Amy R. Pallant

The Concord Consortium, MA

From the experiential learning perspective, this study investigates middle and high school students (n = 1009) who used an online module to learn about wildfire hazards, risks, and impacts through computational simulations of wildfire phenomena. These students were taught by 18 teachers in urban, rural, and suburban schools across the United States...

As computational methods are widely used in science disciplines, integrating computational thinking (CT) into classroom materials can create authentic science learning experiences for students. In this study, we classroom-tested a CT-integrated geoscience curriculum module designed for secondary students. The module consisted of three inquiry inves...

Computation has become an essential part of today’s personal, educational, civic, and career living, which necessitates preparation of a generation of future citizens who are knowledgeable of computational thinking (CT) concepts and are able to apply CT skills in daily life and work. Because of CT’s use across fields, it is important that we take a...

Learning to teach is a culturally situated activity. As teachers learn, it is important to understand not only what teachers learn, but how they learn. This article describes a qualitative case study of a subset of four teachers’ learning during a professional development surrounding a plate tectonics curriculum. Using qualitative methods, this stu...

Practitioners and researchers in geoscience education embrace collaboration applying ICON (Integrated, Coordinated, Open science, and Networked) principles and approaches which have been used to create and share large collections of educational resources, to move forward collective priorities, and to foster peer‐learning among educators. These stra...

Understanding Earth's tectonic plate system dynamics is complicated though it is the central paradigm to explain transformations of Earth's surface. The landforms and geodynamic events resulting from plates interacting are too massive to observe at scales of human experience. It is difficult for students to connect plate movements to geologic featu...

This study uses a computerized formative assessment system that provides automated scoring and feedback to help students write scientific arguments in a climate change curriculum. We compared the effect of contextualized versus generic automated feedback on students' explanations of scientific claims and attributions of uncertainty to those claims....

A design study was conducted to test a machine learning (ML)-enabled automated feedback system developed to support students’ revision of scientific arguments using data from published sources and simulations. This paper focuses on three simulation-based scientific argumentation tasks called Trap, Aquifer, and Supply. These tasks were part of an on...

This article represents the findings from the qualitative portion of a mixed methods study that investigated the impact of middle school students’ spatial skills on their plate tectonics learning while using a computer visualization. Higher spatial skills have been linked to higher STEM achievement, while use of computer visualizations has mixed re...

Incorporating scientific uncertainty as part of science teaching means acknowledging that there may be incomplete or potentially limited scientific information when scientists draw conclusions. In the geosciences, scientists routinely make inferences about the Earth based on observations of the present, and test those observations against hypothese...

This paper describes HASbot, an automated text scoring and real‐time feedback system designed to support student revision of scientific arguments. Students submit open‐ended text responses to explain how their data support claims and how the limitations of their data affect the uncertainty of their explanations. HASbot automatically scores these te...

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine teacher instructional dilemmas and opportunities that emerged when students worked with interactive computer‐based simulation models during the High‐Adventure Science (HAS) project. The intervention included the HAS digital curriculum, designed for grades 7–12. Each curricular unit was framed to...

Scientific argumentation is one of the core practices for teachers to implement in science classrooms. We developed a computer-based formative assessment to support students’ construction and revision of scientific arguments. The assessment is built upon automated scoring of students’ arguments and provides feedback to students and teachers. Prelim...

This study investigates the role of automated scoring and feedback in supporting students’ construction of written scientific arguments while learning about factors that affect climate change in the classroom. The automated scoring and feedback technology was integrated into an online module. Students’ written scientific argumentation occurred when...

Under what conditions do students engaged with a virtual world come away with enhanced appreciation for science, wonderment about the world, and nascent understanding of science practice? Other researchers have shown that virtual worlds and games can foster such development and highlight design characteristics that elicit engagement, motivation, an...

During the past several decades, there has been a growing awareness of the ways humans affect Earth systems. As global problems emerge, educating the next generation of citizens to be able to make informed choices related to future outcomes is increasingly important. The challenge for educators is figuring out how to prepare students to think about...

Deep-sea research is rarely available to undergraduate students. However, as telepresence technology becomes more available, doors may open for more undergraduates to pursue research that includes remote fieldwork. This descriptive case study is an initial investigation into whether such technology might provide a feasible opportunity for undergrad...

The National Science Foundation funded the Transforming Remotely Conducted Research through Ethnography, Education, and Rapidly Evolving Technologies (TREET) project to explore ways to utilize advances in technology and thus to provide opportunities for scientists and undergraduate students to engage in deep sea research. The educational goals were...

An interactive learning task was designed in a game format to help high school students acquire knowledge about a simple mechanical system involving a car moving on a ramp. This ramp game consisted of five challenges that addressed individual knowledge components with increasing difficulty. In order to investigate patterns of knowledge emergence du...

The NSF-funded Data Sets and Inquiry in Geoscience Education project (DIGS) developed a set of curriculum modules comprising units and assessments in which students use real geospatial visualizations and data sets to conduct extended inquiry on plate tectonics and local climate change. As befits the differences in research on the two topics, the mo...

