This article is drawn from a study conducted to explore how assessment conversations, a type of informal formative assessment, can support science learning in a technology-aided seventh-grade classroom in Northern California. The classroom setting where the study took place used interactive whiteboards in conjunction with the inquiry-based…

Challenged by some of the inherent difficulties in teaching qualitative data analysis, three instructors created an interactive digital learning object entitled "Sleuthing the Layered Text: Investigating Coding." In this paper we assess the effectiveness of that learning object as a tool for teaching qualitative coding. On the face of it, learning…