John Bransford - US grants

The specific aims of this project are 1) to assess whether learning to program computers can promote the development of thinking and learning skills, and 2) to refine a theoretical framework that relates types of learning activities to the development and transfer of general cognitive skills. The general design involves comparisons between children who have received extensive training in learning to program computers using Logo with children who receive no computer training. A variety of learning situations and subject variables will be manipulated including: 1) type of learning situation (open versus structured), 2) extent of mediation provided by instructor, 3) degree of peer interaction in the learning situation, and 4) the level of previous academic success of the learners. The effects of these variables on learning and development of generalizable cognitive skills will be measured both by 1) assessments of acquired skills in programming per se as well as tests of developed general cognitive skills including measures of transfer to novel learning, problem solving situations. In addition to meeting the specific aims listed previously, this research will provide important data concerning possible strategies for intervention for remediation of learning deficiencies and will provide information concerning the possible prerequisites for development of computer literacy and factors which can affect this development.

Our objective is to develop, evaluate, and disseminate a video-based problem solving series that generates excitement about mathematics and science among middle school students (grades 5,6,7) and that helps them develop powerful skills of mathematical problem formulation and problem solving. The series will consist of (1) six problem solving videos that cover the key mathematical concepts and activities recommended for middle school mathematics in the NCTM curriculum standards (1989); (2) ancillary materials in the form of print, Hypermedia and computer tools that help students carry their mathematical thinking to other parts of the curriculum such as science and social studies; (3) teaching videos plus text materials for teachers. The series will be based on a theoretically and empirically motivated set of design principles that help teachers engage in the types of classroom activities that are recommended in the NCTM curriculum standards. Several of these design principles are unique to our proposed series and appear to be extremely important for enhancing motivation among students and developing powerful skills of complex problem formulation and problem solving. We have already produced two problem solving videos that serve as pilots for the series (one is included with this application) and are currently producing a teaching video plus ancillary materials to accompany the pilots. We are asking the NSF for help in producing the four additional problem solving videos (plus ancillary materials) plus the two additional teaching videos. We discuss the anticipated impact of our series, our previous track record and our plans for quality control, cost-sharing and dissemination.

The goal of this project is to produce six additional Jasper adventures plus video extensions for each adventure, and relevant print and professional development teacher materials. Included with each Jasper adventure will be an optional piece of software, called the Adventure Maker, that will allow students to create their own adventures. In addition, the adventures and materials will be field tested in sites across the country. This series, as with the previous series, will be designed to be implemented at various levels of hardware. It is designed to be used in conjunction with videodisc technology. The simplest level of technology is with a videodisc player and a hand-held remote; the second level is to use a videodisc player with barcode; the third level involves computer based control of the videodisc with hypercard stacks and computational and graphic tools. The project has an extensive research component which includes an analysis of the reactions to Jasper characters and adventures, an assessment of teachers' ideas for implementation, expanded assessments of student learning, studies of the value-added of Jasper software, and research on the Adventure Maker.

9873520
Bransford

This project combines insights from recent work in computer science, psychology and education to create and study "teachable agent" (TA) environments in mathematics and science that are motivating to students, intuitive to teachers and parents, and lead to high degrees of student learning. The hallmark of these environments is that students learn by instructing "teachable agents" who then venture forth in simulation-based exploratory environments and attempt to solve problems that require knowledge relevant to the disciplines of mathematics or science. If the agents have been taught properly they solve the problems; otherwise they need to be educated further. The simulation-based environments are carefully designed to focus attention on important concepts in science and mathematics, and to make explicit the errors that occur during problem solving. Students "scout" the problem solving requirements of various environments before attempting to teach their agents. Additional help and coaching agents are available to point students in the right direction when they make errors or produce sub-optimal solutions. The focus of the TA environments is on learning standards-based content in science and mathematics, not on learning to program.

One key issue to be studied is how student learning is affected by opportunities to teach agents to prepare for particular sets of challenges. Also to be studied is how learning is influenced by the design of systems that vary in the degree to which they let students (a) "scout" to find problems that arise in the agents' environments; (b) teach the agents with different representations and techniques; (c) measure the successfulness of their teaching by placing their agents in mini-assessment environments prior to engaging them in full-blown "challenge environments"; (d) receive different degrees and forms of feedback when their agents encounter difficulties; and (e) educate the personality, as well as the knowledge variables, relevant to learning, problem solving and collaboration.

