While automated guidance in online units has been found to successfully support learning, students can sometimes feel alienated rather than motivated due to computerized guidance seeming impersonal. In this study, we explore ways to improve learning and motivation by personalizing adaptive guidance. Standard adaptive guidance is compared to more…

This paper describes the design and impact of an inquiry-oriented online curriculum that takes advantage of dynamic molecular visualizations to improve students' understanding of chemical reactions. The visualization-enhanced unit uses research-based guidelines following the knowledge integration framework to help students develop coherent…

In the past 40 years, the proportion of women in science courses and careers has dramatically increased in some nations but not in others. Our research investigated how national differences in women's science participation related to gender-science stereotypes that associate science with men more than women. Data from ~350,000 participants in 66…

Science is increasingly characterized by participation in knowledge communities. To meaningfully engage in science inquiry, students must be able to evaluate diverse sources of information, articulate informed ideas, and share ideas with peers. This study explores how technology can support idea exchanges in ways that value individuals' prior…

Advances in technology, science, and learning sciences research over the past 100 years have reshaped science education. This chapter focuses on how investigators from varied fields of inquiry who initially worked separately began to interact, eventually formed partnerships, and recently integrated their perspectives to strengthen science…

Although researchers call for inquiry learning in science, science assessments rarely capture the impact of inquiry instruction. This paper reports on the development and validation of assessments designed to measure middle-school students' progress in gaining integrated understanding of energy while studying an inquiry-oriented curriculum. The…

Powerful online visualizations can make unobservable scientific phenomena visible and improve student understanding. Instead, they often confuse or mislead students. To clarify the impact of molecular visualizations for middle school students we explored three design variations implemented in a Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) unit on…

Supporting students to revise their written explanations in science can help students to integrate disparate ideas and develop a coherent, generative account of complex scientific topics. Using natural language processing to analyze student written work, we compare forms of automated guidance designed to motivate productive revision and help…

Content-based automated scoring has been applied in a variety of science domains. However, many prior applications involved simplified scoring rubrics without considering rubrics representing multiple levels of understanding. This study tested a concept-based scoring tool for content-based scoring, c-rater™, for four science items with rubrics…

In this work, we examine middle school students' understanding of the greenhouse effect and global warming. We designed and refined a technology-enhanced curriculum module called "Global Warming: Virtual Earth". In the module activities, students conduct virtual experiments with a visualization of the greenhouse effect. They analyze data and draw…

Dynamic visualisations capture aspects of scientific phenomena that are difficult to communicate in static materials and benefit from well-designed scaffolds to succeed in classrooms. We review research to clarify the impacts of dynamic visualisations and to identify instructional scaffolds that mediate their success. We use meta-analysis to…

Middle school students struggle to explain thermodynamics concepts. In this study, to help students succeed, we use a natural language processing program to analyze their essays explaining the aspects of thermodynamics and provide guidance based on the automated score. The 346 sixth-grade students were assigned to either the critique condition…

Rapid advancements in computing have enabled automatic analyses of written texts created in educational settings. The purpose of this symposium is to survey several applications of computerized text analyses used in the research and development of productive learning environments. Four featured research projects have developed or been working on:…

Dynamic visualizations can make unseen phenomena such as chemical reactions visible but students need guidance to benefit from them. This study explores the value of generating drawings versus selecting among alternatives to guide students to learn chemical reactions from a dynamic visualization of hydrogen combustion as part of an online inquiry…

"Science Learning and Instruction" describes advances in understanding the nature of science learning and their implications for the design of science instruction. The authors show how design patterns, design principles, and professional development opportunities coalesce to create and sustain effective instruction in each primary scientific…