Learning Science through Collaborative Visualization over the Internet

1. Learning Science through Collaborative Visualization over the Internet Roy Pea Stanford University Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning Nobel Symposium: Virtual Museums 2002

2. Collaborative Visualization • Development of scientific knowledge… • Mediated by using scientific visualization and CSCW tools… • In a collaborative context… • Supported by constructivist pedagogy.

3. What was the CoVis Project? • A wideband network that formed a distributed learning environment for reform-oriented science education by developing a culture of science practice, including: • Integrated suite of tools for network-based project-enhanced science learning • Internet direct to 5-6 desktops per classroom, and all students with individual accounts • Scientific visualization and inquiry tools--focus on earth and atmospheric sciences • Collaborative media spaces: Collaboratory Notebook, communication, and video-conferencing with screen sharing • Project-oriented pedagogy and services • Learning activities/web services for interschool collaborations • Continuing professional development for teachers, with a focus on project-oriented pedagogy • Mentor database services for involving scientists

4. But this was 1992 and there were no web browsers! When the grant proposal was written in 1991, Internet-based videoconferencing was only possible with a $40,000 hardware codec. Scientific visualization was not seen in the K-12 classroom.

5. Learning through Collaborative Visualization The vision was to establish a prototype of a future distributed multimedia learning environment for science that would integrate distributed expertise including educators, learning researchers, scientists at universities, and a science education museum.

6. CoVis Guiding Principles • Learn science by doing science • Invite and nurture open-ended questions • Foster refinements of questions in reflective discussions • Secure respect and value for the diversity of learners’ questions • Provide multiple representations as diverse and flexible means for asking and answering questions • Teach inquiry by modeling inquiry • Support progress in learning by seeding it with the use of powerful ideas • Reflect these principles in the assessment of student activities

7. Use scenario: Global warming studies • First, staging activities guide learning about greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, and variation in seasonal climate patterns using learner-centered scientific visualization tools and the same NASA and NOAA datasets used by the scientific community. • Then, student teams collaborate across schools over the Internet on projects following questions of their interest. • The 8-week cycle ends when they present findings at a global summit where diverse national or ideological perspectives are represented.

8. Distributed Learning Communities

9. Where did we start? With a vision and some partners...

10. Perspective on technologies for learning • Historically, new representational systems provide cognitive power and have social consequences (e.g., writing, algebra, graphing, computer models) • “Distributed intelligence” supports activity in human-technology systems. • “Cognitive” technologies: to see, design, build, what’s more difficult, error-prone, impossible without them. • “Social” technologies: Enable collective activity such as collaborations, cooperations, more difficult without them. • Technologies often change the problems that it is possible to pose, not only to solve • Leads to re-structuring of what it means to know and understand in a discipline (and hence learning)

11. Perspective on science education reform • View of science in terms of “communities of practice,” sharing values and norms, language, tools, practices • “Constructivist” conception of science learning as building on a learner’s prior belief systems • Promoting science learning as “guided inquiry” in practices akin to scientific ones, using similar tools • That science is a social practice is compatible with science being nonetheless about a material world Internet

12. Changing the processes of learning • Beyond traditional distance learning (talking heads) • Goal was to create highly-interactive learning environments that reproduce or exceed face-to-face • Distributed learning communities • Shared media spaces for collaborative learning • Interschool projects mediated by groupware, web-based resources and scientific visualization • Telementoring and teleapprenticeships • Virtual fieldtrips to museums and research labs

13. Components of the CoVis Testbed in 1992-93 • Hybrid high-speed public-access network for data services and desktop videoconferencing • Scientific visualization tools (Climate Visualizer, Weather Visualizer) • Collaboration support (Collaboratory Notebook) • Integrated email, FTP, Gopher • 1993 summer teacher workshop (Internet, project science, visualization, collaboration tools) • Few learning activities (teachers suggested that they would build them around resources and tools)

14. Scientists U. of Illinois Schools Evanston Twp. High School Northwestern The ISDN Internet New Trier High School Museum Exploratorium 1992-94...CoVis Community “Proof of concept”

15. Benefits of Scientific Visualization • Scientific visualization: an image rendered through high-speed computer graphics that is based on a numerical data set that describes some quantity in the world (e.g., global temperatures). • Uses visual reasoning to understand science • Provides “big picture” view of complex systems • Can connect students to scientific communities by allowing access to existing and used data sets • Acts as “conversational props” for learning discussions • Provides resources for inquiries in student projects

16. Scientists’ Visualization Tools

17. From Scientists’ Workbench to Learner-Centered Scientific Visualization Applications (1993) Climate Visualizer NMC Archival data providing twenty-five years of twice daily measurements of temperature, winds, and pressure at several levels of the atmosphere. Coverage over most of the Northern Hemisphere. Weather Visualizer Real time hourly data providing custom weather maps including temperature, dew point, fronts, severe weather warnings and weather station reports. Coverage over contiguous United States and Canada.