The project requires contributions from, and has important implications for, at least three disciplines: computer science, psychology, and education. The project has the potential to create new forms of assessment, and to transform popular video technologies into environments that help students learn important content. The quality and impact of the project will be enhanced through its association with the NSF-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT), whose mission is to foster collaboration among members of the education and technology community.

This project explores how a cognitive-representational approach to early reading can lead to new and efficient instruction that will impact learning across the curriculum. The research questions addressed are:

Which design principles are most important for a balanced approach to literacy instruction that uses multimedia environments for integrated, efficient instruction of decoding and word recognition skills?

Will design principles suggested by research help teachers better understand and integrate decoding skills into their classroom literacy environments?

Can a combination of video and print materials linked to multimedia environments be effective tools for improving children's home environments and parental support for early reading instruction?

The project will investigate these questions by developing an understanding of design principles for children's word recognition fluency and decoding skills using current cognitive theories of mental representations of language. Within-subject designs will be used to see how different variations of prototype software affect children's word recognition fluency and decoding skills. These initial studies will also include between-subject controls that use no software. At-home reading of both decodable text and rich, high-quality children's literature will be linked to the content and structure of the decoding and word recognition software. This at-home reading will be supported by video exemplars. The children with at-home access to these materials and the software in school will be compared with those children with just the software at school. Additionally, software based on recent cognitive theories will be compared to commercially available software designed to aid children in developing decoding skills by comparing the reading development of children using research software vs. commercially available software.

It is a common intuition that one of the best ways to learn something is to attempt to teach it to others. The research project is testing this intuition and its usefulness for educational practice. Central to the work are web-based "teachable agents" that students teach as a way to learn themselves and that permit studies of the active ingredients of learning by teaching. The project will use the agents to help students learn science and mathematics content and help teachers learn content-specific pedagogy. The intellectual merit of the work is that the agents provide a method for developing and testing a learning theory that helps explain the motivational and cognitive benefits of learning by teaching. By manipulating a teachable agent's available features and use (something that is hard to do with actual pupils), it is possible to experimentally isolate different components of the learning by teaching interaction. A primary measure used to evaluate whether students learn by teaching includes assessments of students' abilities to subsequently learn from resources once they have completed their teaching activities. The broader impacts include a new way of helping teachers understand the learning of their students, and the development of easily distributed, software that embodies new learning principles so that others in schools and industry can learn from those artifacts and create new ones of their own.

LIFE abstract

The purpose of the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center it to understand and advance human learning through a simultaneous focus on implicit, informal, and formal learning, thereby cultivating generalizable interdisciplinary theories that guide the design of effective new learning technologies and environments. The investigators argue that, given the complexity of learning phenomena and the disparate levels of analysis that can be used to study learning, a transformed science of learning will not come about by proceeding with "research as usual." Their plan is to bring experts together from research traditions that have tended to work separately rather than collaboratively. The expertise in the Center spans neurobiological, psychological, and social/cultural approaches as well as pioneering work in augmenting human learning through innovative technology and new media tools. The investigators hope to encourage productive conceptual collisions by deliberately juxtaposing the different traditions' prevailing assumptions, theories, and methodologies. These collisions are designed to spark efforts toward creating a coherent, integrated perspective that is theoretically sound and has clear and far-reaching implications for improving people's abilities to learn.

A central premise of the LIFE Center is that successful efforts to understand and propel learning require a simultaneous emphasis on informal and formal (e.g., K-16) learning environments, and on the implicit ways in which people learn. The basic research will be conducted through three intersecting and multidisciplinary strands of inquiry. The first strand, Implicit Learning and the Brain, will document learning in the brain over the lifespan and discover from empirical and modeling work the underlying neural processes and principles associated with implicit forms of learning in the domains of cognitive, linguistic, and social learning. The second strand, Informal Learning, will conduct studies of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math learning in informal settings to develop comprehensive and coordinated accounts of the cognitive, social, affective, and cultural dimensions that propel learning and development outside of school. The third strand, Designs for Formal Learning and Beyond, will conduct experimental studies of theory-based principles for the design of high-quality learning environments. A major focus of the cognitive component of the strand will involve theories and measures of transfer -- the ability to enter an unanticipated setting with the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to make sense of the structure of a problem, to locate and use relevant resources, and to reflect on one's efforts so as to learn to "work smarter." The investigators also propose to initiate a line of technology projects that would proceed in concert with the theoretical work on transfer. This strand will place special emphasis on studying powerful roles for new technologies.

