Collaborative research: From the learner's perspective: Unpacking the why and how of model-based learning about biological systems

协作研究：从学习者的角度来看：揭示基于模型的生物系统学习的原因和方式

• 批准号: 1420320
• 负责人: Elena Bray Speth
• 金额: $ 15.92万
• 依托单位: Saint Louis University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1420320&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; learner; perspective; Unpacking

The purposes of this study are to promote and understand how undergraduate students learn foundational biology ideas in introductory biology courses. It will implement and study an innovative approach, which has students learn biological explanations by modeling phenomena as biologists do. The approach directs students to think about structures, behaviors and functions in nature, and to write these out and discuss them. This study will explore in detail student reasoning while they do this and how they learn. The project has potential not only to advance the field's ability to measure student competencies that are valued in recent science education standards documents (e.g., NGSS), but also to advance the field's understanding of how student "modeling ability" develops in a particular discipline. In this way, it can provide an important foundation for other research on the learning of modeling practices in science. Moreover, because the innovations take place in an introduction to biology course and introduction to biology is required for a large number of college majors, the project can be transformative for a large number of students across the country. This study will be conducted in a pre-designed undergraduate biology course across four universities, two public and two private, serving diverse populations. The aims are: (1) propose systems thinking skills needed by biology students, by (a) getting feedback from academics, and reviewing; (2) to examine more closely student thinking during their activities by (a) recording group discussions, (b) conducting clinical interviews with a subset of students, and (c) collecting student drawings in response to different prompts than they have used previously that help the instructors better understand what students are thinking; (3) conduct open-ended comparisons between other assessments and their assessments of student models; (4) compare outcomes when students are provided different visual representations as feedback (split-plot design); and (5) make comparisons between different demographic groups.

这项研究的目的是促进和理解本科生如何在入门生物学课程中学习基础生物学思想。它将实施和研究一种创新的方法，该方法使学生通过像生物学家一样对现象进行建模来学习生物学解释。该方法指导学生思考自然界的结构，行为和功能，并将其写出并讨论它们。这项研究将在学生这样做时详细探讨他们的推理以及他们的学习方式。该项目不仅有潜力提高该领域的衡量学生能力的能力，这些能力是在最近的科学教育标准文档（例如NGSS）中所重视的，而且还可以促进该领域对学生在特定学科中如何发展学生“建模能力”的理解。通过这种方式，它可以为学习科学建模实践的其他研究提供重要的基础。此外，由于创新是在生物学课程简介和大量大学专业的生物学简介中进行的，因此该项目对于全国各地的许多学生都可以进行变革。这项研究将在四所大学的预设的本科生物学课程中进行，两所公立和两家私人人口为各种人群提供服务。目的是：（1）提出生物学学生所需的系统思维技能，（a）从学术界获得反馈和审查； （2）通过（a）录制小组讨论，（b）与一部分学生进行临床访谈，以及（c）收集学生绘画以应对不同的提示与以前使用以前使用的帮助，以帮助教师更好地了解学生的想法； （3）在其他评估与学生模型评估之间进行开放式比较； （4）比较当向学生提供不同的视觉表示作为反馈（拆分图设计）时的结果； （5）在不同的人口组之间进行比较。