Co-Investigators: Ian Douglas, Sherry Southerland, Victor Sampson – Florida State University

Purpose: Field trips to museums and wildlife centers are a common activity in schools and it is widely believed that they have educational and motivational impacts. Yet research shows field trips frequently have limited educational benefits and lack integration with science curricula. National reform efforts in science education emphasize the need for students to participate in scientific inquiries, yet inquiry-based instruction remains a rarely-seen practice in most elementary classrooms. To address these problems, this project will develop an intervention designed to foster fourth and fifth grade student understanding of scientific inquiry and the nature of science. This will be accomplished through student-led data collection and analysis, before, during, and after visits to a local wildlife center.

Project Activities: The project activities include developing a field-tested version of an intervention supporting student scientific inquiry through data collection in informal settings. The development of the systems during Year One will go through multiple small iterations as technical issues with installing and testing the systems are resolved and the various interfaces are prototyped and evaluated. These iterations will result in the development of three distinct versions of the Habitat Tracker systems over the project duration: an initial test version that only covers a few exhibits (by the end of year one); an intermediate version that covers the entire museum (by the end of year two); and a final version suitable for adaption and implementation in other schools. The final version will be ready for full evaluation and testing for efficacy through a Goal 3 project (by the end of year three). To help teachers learn how to implement the intervention and its learning goals in the classroom, a three-day professional development workshop will be created and held in the summer before the second and third years of the project. The goal of the workshop will be to familiarize teachers with the target benchmarks and inquiry-related activities to be associated with pre- and post-visit activities. An additional goal of the workshop will be to incorporate the Habitat Tracker journal and website into their classroom curricula to meet science standards.

Products: Products from this project include a fully developed Habitat Tracker journal and website, as well as accompanying professional development materials. Scholarly reports of findings will also be produced.

Structured Abstract

Setting: The investigators will collect data from schools in three districts (one urban, one rural, and one mixed) from public elementary schools in the Leon County and Gadsden County area in Tallahassee, Florida. Schools that have highly diverse populations of students will be selected.

Population: The project will involve 36 participating teachers, each serving up to 50 fourth and fifth grade elementary students each year (1500 during the duration of this project).

Intervention: The intervention will be designed to support student participation in scientific inquiry through two interrelated systems: the Habitat Tracker Digital Journal and the Habitat Tracker Community Website. The Habitat Tracker Digital Journal is an application for a handheld device (such as an iPod Touch) through which students will record their own observations, answer questions, and access multimedia content and expert commentary about wildlife habitats. The Habitat Track Community Website will be designed as an interactive forum where students can read and edit their digital journal entries and contribute data about natural habitats observed at other wildlife centers.

Research Design and Methods: The investigators will use an iterative, user-centered design process with continuous formative evaluation of the students' experiences with the systems. During year one, student surveys, interviews with teachers, and observations of classroom practice will provide baseline data while an initial version of the intervention is developed. Toward the end of year One and throughout years two and three, incrementally expanded and improved versions of the intervention will be evaluated through functional, content, and usability testing. To address the feasibility of implementing the intervention, the researchers will conduct a pilot study during the final year of the project to collect data suitable for evaluating the intervention's potential to affect positive outcomes in inquiry-based science education. Pilot data will be gathered from 36 participating teachers, each serving up to 50 fourth and fifth grade elementary students. Data will be collected using a variety of measures to assess the fidelity of the implementation for the intervention in the museum and the classroom. Data will also be collected on the intervention's effect on the participating students' understanding of inquiry, attitudes toward science, and understanding of the nature of science.

Key Measures: For the pilot study, pre-visit and post-visit surveys will be used to assess the teachers' and students' experiences with interactive technologies in museums, knowledge of how the visit can be linked to classroom curriculum, and general knowledge of museum exhibits. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with teachers and students to determine the potential effects of this project on the curriculum-based learning experiences of participating students and to measure potential learning improvements consistent with state benchmarks. Students will be asked to complete three different researcher-developed instruments designed to measure their understanding of scientific inquiry, the nature of science, and their attitudes toward science before and after visits.

Data Analytic Strategy: Gain scores from the instruments will be examined to search for differences in achievement for students from different demographic backgrounds. Comparison data will allow the researchers to document the potential value of journaling activities and participant observations for improving science education, including changes in participation, satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, and student interaction. The investigators anticipate conducting t-tests (paired-samples or Wilcoxen, as appropriate) and multivariate analyses.

Products and Publications

Journal article, monograph, or newsletter

Kazmer, M. M., Alemanne, N. D., Mendenhall, A., Marty, P. F., Southerland, S. A., Sampson, V., ... & Schellinger, J. (2016). " A good day to see a bobcat": Elementary students' online journal entries during a structured observation visit to a wildlife center. First Monday, 21(4).

Marty, Paul F.; Mendenhall, Anne; Douglas, Ian; Southerland, Sherry A.; Sampson, Victor; Kazmer, Michelle M.; Alemanne, Nicole; Clark, Amanda; Schellinger, Jennifer (2013). The Iterative Design of a Mobile Learning Application to Support Scientific Inquiry. Journal of Learning Design, 6(2): 41-66.

Marty, P.F., Alemanne, N.D., Mendenhall, A., Maurya, M., Southerland, S.A., Sampson, V., Douglas, I, Kazmer, M.M., Clark, A., and Schellinger, J. (2013). Scientific Inquiry, Digital Literacy, and Mobile Computing in Informal Learning Environments. Learning, Media and Technology, 38(4): 407–428.

Schellinger, J., Mendenhall, A., Alemanne, N., Southerland, S. A., Sampson, V., & Marty, P. (2019). Using Technology-Enhanced Inquiry-Based Instruction to Foster the Development of Elementary Students' Views on the Nature of Science. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 1-12.

Proceeding

Alemanne, N.D., Sampson, V., Marty, P.F., Kazmer, M.M., Douglas, I., Clark, A., Southerland, S.A., and Mendenhall, A. (2012). Habitat Tracker: Engaging Students With Scientific Inquiry Through Technology and Curriculum Support. In Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (pp. 1–4). Silver Spring, MD: American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Marty, P.F., Douglas, I., Southerland, S.A., Sampson, V., Alemanne, N.D., Clark, A., Mendenhall, A., de la Paz, A., and Yu, C. (2012). Habitat Tracker: Learning About Scientific Inquiry Through Digital Journaling in Wildlife Centers. In Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (pp. 560–562). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.