18. CoVis Collaboratory Notebook (1993) • ...was a shared, networked hypermedia database • ...was a place where students, teachers, and scientist mentors... • Record thoughts, plans, and actions • Respond to the work of others • Are scaffolded in steps of project inquiry and collaboration • ...in the course of open-ended scientific inquiry

19. What did we learn from practice?

20. First year “testbed woes” (1993) • Learners’ inquiry questions often went beyond available visualization datasets • Learners and teachers needed more support, and scheduled events to motivate scientific visualizer use in projects • Few cross-school project teams emerged • Lack of fit of videoconferencing to common education tasks, despite early teacher excitement • Needed regular access to “Collaboratory Notebook” to warrant integral use in projects • Transitioning to project pedagogy presented many challenges to teachers and learners

21. Redesign Tools and Activities (‘93-94) • Added more learner support in tool and activity “wraparounds” for scientific visualizers • Piloted scheduled on-line events to encourage cross-school projects and pedagogy (CIAs) • Planning for a Greenhouse Effect Visualizer as new domain for inquiry projects • Set-up out-of-classroom computers to increase Internet access for collaboration and communication • To motivate adoption, we tried desktop video for remote classroom support of teachers

22. Observations and CoVis Redesign (‘94-95) • Assessment: Teachers sought project assessment rubrics, and established clearer expectations for students on work process and products • Mentors: More ready access to mentors to help scope student projects, and identify data for investigating students’ questions (explored a mentor database) • Models: More curriculum activities and datasets around which students’ questions could be developed (explore web-based resources and activities) • Domains: New Greenhouse Effect Visualizer into use • Archival global data of monthly means for a year providing surface temperature, incoming sunlight, albedo (reflectivity), energy absorbed and emitted by the earth, and measurement of greenhouse effect

23. New Challenges for Summer 1995 • National Science Foundation asks for national scale-up of CoVis from AAT (‘92-94) to NIE (‘95-97) program • What scaling issues are involved in making CoVis innovations broadly available to many more and far more diverse schools? • What do we find to be needed in software, network, activity design and teacher support? • OR: How does the system of distributed intelligence in support of science learning need to be redesigned to fit these new challenges?

24. Scaleup Changes in CoVis Classrooms (From 1992-94 to 1995-1997) • 2 high schools using 12 computers --> 42 middle and high schools 1000+ computers (56KB to T-1 level Internet connections) • Size and diversity of learner community: 270-->5000 students, 80% white --> 47% white, 34% African American, 14% Latino, 5% Asian • Broader geographic and economic diversity: • Many low-income urban schools, e.g., 11 in Chicago; Jersey City; Patterson • Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, South • Teacher community: from 6 to 100+ teachers, plus 40 tech coordinators, 100’s of scientist telementors

25. Challenges in scaling CoVis (1995-97) • Experimental, hand-supported reforms —> institutionalized, sustainable ones with local ownership • Demonstration activities using new tools —> repeatable, curriculum-based activity structures • Local, informal face-to-face development activities for 6 teachers —> formal workshops, print materials, on-line support of 100 teachers in 13 states working with over 5000 students • CoVis staff technical support for 2 local high schools —> training and remote support of on-site tech personnel for 42 middle and high schools • Proprietary software —> web-based open system standards • Informal use of mentors —> on-line mentor database

26. What did we re-design in response to these challenges? • GeoSciences Web server for guiding new classrooms into the CoVis community • Workshops for teachers and school tech support staff (summer, on-line, targetted face to face) • Web-based software distribution and ongoing teacher support system • Scaled project collaboration support: • Collaboratory Notebook for thousands of users • CU-See Me desktop videoconferencing

27. Design team partners from Northwestern, U.Col., U.Mich., UIUC, U.Chicago, UniData, NCAR (late 1994-early 1995) • Professional development resources on learning perspectives, doing projects, mentoring, visualization, collaboration • CoVis Activities and Projects -- to provide a range of scheduled learning activities from which students can evolve projects, and teachers develop and share new designs • CoVis Resources -- visualization tools and data, Virtual Field Trips, Interactive Weather Briefings • CoVis Teacher Lounge -- information and materials teachers need to conduct project-based science and participate in CoVis, including links to tools, activities, assessment rubrics, mentors, and listservs • CoVis Student Lounge -- information and materials students need to do project-based science and participate in CoVis

