Student use of Web 2.0 tools to support argumentation in a high school science classroom
Open Access
- Author:
- Weible, Jennifer Lynn
- Graduate Program:
- Learning, Design, and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 15, 2014
- Committee Members:
- Heather A Zimmerman, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Heather A Zimmerman, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Susan Mary Land, Committee Member
Priya Sharma, Committee Member
Scott P Mcdonald, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Web 2.0 tools
science education
argumentation
technology
science practices
CSCL
sensemaking
articulating
persuasion - Abstract:
- This ethnographic study is an investigation into how two classes of chemistry students (n=35) from a low-income high school with a one-to-one laptop initiative used Web 2.0 tools to support participation in the science practice of argumentation (i.e., sensemaking, articulating understandings, and persuading an audience) during a unit on alternative energy. The science curriculum utilized the Technology-Enhanced Inquiry Tools for Science Education as a pedagogical framework (Kim, Hannafin, & Bryan, 2007). Video recordings of the classroom work, small group discussions, and focus group interviews, documents, screen shots, wiki evidence, and student produced multi-media artifacts were the data analyzed for this study. Open and focused coding techniques, counts of social tags and wiki moves, and interpretive analyses were used to find patterns in the data. The study found that the tools of social bookmarking, wiki, and persuasive multimedia artifacts supported participation in argumentation. In addition, students utilized the affordances of the technologies in multiple ways to communicate, collaborate, manage the work of others, and efficiently complete their science project. This study also found that technologically enhanced science curriculum can bridge students’ everyday and scientific understandings of making meaning, articulating understandings, and persuading others of their point of view. As a result, implications from this work include a set of design principles for science inquiry learning that utilize technology. This study suggests new consideration of analytical methodology that blends wiki data analytics and video data. It also suggests that utilizing technology as a bridging strategy serves two roles within classrooms: (a) deepening students’ understanding of alternative energy science content and (b) supporting students as they learn to participate in the practices of argumentation.