Though addressing sources of uncertainty is an important part of doing science, it has largely been neglected in assessing students' scientific argumentation. In this study, we initially defined a scientific argumentation construct in four structural elements consisting of claim, justification, uncertainty qualifier, and uncertainty rationale. We c...

Modeling and argumentation are two important scientific practices students need to develop throughout school years. In this paper, we investigated how middle and high school students (N = 512) construct a scientific argument based on evidence from computational models with which they simulated climate change. We designed scientific argumentation ta...

Computer-aided design (CAD) logs provide fine-grained empirical data of student activities for assessing learning in engineering design projects. However, the instructional sensitivity of CAD logs, which describes how students respond to interventions with CAD actions, has rarely been examined. For the logs to be used as reliable data sources for a...

Students formulated their own questions for a virtual spring/mass system and collected and analyzed data in the InquirySpace environment featuring probes, computational models, and data visualization software. We investigated how students navigated and reasoned with the parameter space defined by a set of manipulative variables related to a virtual...

This paper proposes a novel computational approach based on time series analysis to assess engineering design processes using a CAD tool. To collect research data without disrupting a design learning process, design actions and artifacts are continuously logged as time series by the CAD tool behind the scenes, while students are working on a design...

Science is not (all) about facts. There are questions to be answered, discoveries to be made. So, can we engage students with the unknowns in frontier science? How do we have them explore the sources of scientific uncertainty? And how does their understanding of complex scientific issues change when they have to justify their own claims? What if...

Computational physics, which provides digital representations of natural phenomena by solving their governing equations numerically, has transformed areas as diverse as scientific research, engineering design (1), and film production (2). It is also changing the way science is taught. The Molecular Workbench (MW) software, http://mw.concord.org, de...

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are critically important in the twenty-first century (National Research Council, 2006; National Science and Technology Council, 2007). This is the field in which major sciences are joining, blending, and integrating (Battelle Memorial Institute & Foresight Nanotech Institute, 2007; Goodsell, 2004). KeywordsNanoscienc...

Recently there has been expressed need for authentic inquiry assessments that can differentiate students’ content knowledge from their inquiry skills. Additionally there has been expressed need for such assessments particularly in the Geosciences, given the nature of the visualizations, the data sets, and the form of communication (i.e., topographi...

This project addresses the dual problems of declining numbers of U.S. citizens trained to become scientists and engineers and the lack of qualified science teachers in the middle school where the interest in science must be kindled. To solve this problem, the project is harnessing modern computer technology to provide multi-media “Science Units” wh...

This project addresses the dual problems of declining numbers of U.S. citizens trained to become scientists and engineers and the lack of qualified science teachers in the middle school where the interest in science must be kindled. To solve this problem, the project is harnessing modern computer technology to provide multi-media “Science Units” wh...

The report "Bringing Research on Learning to the Geosciences" (Manduca, Mogk, & Stillings, 2002) proposed a new program of research to invigorate and expand geoscience education. The report recommended integrating best practices in learning science with the distinctive challenges posed by using geoscience data sets and visualizations in inquiry act...

A curriculum unit for middle school Earth Science called What's on Your Plate? was designed. The unit was implemented in several middle and high school classrooms in California and Massachusetts. In the first implementation, the total number of students who participated was 1100. The unit was designed with two main pedagogical principles: make thin...

The studies reported in this paper are an initial effort to explore the applicability of computational models in introductory science learning. Two instructional interventions are described that use a molecular dynamics model embedded in a set of online learning activities with middle and high school students in 10 classrooms. The studies indicate...

Two sites in the Labrador Sea and one site in Baffin Bay were drilled during Leg 105. Radiolarians were recovered at all three sites, although at Site 645 (Baffin Bay), radiolarians were present in useful numbers only in the mudline sample. The abundance of radiolarians and other siliceous microfossils within the lower Oligocene to lower Miocene is...

The genus Bolboforma, first described by Daniels and Spiegler (1974), is a problematic group of calcareous microfossils. Solbaforma is most probably a planktonic cyst (Rogl and Hochuli, 1976) having protozoan or algal affinities (Poag and Karowe, 1986). Its known distribution at present suggests that various species may have potential for becoming...

Two sites in the Labrador Sea and one site in Baffin Bay were drilled during Leg 105. Radiolarians were recovered at all three sites, although at Site 645 (Baffin Bay), radiolarians were present in useful numbers only in the mudline sample. Radiolarians of late Neogene age were recovered at Site 646 south of Greenland, while early Oligocene and ear...

A listing of high southern latitude (greater than 30 deg S) pre-Pleistocene sediment cores is given for samples obtained by the coring and drilling programs of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, the Antarctic Program of the Florida State University, the French Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, and the Deep Sea Drilling Program. Informat...

Computational models engaging students in exploration of the interactions between atoms and molecules can illuminate topics in high school biology curriculum heretofore left for later years. Atomic and molecular-scale processes are typically encountered in either advanced high school biology course or in college courses, after a student has acquire...

b) Figure 1. (a) A very simple model house that can be heated by a light bulb inside and an adjustable table lamp outside, simu-lating a furnace and the sun, respectively. Multiple temperature sensors can be used to monitor and investigate the temperature distribution inside the house and heat flow across the building envelope. This model house cou...