Session 1

Title: Trends in Online Science Learning Practice and Instructional Technologies

Session Description:

Although the online science teaching format holds great promise for enhancing K-16 instruction in the natural sciences, our survey and the published literature indicates this teaching approach remains largely underutilized and rudimentary. Our investigation found that online science courses tend to be lower level (e.g., freshman, sophomore), asynchronous, and in the physical sciences. Courses are more likely blended/hybrid although the fully online format is common. The overwhelming majority of courses are conceptual, requiring no laboratory or field work and use automated feedback (e.g., quizzes or tests) for assessment. Communication uniformly occurs through discussion boards or e-mail. More than half of online science courses use synchronous communication but few use course-casting technology. Learning assessment techniques are largely traditional.

Advances in instructional technologies point to the following trends for online science learning. Learning management systems will have vastly expanded capacity and speed supporting the inclusion of copious media-rich resources, diverse interactivity options, sophisticated visualizations, realistic/immersive virtual environments, and learning objects with multiple layers of detail (i.e., scaffolding). Online science students will have expanded opportunities to learn anytime-anywhere through mobile learning technologies with mobile learning engines capable of delivering complex 3-D learning objects based around science themes. A student’s learning may be supplemented and personalized using intelligent tutors and/or virtual instructors via artificial intelligence systems. Course collaboration will be increasingly supported by social software such as multi-user environments that may be virtual, as in a scientific learning game, or real, as in the case of a ‘virtual’ classroom. Science students will have expanded opportunities to use and share online institutional resources such as remote experiments and rich disciplinary data and learning objects from virtual museums and national digital libraries. Moreover, learning at a distance may be increasingly tactile, employing haptic technologies to engage students in the simulated manipulation of learning objects.

Presenter: Kevin Downing

Dr. Downing is an Associate Professor at DePaul University’s college for adult learners, the School for New Learning. His research interests include the investigation of Miocene fossil mammals, the record of stratigraphic and paleogeographic change during the Himalayan Orogeny, and online science learning practices. He is the co-author of the recently published book, Online Science Learning: Best Practices and Technologies.