Workshop to be held at ICLS 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on June 23, 2008

Workshop Description – Committee – Submissions – Important Dates

Contact person: Sadhana Puntambekar – puntambekar@education.wisc.edu

Register as a participant

or

Submit a 3-page summary by April 15, 2008. See submissions for details.

This workshop will focus on the use of multiple external representations for science learning. Specifically, our focus will be on the integration of text resources and simulations with hands-on science activities. Hands-on investigations enable students to manipulate physical objects and instruments; simulations can help control parameters and provide alternative quantitative representations, while text can provide students with language to describe their experiences, and understand theories. Integrating these representations can provide students with opportunities for deeper science learning. While hands-on activities, text-based investigations and simulations have mostly been used singly in helping students learn science, recent research on integrating different modes in which students learn science has raised more questions than provided answers. In fact, most research on multiple representations has focused on computer-based representations (e.g., text+animations). A unique aspect of this workshop is that it will also address the issue of integrating physical representations in the form of hands-on activities with other modes of learning science.

Two key issues that will be addressed in the workshop are: (i) integration of multiple representations into instructional activities and (ii) scaffolding students to make connections between representations. Several questions concerning these will be discussed:

1. What are the strengths, limitations and specific affordances of hands-on experimentation, text-based learning and learning from computer simulations and animations (e.g., virtual experiments)?
2. What difficulties do students have in working with multiple representations? How can a teacher facilitate students in making connections across representations and activities within an instructional unit? How can we design scaffolding in software to help students as they transition amongst these different learning activities?
3. What are different ways of designing instructional activities involving real-world experiments, text-based learning and computer simulations? How can these be integrated into a science curriculum in the classroom context? How can learning and teaching activities using these different representations be orchestrated for optimal outcomes?
4. How can different representations scaffold each other? more...