Abstract
For promoting the development of students’ problem representations by collaborative design the learning activity for the network-based synchronous environment Collaborative Virtual Workplace was designed. Two biology and chemistry related problem situations were presented to 21 biology and 18 chemistry class students of different schools. Students’ activity was scaffolded by an online tutor. The analogous problem situation was solved individually in the pre- and post-test. The process of design on whiteboard tool and the textual conversation on chat tool were recorded and the content was analysed from log-files. Based on the individuals’ external problem representations and the interactions recorded on whiteboards, the theoretical framework for the analysis of problem representations in science was created. According to this, the development of students’ problem representations must be supported on the dimensions of the ontological “objects” and “events” category components of mental models at the levels of everyday, scientific and scientific symbolic explanations. It was found that the collaborative modelling activity in the synchronous network environment caused the shift in students’ individual problem representations towards more complete and scientifically valid mental models.
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Pata, K., Sarapuu, T. (2003). Framework for Scaffolding the Development of Problem Representations by Collaborative Design. In: Wasson, B., Ludvigsen, S., Hoppe, U. (eds) Designing for Change in Networked Learning Environments. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0195-2_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0195-2_25
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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