This paper describes a design study of a cyberlearning instructional unit about climate change created with a new inquiry-based design framework, the 5-featured Dynamic Inquiry Enterprise (5-DIE). The 5-DIE framework was created to address the need for authentic science inquiry experiences in cyberlearning environments that leverage existing tools…

Secondary school science teachers have a wide variety of teaching approaches available to them as they support the development of their students' scientific literacy and knowledge of, and about, science. Information technologies, on computers and other devices, offer potentially valuable ways to supplement this "toolkit" of teaching approaches.…

This paper reports the results of an investigation on the effect of cooperative learning on academic achievement of physics course. Cooperative learning was employed to experimental group and conventional teaching method was used for control group. Sampling of the study consists of 15-16 years old 220 students at high school in Iran. The progress…

Students in 4 Canadian high school physics classes completed instructional sequences in two key physics topics related to motion--Straight Line Motion and Newton's First Law. Different sequences of laboratory investigation, teacher explanation (lecture) and the use of computer-based scientific visualizations (animations and simulations) were…

Science educators and school administrators are reexamining the educational value of animal dissection in the nation's schools and are focusing on simulation as an instructional alternative. One implication of the debate is that simulations can lead to equivalent learning to hands-on dissection. The second implication is whether dissection is…

In this study half of 52 sixth graders learned to program in MSWLogo and the other half in Drape. An analysis of students' test scores revealed that Drape (an iconic language) seemed to have a steeper learning curve than MSWLogo (a textual language). However, as students gradually became more familiar with either language, the difference in…

This mixed-methods study explored the effects of student-generated visualization on middle-schoolers' science concept learning. We compared students who visualized during study time with those who did not and found that visualization as a study strategy led to students' improved test performances (p=.02). However, middle schoolers' scores on a…

This project investigated the effects of technology task autonomy, teacher gender, and student gender on student achievement scores for students disaggregated by IEP and SES in middle school science classrooms. Participants were from the treatment group in a larger quasi-experimental design project that investigated the effects of integrated…