There is a great deal of interest in using new technologies to help developing nations improve the quality of lives of their citizens. Yet without a careful analysis of existing social and cultural norms and infrastructures, there is a great danger that technology-based "solutions" will fail. This grant will fund a collaboration between technologists, educators, and learning scientists in India and the US to design, implement and evaluate distance learning systems that help resource-starved village primary schools in rural villages to benefit from the better human and content resources available in urban environments. The basis of the project is a combination of YouTube, NetFlix, and file sharing: excellent teachers are videotaped in the classroom demonstrating good pedagogy teaching the same subject matter as is taught in village schools, these video clips will be automatically assembled and distributed using DVDs and the postal system to village schools, where the videos are used for on-site teacher training and mediated instruction by the local teacher.

Over a billion people on the planet are illiterate, in large part due to the lack of trained teachers in rural villages where most children in poverty live. Finding trained teachers for primary school education is nearly impossible in rural areas, despite these skills being essential for upward mobility in today's economy. Of course, distance education is nowhere near as good as a qualified teacher at the primary school level, at least with current technologies, but many students don't have that luxury. The goal of this project to improve the existing educational baseline in a cost-effective way, using solutions that can be scaled to match the scope of the problem.

ABSTRACT

Proposal number: 0850774
PI: John Bransford
Title: 2009 Inter-Science of Learning Centers (iSLC) Conference

The 2009 Inter-Science of Learning Centers (iSLC) Conference is the second annual conference for students and postdoctoral fellows from the six NSF Science of Learning Centers (SLCs). This is a venue for participants to meet at one of the SLCs on a rotating basis, to discuss common research interests, methodologies, challenges and career development. The goals are to facilitate information exchange, collaborative synergies and sharing of resources (people, ideas and tools) between the centers. The 2009 meeting will be hosted by the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center at the University of Washington, and attended by approximately 90 students and postdoctoral fellows. This annual iSLC Conference is a step towards breaking down disciplinary barriers and creating a common framework for the scientific study of learning.

An ongoing partnership between learning scientists and science educators from the University of Washington and school district leaders from Bellevue School District along with curriculum specialists and teachers is conducting research and development on a new science learning environment. Previously researchers in the College of Education and at the LIFE Center at the University of Washington have developed two fifth grade science modules used in the school district. One takes a socio-cognitive approach, leveraging authentic science practices and questions, student choice, and communication of ideas into a challenge-based design. The other takes a socio-cultural perspective, aiming to bridge informal and formal learning environments by leveraging into formal science curricula students' culturally based repertoires of practice to try out and revise their own ideas based on evidence and discussion. This research and development project develops and tests in the classroom two fifth- grade and two second-grade biological science units that combine both perspectives in order to more fully engage both students and teachers in authentic inquiry and tests the units in second- and fifth- grade classrooms.

The research focuses on how the new learning designs affect learners' a) concepts of science and scientific inquiry; b) ability to collaborate productively; c) engagement, interest and science self efficacy; and d) sense of classroom community. The results are compared to matched control groups using FOSS units in the same subject area. The project also studies the extent to which the design principles and outcomes are generalizable across and within branches of science and are developmentally appropriate. The theoretical frameworks, curriculum resources and embedded professional development opportunities needed for sustainability and continuous improvement are investigated. The external evaluator assesses the quality of the research design and instruments as well as the quality of the science modules developed. An Advisory Committee monitors the work.

This project focuses on several ways of creating learning experiences that provide agency for elementary school students and excite them to pursue STEM pathways. Opportunities are provided to more fully explore the importance of connecting formal and informal learning experiences in ways that greatly boost the potencies of each. The project has the potential to create alternative learning designs to the kit-based science materials that are pervasive in elementary science classrooms.

