Digitally augmented physical spaces (e.g., smart classrooms) offer opportunities to engage students in novel and potentially transformative learning experiences. This paper presents an immersive rainforest simulation and collective inquiry activity where students collect observational data from the environment and explore their peers' data through large visualization displays and personal mobile devices. Two iterations of the design were tested, which resulted in higher quality student explanations constructed. Images were found to be an important source of evidence for the explanations, more so than text-only evidence. We also found that patterns of collective ideas influenced student performance, and that visualizations, as ambient or plenary displays, supported both teacher and students in reviewing patterns of collected data.

This study was conducted during a two-week summer science camp that included two field trips to a local river and to a botanical garden. During the camp period, fifth and sixth graders learned about water quality in the class, collected data using Zydeco (a mobile-based inquiry learning system) on field trips, and reviewed data in the classroom. This paper is aimed to discuss how students make decision to capture multimedia data (video, audio, photo) and metadata (tag) on the Zydeco system to answer their driving question, and to explore students' perspectives on this type of guided inquiry learning with the use of the supportive mobile-based program.

Scientific inquiry can be more authentic and meaningful to students when using personal and peer-collected data. The challenges of organizing and evaluating a potentially large amount of data can be overcome through the use of annotations (title, tags, and audio notes). We created Zydeco, a multi-component system that students use to collect annotated multimedia data from a museum (using a smartphone app), and then create a scientific explanation with their personal and peers' data (using a tablet app). We ran a classroom study with 54 students (ages 11-13) investigating how students searched for, evaluated, and used annotated data to construct a scientific explanation. We found that tags supported data interpretation, while title searching and panning through the unfiltered data set supported finding and using data.

Teaching and learning the vast range of the sizes of the objects that are too small to see with human eyes (called imperceptible objects) has been a challenging issue in education. Because representation is the only medium that learners can use to make sense of imperceptible phenomena, learners encounter challenges when trying to understand the range of imperceptible sizes. However, the conventional visual representations that are incorporated in many learning technologies tend to direct learners to overestimate the sizes of imperceptible objects. To address this issue, we designed a multimodal representation called ""temporal-aural-visual representation" (or TAVR) to provide students with an alternative way of perceiving and conceptualizing imperceptible sizes. In prior studies it was noticed that learners constructed more refined mental models of the vast range of imperceptible sizes through the TAVR-enhanced learning activity. In this paper, we introduce a recent study that explored how to best augment the temporal experience of the range of imperceptible sizes with supporting modalities.

Nomadic scientific inquiry -- technology-supported authentic inquiry done on-the-go, across settings -- has the potential to engage students in learning new concepts and practicing essential science skills. We developed the Zydeco system to support nomadic inquiry in part through enabling the collection and annotation of multimodal data (photographs and audio notes). The system was designed to bridge school and museum contexts through project-based science inquiry. In this study, we explore how Zydeco influences student behavior and sensemaking in the museum. We compared the behaviors of middle-school students who used either Zydeco or paper worksheets to perform inquiry in a museum, and found that, while both the worksheets and the system engendered heads-down behavior, the Zydeco system increased active sociocultural engagement.

Nomadic inquiry may benefit from tagging when used for educational purposes to support reflection and annotation during data collection. To that end we created Zydeco, a mobile system to scaffold learners through the science inquiry process in and out of the classroom, and tested it in a museum with 42 middle school students. Students report that tags encouraged reflection and annotation during data collection, suggesting that tagging can be used to support nomadic inquiry. From this work we present some emerging design recommendations for constructing similar systems.

Museums and other out-of-school settings, are ideal contexts for children to engage in authentic scientific inquiry. However, students need support to successfully do inquiry outside of the classroom, and to make connections between what they are learning in and outside of school. Zydeco is a new system that aims to support students in seamlessly conducting inquiry across contexts. Zydeco includes an online web component that allows students to define goals, questions, and categorical information for their science investigations. This information is uploaded to a handheld device, which allows students to photograph, tag, and annotate information in a museum. Students can then access their museum work in the classroom to complete their investigations. Here we describe the Zydeco system, highlighting strategies for addressing challenges of mediating inquiry across class and museum contexts.

The StoryTime project explores the benefits of and issues surrounding the use of mobile finger-touch devices to support struggling writers. StoryTime is a mobile finger-touch tool designed from a learner-centered design perspective to be a supportive writing tool for children 7--9 years old. StoryTime allows children to write stories by providing simpler writing mechanics, increased user engagement, and a contextualized writing experience. The combination of these attributes allows struggling writers to focus more on the sentence construction task. Here we describe the iterative design and testing of three versions of StoryTime on 13 children to date.

This study introduces Chemation, a handheld application developed for middle school students learning chemistry concepts. We report on an initial study to examine the impact of Chemation on classroom activities and determine the added value over physical ball-and-stick models. Six teachers and their seventh grade students participated in this study. Data collected include classroom videos and observations, teacher and student interviews, and reviews of student artifacts (e.g., chemical models). The results of this study provide insight into future revisions for Chemation and the affordances and constraints of handheld tools for classroom activities.

