Papers in PDF format

Results & Discussion
The majority of the students were successful at searching the Internet for relevant sites, saved evidence to the
Netbook, and incorporated that evidence into their final reports. The pattern of search activity that emerged
was more characteristic of perceptual search patterns directed by the stimulus of the display rather than the
logical deployment of a systematic search strategy. Access to the sites located by other students provided
relevant information for students that had difficulty locating material on their own . However, access to
information did not necessarily lead to critical thinking about the sites. The addition of a Revised Design
Worksheet and Heat Flow Analysis Worksheet had little impact on the selection of features considered for the
dwelling (e.g., windows, size of rooms, orientation of house, type of insulation, etc.) but did reveal internal
conflicts within the students' explanatory framework for the temperature differences at different times of day.
This cognitive dissonance occasionally resulted in a reevaluation of the design or reassessment of the
explanatory mechanisms for describing heat flow. Initial designs reflected a strong bias towards the examples
used to illustrate heat flow and towards the selected sites that were visited early on in the project. Students
generally retained the framework of their initial designs and used evidence as a "proof of existence" for
features of a house rather than as an argument for selecting one design over another. Principled reasoning
about the dwelling design came late in the process in either the Heat Flow Analysis worksheet or the Final
Report. The use of prototypes as a starting point for the design rather than principled reasoning about
temperature regulation increases the importance of the examples and the accompanying metacognitive prompts
built into the software environment. This reliance on selected examplarary sites appears in both the house
design and the final report where Internet sites are linked into the final write-up.
The tendency to not revise initial designs suggests that the sequence of searching for evidence to support
existing designs should be reordered. Searching for evidence needs to be linked more directly with the
conceptualization of the problem if the located information is to have a significant impact on the project
design. A number of approaches to encouraging a more dynamic and expanded problem definition can be
drawn from other KIE projects such as critiquing other students' designs or developing simple prototypes
highlighting the scientific principles involved. Linking the criticisms of existing designs and components of
the prototypes with Internet evidence may help model the process of critical thinking that needs to occur for
students to successfully complete similar design projects.
The process of using Internet resources to support design decisions seems to have two phases:
(a) locating evidence and (b) using evidence. Tied to the problem of locating and using evidence is the
conceptualization of the problem [Cuthbert 1996]. This conceptualization occurs rapidly although the
resulting framework appears to be fluid enough to encompass potentially conflicting elements. The process
through which these elements are sorted, critiqued, and supported has been the focus of this research. The
change in activity structure from the first to second running of the intervention successfully expanded the
problem definition for the majority of the students. This expanded problem definition helped students generate
a wider range of keywords. Useful sites were automatically added to the publicly-accessible page of relevant
Web sites thereby helping the lower-end students collect potentially useful information. The fact that this
information was not used to revise existing designs suggests that information resources have significantly
different effects on the problem solving process depending on whether they are introduced during the
conceptualization or realization phase of the activity. Since each of these two phases of the activity overlap,
intertwine, and can be further decomposed, the effect of informational resources on problem solving in general
is particularly complex. The results of these experiments begin to show the effect of information resources
during the realization phase of the activity. Further research is needed to uncover the potential role of
information resources during the other phases of a design activity.
References
[Cuthbert 1996] Cuthbert, A. (1996) How do students use Internet evidence to complete projects? From exploration to
directed search. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), NY,
NY. (See http://www.kie.berkeley.edu/people/alex/pubs.html)
[Linn 1995] Linn, M. C. (1995). Designing computer learning environments for engineering and computer science: The
Scaffolded Knowledge Integration Framework. Journal of Science Education and Technology.