now, not
only am I enjoying science more, I find I'm thinking about it a lot more. The
computers have opened up a lot more educational opportunities for me. I find
I'm learning science, not just facts I have to memorize for some quiz.”
LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL INTERVENTION
The goal of teaching science is to enable students to use the knowledge that
they generate, from informed community debate, to being able to find and
implement solutions to local problems. Foundations of Science fosters students'
natural curiosity, and directs that towards scientific inquiry. Through dealing
with real-world environmental problems such as local water quality, students
learn to become functioning members of the scientific community, as well as socially
responsible citizens. The most extensive project that the FOS students have
worked on is monitoring the water quality of Traver Creek, a tributary of the
Huron River which is within walking distance of the school. The first tests and
assessments were performed in the very first year of FOS, and students have
continued to monitor the stream water quality in the Fall and Spring of every
year.
The Traver Creek project, unlike the ready-made experiments designed to
accompany a specific textbook chapter, allows students to conduct original
research while investigating a problem which is relevant to their lives, and to
the life of their community. Students become deeply engaged in their project
when they realize that it has real-world importance. As one student commented:
“Our work did more than just be graded--it made a difference.”
Figure 4: A screen shot of one card of a HyperCard stack created by a group
of FOS students. This card is one of a series of ten that describe how the
movement of glaciers created the geological formations we see in Ann Arbor
today; the section on glaciers is just one of four sections which detail the
various geological aspects of a park in Ann Arbor. This HyperCard stack
incorporates sound, music, text, graphics, Quick-Time movies, and a 3-D virtual
walk-through of the park.
At the completion of the first year of water quality tests, students
presented their findings to the Huron River Watershed Council for inclusion in
their report to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. This presentation
has been broadcast repeatedly on Ann Arbor's local Community Television Network
(CTN). Students also published their written reports on the Internet. These can
be viewed at:
http://chs-web.neb.net/classes/foundations/Found_work.html
After hearing of the water quality testing which FOS students were involved
in, the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) requested the help of FOS
students in assessing the water quality of a drainage pond outside of their
headquarters. The AATA was interested in turning the land around the pond into
a recreation area for its employees, and was concerned that the pond had an
unpleasant odor. Students performed water quality tests on May 31, 1995 and
then submitted a proposal to the AATA on their findings and their
recommendations for improving the quality of water in the pond. Based on the
recommendations of the FOS students, a variety of plants were selected and
planted in the pond on June 30. Students returned to the pond this fall to
perform the tests again, and are currently assessing what effects their changes
have had on the pond water quality.
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
In order for science education to progress beyond the methodology of the
nineteenth century, we must integrate technology into the classroom. It is only
through the use of technology that education will progress into the needs of
the twenty-first century workplace. Technology must be combined with a new
curriculum which allows students to see the relationships between the various
educational disciplines, so that they themselves will be able to integrate
their knowledge and be able to think and act as responsible citizens. Students
must come to understand the basics of science and scientific method enough to
be flexible in the way they approach new problems, so that in the future they
can apply their knowledge to situations they may not have faced in the
classroom.
Technology allows students to seek out answers themselves, instead of
running to the teacher each time they don't understand something, or
worse--passively sitting by as the teacher tells them everything they need to
know. Students learn to think for themselves and discover answers on their own,
with the aid of technology such as CD-ROMs, laser discs, and the many resources
available on the Internet. Students also learn to support each other,
facilitated by the technology, so that together they form a knowledge building,
and knowledge using community of their own within the classroom.
Students in the Foundations of Science program are no longer sitting with
their hands quietly folded listening to a teacher drone on and on; rather, they
are active in the classroom, in their homes, in the field, studying important
issues such as local water quality, and developing scientifically-rich
understandings of biology, chemistry, and earth science. The FOS teachers, the
faculty and students from the University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Public
Schools administration, and the FOS students and their parents are constantly
working together to rethink their goals and tasks. Through Foundations of
Science and ScienceWare we have created and are sustaining an educational
innovation that is serving our students well.
Last year, the students in Foundations of Science and the students in a
traditional biology course were administered the same test. Although they had
covered the same material, the students in the Biology class were given
lectures, while students in FOS worked on projects. The FOS students
demonstrated their deeper knowledge of the material by performing equally well
on the multiple choice questions, and creating essays which were far more
sophisticated with regard to interpreting data and reaching conclusions than
those of students in the regular Biology class. As Madeline Drake comments:
“Essentially what happened was the kids in FOS were able to intelligently
discuss and analyze the sample data given to them on the test. It illustrated a
greater depth of understanding because of the amount of time spent on what the
various pieces of data mean. You can never spend a long time on anything in a
content driven Biology class because you have too much you have to cover; it's
very superficial.”
Not only does the Foundations of Science format allow for a deeper
understanding of science content, but it also provides a environment in which all
students can learn. “Hands-on activities teach everyone the same things,” says
an FOS student, “whereas memorizing facts from a book doesn't work for about
half the people in this class.”
Throughout all the hands-on activities in the FOS classroom, students attain
an understanding of science and scientific methods which would be impossible in
a traditional classroom setting. Students in Foundations of Science gain a new
appreciation for science which they might not have had without moving beyond
the dry lectures and textbooks chapters into the realm of hands-on scientific
inquiry. “There's a new level of cooperation,” comments Madeline Huebel-Drake,
“students who apparently didn't like what they were doing, didn't like science,
are now very interested in it.”
