Designing a Website to Support a StudentCentered Online Community of Practice

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Designing a Website to Support a Student-Centered
On-line Community of Practice
Indiana University Center for Research on
Learning and Technology
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Overview

• History
• Goals
• Overview of Website
• Current Participants
• Wengers Dualities
• Research

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History

• Childrens Museum of Indianapolis
• Great Coral Reef Adventure
• 14 students
• 11 different schools
• Florida trip
• Providing a means for these students to share
  their experiences

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STREAMS Project

• Students and Teachers Researching Ecology and the
  Making of Science
• Classroom collaborations
• Student-centered community
• Water quality in Indiana
• Making of Science
• Practice investigating water quality

???
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Making of Science

• Messiness of science
• Sharing experiences
• Collaboration
• Science as a community endeavor
• Peer review ? Consensus building
• Scientific Inquiry

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STREAMS Website
http//streams.indiana.edu
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Current Participants

• Decatur Middle School
• 4 team teachers 120 students
• Eastwood Middle School
• Columbus North High School
• 4 team teachers 87 students
• Student constructed nature center
• Childrens Museum of Indianapolis

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Wengers Dualities

• Designed and Emergent
• Participation and Reification
• Local and Global
• Identification and Negotiability

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Wengers Dualities

• Designed and Emergent
• Lack of teacher/student participatory design
• Based on an heavily-designed entity (ILF)
• Flexibility within project
• Making of Science classrooms
• Nature of participation

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Wengers Dualities

• Participation and Reification
• Have focused on developing a framework
• Teacher Information Packet
• Chosen to focus on Making of Science
• Our conceptions
• Teachers conceptions
• The framework allows for reification of student
  understandings
• To what extent do we provide explicit artifacts
  that reify our understandings?

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Wengers Dualities

• Local and Global
• Focus on the local classroom
• Will classroom experiences be so local that
  visitors have a difficult time gleaning useful
  information, data, and insights?
• Research partners - C2C
• What is the global agenda?
• Promoting Making of Science (designers)
• Community of practice
• Student collaboration
• Better understanding Indiana waterways (members)

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Wengers Dualities

• Identification and Negotiability
• Design affords opportunities for identification
• Design affords opportunities for negotiation

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Research Agenda

• How do we support the development of a CoP?
• How can STREAMS support C2C research
  collaborations?
• How does STREAMS improve student understandings
  of
• Nature of science
• Scientific inquiry
• Scientific content

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Acknowledgements

• CRLT
• IUB School of Education
• Larry Campbell
• Inquiry Learning Forum
• Hoosier Riverwatch
• National Science Foundation
• Childrens Museum of Indianapolis