The Making Connections (MC) study is a time-sensitive research project that is built around a unique event that will be occurring in the summer of 2010, the removal of two enormous dams on Elwha tribal lands and affecting Olympic National Park in Washington State. This is the largest dam removal project in the world, and the removal of the dams will have an enormous effect on the river environment in that area. Effects are expected to be positive and include the restoration of salmon breeding grounds. This will significantly alter the immediate environment of people living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, including the indigenous people living on tribal lands who will have the natural habitat restored. This study will use the dam removal project to connect 7th and 8th grade students (including indigenous students) with the relevant science and mathematics knowledge and skills to make sense of its environmental impact, and to more fully understand and participate in important scientific and community activities. In order to do this, first, specialized curriculum materials will be developed that teach important knowledge and skills that can be used to understand the dam removal process and its effects on the environment, and to study it first-hand in the field. The PIs will work with teachers collegially to implement this curriculum. Next, students and teachers will collect baseline data at the dam sites and areas below, allowing them to document and better understand the changes that will occur as the dams are removed, and afterwards as the river system slowly restores itself. Students will use video to document some of these features, creating the potential for dramatic before and after video evidence. Finally, during the summer, the students once again will return to dam sites as they are taken down, brick by brick. Honors students from the University of Washington will help mentor middle school students in the field. In addition, videographers from the University of Washington will collect video/ethnographic data on the students interacting with the environment, making predictions, collecting data, and making connections between their knowledge of science and colossal impact that this environmental event is having on the ecosystem and on the community. The study includes measures of blended formal/informal learning with the aid of pre- and posttests, progressive self-assessments, and ethnographic methods. The eventual goal is to prepare for a follow-on study that involves students after the dams are removed, as they participate as docents who can explain what has occurred to visitors to the National Park.

This study is important because it takes advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime environmental event as the platform for teaching and learning about science and mathematics. Students participating in this study are expected to engage in the actual practice of science in a way that blends informal and formal science education. The overall goal is to develop student expertise in areas of science education stemming from the restoration of the river watershed. Students will learn and apply scientific principles as they learn to develop videographer and museum-like docent skills and, in so doing, capture and process valuable footage of the present (pre-dam-removal) landscape. The study integrates formal classroom learning with informal experiential learning by first, engaging students in the restoration of their community landscape, and thereafter, in their telling of this story to peers and to the outside world. The study would provide mediation, tools and artifacts to help learners notice key dimensions of their experiences and demonstrate linkages to other aspects of their culture and lives. The project will partner with The National Park Service (NPS)to develop visitor activities for the site so that others can learn about myriad geo-scientific and social issues involved in dam removal and habitat restoration.

Proposal NSF 0835854: The LIFE Center
ABSTRACT

This is a proposal to renew the LIFE Center, situated at the University of Washington in Seattle, a multi-university, multi-year, interdisciplinary project devoted to the study of social factors in learning, an underappreciated element of the science of learning. Now concluding its 5th year of support, the center proposes to continue its efforts "to develop and test principles about the social foundations of human learning in informal and formal environments, including how people learn to innovate in contemporary society, with the goal of enhancing human learning from infancy to adulthood."

Among the research projects to be pursued during the next phase of investigation are (1) social factors in language learning--especially in infants, (2) new designs to enhance learning via media and technology by identifying and utilizing social interaction and "social belief", the perception that one is interacting with a human being, whether or not this is true, (3) effects on learning of social identity and stereotyping, (4) social practices in science learning, including an anthropological study of informal science learning in social settings, (5) new views of and efforts to enhance expertise, transfer and assessment, (6) social practices in the workplace that foster learning, and (7) the importance of informal teaching by parents, peers and mentors.

In addition to demonstrating strong effects of social factors on learning, the researchers in LIFE will pursue answers to the overall theoretical question: "What is it about the social that powerfully enhances learning?"

More than just a research center, LIFE participants are also committed to the education of undergraduates, graduate students and post-docs; to increasing diversity among faculty, students and future scientists; and to the transfer of research results to practice in education and workplaces.

PROJECT SUMMARY
Science in Action: Understanding and Sustaining Student Engagement in Environmental Science in Urban, Poverty-Impacted Schools is a proposal to the Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) program to study how domain knowledge, literacy, and the social context of classrooms and schools afford and constrain student engagement and learning in a project-based environmental science course in urban, poverty-impacted high schools. The course concerned, Project-Based Learning Advanced Placement Environmental Science (PBL-APES), was co-designed with a suburban school district. The investigators propose in this (2.5 year, medium empirical) project to study the migration of PBL-APES to two diverse, poverty-impacted urban districts. A design-based implementation research approach will be employed to develop and test specific supports for productive disciplinary engagement that address the wide range of student literacy and domain knowledge that the investigators and others have observed in urban settings.