In Foundations of Science, skills such as creative thinking and
decision-making are developed, and students learn to work together to determine
the problems and possible solutions in the questions under investigation.
Students learn the importance of being responsible citizens as they examine the
effects that irresponsible behavior have had on their local environment.
Through the study of the water quality at Traver Creek and the AATA pond,
students have become involved with such community organizations as the Huron
River Watershed Council, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and the
Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. But students in Foundations of Science are
not only attaining invaluable experience in real-life science, they are also
using the tools and the methods that will prepare them for the twenty-first
century workplace.
SIDEBAR:
Scienceware: Technological Tools For Authentic Science Inquiry
Authentic science inquiry is an essential component of the Foundations of
Science (FOS) classroom. However, the complexity of the tools and procedures
used by professional scientists would overwhelm most high school students.
Technology has given us the ability to create software tools that support high
school students as they conduct authentic research. We have provided FOS
students with portable computers, and have designed a suite of educational
software tools to support them in all aspects of their investigations,
including project planning, data gathering and analysis, visualizing and
modeling data sets, creating multimedia presentations, and publishing research
findings on the Internet. This software--ScienceWare--provides FOS students
with the scaffolding necessary to engage in complex tasks as their skills and
understanding progress to higher and higher levels of expertise.
The ScienceWare suite currently includes: PlanIt Out, a collaborative
project planning and organizational tool; NIMBLE, a data collection tool which
allows water quality data to be collected directly from water to computer via
Apple Newtons and various probes; RiverBank, a database for water quality
monitoring; Viz-It, a data visualization tool; the Classifier, a tool for building classification
trees; Model-It, a tool for creating models and simulations of dynamic systems;
RiverMUD, a virtual community centered around scientific modeling; Media Genie,
a tool to assist in incorporating sound, pictures, movies, and hypertext links
into a HyperCard stack; and Web-It, a tool that translates ClarisWorks
documents directly into HTML for publication on the World Wide Web. Model-It is
perhaps the most unusual of all these tools, in that it allows high school
students to create models of dynamic systems by themselves and without
limitation. Dynamic modeling is an activity which high school students rarely
have the chance to see, let alone participate in themselves. Model-It makes
dynamic modeling accessible to students without the need for advanced
mathematical training.
Through modeling, students learn to analyze complex systems, reason about
causes and effects, and understand the scientific content under investigation.
Using Model-It, students can take the ideas they already have about how
relationships between different objects and factors work, and realize them as a
complex dynamic system. Students are then able to run a simulation to see if
the model they have constructed runs according to their original ideas.
Constructing dynamic models can help students understand complex phenomena as
interconnected systems and develop an understanding of how scientists use
models to test and revise hypotheses. Model-It is a prime example of how
ScienceWare brings the tools and methods of professional scientists into the
realm of understanding of high school students.
Figure 5. The Simulation Window of Model-It displays the system under
investigation. In this example, the ecosystem of Traver Creek has been modeled.
To build a model, students create objects, such as the stream itself, people
living near the stream, organisms living in the stream, weather, and a
drainpipe flowing into the stream. Students then define factors for each object
(e.g., rainfall is a factor for weather, and toxins are a factor for the
drainpipe). Students use the Relationship Maker (Figure 6) to define how the
various factors of each object in the system affect one another. After all the
objects and factors have been defined, students can run a simulation, and
monitor the changes that occur over time using the simulation graph. Students
can also manipulate the levels of each factor (e.g., rainfall, as shown here)
by using the meters that are available for each factor.
Figure 6. The Model-It Relationship Maker gives students two options for
creating a relationship between factors. The text view, as seen here, enables
students to define relationships in such simple terms as “increases about the
same”. This way, students do not have to have an advanced knowledge of
mathematics in order to create the relationship they have in mind. A table view
is also available, so that students can enter in the actual numbers they would
expect to see.
ScienceWare enables students to use and understand scientific methods, but
other technological resources are available to assist students in their
research . The FOS classrooms are wired with Ethernet capability, and have
access to the Internet via ISDN lines to the University of Michigan. Internet
browsers such as Netscape guide students through the many resources on the
World Wide Web, and e-mail readers such as Eudora allow students to communicate
with each other and with other students and researchers around the world. FOS
students have access to an extensive library of videos, laser discs, and
CD-ROMs as additional resources, and to HyperCard and ClarisWorks for creating
reports and presentations.
The use of technology in the classroom forwards our goal of allowing
students to conduct authentic science inquiry on their own, but it also
immerses students in the tools and methods of the twenty-first century
workplace. As one student comments: “You hardly ever find a business without a
computer in it somewhere. These integrations of sciences and computers help the
students like me in this class to be more prepared for the future. It helps to
give us a head start on the skills we will need in the real world.” Students
are also provided with such supportive technologies as video and sound
digitizers, video microscopes, and still and motion pictures cameras. In the
words of FOS teacher Mike Mouradian, these students “use the tools that are
appropriate today rather that the tools that were appropriate fifty years ago.”
How do students feel about all the technology? One student extols the value
of the communications capabilities the computer provides: “The computer means I
have access to millions of people and things and resources in general for help
when I'm doing a project.” Another student comments: “The computers were a big
part in helping us learn in this class. The computers let us use high-tech
technology to put our projects together. We learned a lot about computers and I
think that learning about computers is learning science.”