Chemation, a simple 2-D modeling and animation tool for handhelds (e.g., PalmOS computers), was developed to help teach important chemistry concepts, such as chemical reaction, conservation of mass, and the particulate nature of matter (as specified in national standards). Users build 2-D molecular models of substances and then, through a process of copying and modifying the model, create flipbook-style animations to illustrate various processes. Chemation is currently being piloted by teachers using a standards-based, inquiry-oriented 7th grade chemistry curriculum. The tool is intended to be an alternative or a supplement to current hands-on activities in which students build physical (ball-and-stick) models to represent various chemical phenomena. In this demonstration, we will show the basic functions of Chemation highlighting its important features---modeling and animation of chemical processes on a handheld tool. We will also show example student models of various chemical processes.

Handheld computers are mobile, flexible devices that can provide real-time, one-to-one support for students from within the context of their learning activities. This paper describes the design of three learner-centered handheld tools used as part of a nine-month classroom study involving thirty-three eighth grade students. A review of related work identifies some of the challenges of building educational software within the constraints of handheld screens, and two broad design guidelines are synthesized to help address these challenges. The first design guideline focuses on decomposing the learning activity to identify salient tasks and the type of supports (or scaffolds) students need to engage in these tasks, then building separate handheld workspaces to support each task. The second guideline focuses on methods for implementing scaffolds within these task-based workspaces while preserving the usability of the overall handheld software.

Our project explores the benefits and challenges of using handheld computers to support learners in creating concept maps (a type of visual outline). By synthesizing research on small user interfaces with guidelines for building desktop learning tools, we identified potential challenges to using handhelds for complex learning tasks and developed new design guidelines to address these issues. We applied these guidelines to the design of Pocket PiCoMap, a learner-centered concept mapping tool for handheld Pocket PCs. As part of a 9-month classroom study, students used both the handheld Pocket PiCoMap and a comparable desktop concept mapping tool called PiViT. The goal of this comparison between handheld and desktop tools was to better understand how the different form factors of these computers impact students' work processes and products. Our results suggest that students can successfully complete complex learning activities using handheld tools, and that specialized supports (called scaffolds) can be used to help students create better concept maps. This study also identifies several areas where handheld learning tools need further improvements, such as helping students organize their work within the confines of small handheld screens, and we discuss ways in which scaffolds might be used to improve future handheld learning tools.

A challenge for HCI researchers and designers involves developing software tools for learners to support them in mindfully doing and learning complex new work practices. Such "learner-centered" tools incorporate scaffolds-software features that address the cognitive obstacles learners face so they can engage in the work in an educationally productive manner. However, designers still lack specific scaffolding design guidelines for developing effective scaffolded tools. The HCI contribution of this paper is a set of scaffolding guidelines distilled from an empirical case study. The study evaluated Symphony, a scaffolded environment for high school students learning science inquiry. The study evaluated the "effects with" the Symphony scaffolds, which described how students worked with the scaffolds to do their science work. The scaffolds were evaluated using several usability and learner-centered criteria, and the resulting information was correlated with structural characteristics of the scaffolds to distill a set of structural scaffolding guidelines

Inquiry-based curricula encourage students to develop research and collaboration skills by working with evidence and exploring real problems. Students engaging in inquiry projects must be supported in learning the content and work practices of a domain. SWEets, or scaffolded work environments, are one method of providing this support. We present a new software engineering process for designing SWEets for any educational domain and describe the application of this process to the development of Clio, a Web-based SWEet for high school history students. The Clio SWEet was piloted in two classroom studies and preliminary data indicate that students were able to use the software to successfully gather and analyze data as part of an inquiry-based classroom curriculum.

Learner-centered design is an evolving design perspective focusing on the design of software scaffolds to support novice learners in using software to do and learn previously unknown work practices. Scaffolding evaluation is necessary to see how well learners can perform new work activity using the scaffolded software. However, scaffolding evaluation is challenging because of the need to address several issues resulting from the interplay between user-centered and learner-centered perspectives. Scaffolding evaluation methods need specific criteria to address learner-centered concerns, traditional usability measures to address user-centered concerns, and considerations of the instances when usability conflicts with the learning goals of scaffolded tools. The authors discuss these learner-centered evaluation issues and a scaffolding evaluation method to assess, not just the usability of the software, but also the effectiveness of the scaffolds in terms of the learning goals behind the software.

Learner-centered design (LCD) is an evolving design approach for designing tools that support learners trying to engage in and understand complex work practices in which they are novices. Learner-centered design focuses on developing tools that incorporate support (or “scaffolding”) to support the novice in seeing and doing complex, unknown work so that the learner can begin developing an understanding of that work in a “learning by doing” fashion. In this tutorial, we will give participants a more in-depth treatment of learnercentered design by describing a definition for LCD, theoretical background, and the LCD process and methods to give participants experience with the mindset needed for the LCD approach.

We are exploring a new class of tools for learners: scaffolded integrated tool environments (or SITES), which address the needs of learners trying to engage in new, complex work processes. A crucial phase within a learner-centered design approach for SITE design involves analyzing the work process to identify areas where learners need support to engage in the process. Here we discuss the design of Symphony, a SITE for high-school science students. Specifically, we discuss how the process-space model helped us analyze the science inquiry process to help us identify a detailed set of learner needs, leading to a full set of process scaffolding strategies for Symphony.

The design of software for learners must be guided by educational theory. We present a framework for learner-centered design (LCD) that is theoretically motivated by sociocultural and constructivist theories of learning. LCD guides the design of software in order to support the unique needs of learners: growth, diversity, and motivation. To address these needs, we incorporate scaffolding into the context, tasks, tools, and interface of software learning environments. We demonstrate the application of our methodology by presenting two case studies of LCD in practice.