Lecture by Prof. Dr. Marcia Linn “New opportunities for technology enhanced instruction”

Abstract: New technologies can both guide students and gather detailed records of student activities. This talk explores ways to take advantage of these technologies to help teachers support students as they independently complete complex projects on topics such as climate change, photosynthesis, and chemical reactions. Informed by the research-based knowledge integration framework, we have designed features for the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) and studied their impact. To reveal how students add and sort out ideas in a complex project we have designed the idea manager and the explanation builder. To help students make their ideas visible we have studied a concept illustration tool called My System and studied the impact of several forms of feedback. These advances suggest principles for the design of instruction to support knowledge integration. They raise challenging questions about the balance between guidance and free exploration and about the design of effective feedback.

Biographical information: Marcia Linn directs one of the 13 Centers for Learning and Teaching funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation: the Technology-Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) center. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she investigates science teaching and learning, gender equity, and design of learning environments. In 1998, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents selected her for its first award in educational research. From 1995-96 and 2001-02 she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In 1994, the National Association for Research in Science Teaching presented her with its Award for Lifelong Distinguished Contributions to Science Education. The American Educational Research Association bestowed on her the Willystine Goodsell Award in 1991 and the Women Educator's Research Award in 1982. Twice she has won the Outstanding Paper Award of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (1975 and 1983). She has accepted invitations to contribute as a Fulbright Professor at the Weizmann Institute in Israel; as a Visiting Fellow at University College, London; and as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute J. J. Rousseau in Geneva, Switzerland, where she worked with Jean Piaget.