28. CoVis Interschool Activities (CIAs) • Scheduled project cycles running 2-5 weeks, with interschool matchmaking brokered by CoVis staff • CIAs provide opportunities for network collaboration, mentoring, Exploratorium Topic-Based Virtual Field Trips. • Land Use Management Planning (2 weeks) • Soil Science (3 weeks) • Weather Prediction, inc. UIUC Interactive Weather Briefings (4 weeks), web-based Weather Visualizer • Global Warming (5 weeks) • Teachers evaluated each CIA after use, and we improved resources and activity support for each next iteration.

29. CoVis-UIUC Weather Visualizerhttp://storm.atmos.uiuc.edu/covis2/visualizer/ ~75,000 Hits Per Day (in 1997)

31. UIUC/CoVis Online Guide to Meteorology http://covis1.atmos.uiuc.edu/guide/guide.html ~70,000 Hits Per Day to Just-in-time Learning Modules (in 1997)

32. Online Guide to Meteorology http://covis1.atmos.uiuc.edu/guide/guide.html

33. The CoVis Greenhouse Effect Visualizer (web-based)

34. Visualization window from ClimateWatcher displaying surface temperature for January 1987

35. Exploratorium ExploraNet (http://www.exploratorium.edu/) ~100,000 Hits Per Day (in 1997)

36. CoVis Mentor Database (verified registry, checkin/out, email router)

37. What changed with CoVis scaling and diversity from 1992-94 to 1995-97? • Mainly integrating technology and social support roles in our redesigns • Transformations in how we viewed our roles: • From central invention, building, guiding => To brokering partners, coordinating events, supporting a decentralized community with diverse needs • From providing teachers with “resources” for project science (tools, datasets) => To providing “reform seeds and services” that vary widely across settings as each teacher “re-invents” the CoVis Project

38. Emerging challenges with scaling in diverse schools (1996-97) • Urban schools set up labs with unpredictable access (to simplify their security needs) • Low levels of tech support,under-budgeted teacher training • Shifting leaders and goals make commitments to project reforms and technology difficult • Gaps between present teaching practice & project-centered learning -- Need on-line and on-site support, models and guidance for doing projects • Urban students had far less home computing experience or access and report less efficacy with computers (compared to their suburban peers)

39. CoVis Teachers Learning Together

40. Some Lessons Learned in the CoVis Project • Innovative computing and communications tools make possible forms of learning and teaching exciting for kids and teachers (real-time data, visualizations, telementoring, virtual field trips, student-scientist partnerships) • Loosely coupled technological tools and activities are insufficient to shape classroom reform and change. What’s better? • Scheduled CoVis Inter-school Activities (CIAs), such as the Global Warming Summit • Teachers are often eager for reform changes in classroom activities, but it is very hard to produce it by themselves -- brokering and coordination are critical roles • Not all tools developed for the office workplace fit well with classroom practices (e.g., videoconferencing)

41. Developments from 1997-2002 • Establishment of NSF Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools and scaling of CoVis throughout urban schools in Chicago and Detroit using new generations of WorldWatcher and curriculum activities

42. LeTUS • Nearly 100 schools throughout the Chicago and Detroit areas are using LeTUS science curricula, including new elaborated versions of the pilot curricula developed in the CoVis Project, and new versions of the WorldWatcher software. • “These city school districts recognize the potential of inquiry-driven, technology-rich science education, and have committed resources to developing the means to support it. They are changing the way science is taught in their schools. And they are paving the way for systemic educational reform.” • LeTUS also emphasizes curriculum implementation and revision, and teacher professional development — Local teachers and university researchers collaborate in the design and revision of curricula so that local teachers become the catalysts for change.

43. WorldWatcher Animation: Incoming solar energy for a year

44. Continuing Challenges for Project-Based Learning Environments • Supporting diversity effectively: Different components of “readiness” for wide-scale technology-supported educational reforms in science instruction • Administrative support for continuing teacher development • Perspective on curriculum, pedagogy, assessment • Technology support for reform pedagogy • Networking and computing infrastructure • Engaging the scientific community in precollege education • Sustainability of tools and services • Issues of access and equity in K-12 technology use, and home-school-community connectivity

45. DISCUSSION