Social Networking to Support Scientific Problem Solving

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Interdisciplinary (99) The use of online social networking to transfer the collaborative approach from small classes of fifteen to twenty students to large classes divided into comparable sized groups is being developed and evaluated. The approach is based on a successful course on scientific problem solving currently offered to small sections. The course uses puzzles to develop metacognitive strategies that can be transferred to other STEM courses and to student research efforts. A problem is presented to the class and then attacked collectively. The instructor facilitates the discussion with various strategies designed to encourage metacognition, such as "think alouds", collaborative drawing, and exchanging notebooks that track students' strategies and thinking processes. Students find this to be a transformative experience that provides them with learning models based on how their peers and their instructor strategize their problem solving. Twenty students is about the limit of how many students can productively participate in collaborative problem solving in a classroom environment. The challenge being addressed is to make social networking tools effective for the task of fostering metacognitive engagement in learning and to develop tools to expand the reach of the course to larger classes. To this end, the existing course in scientific problem solving is augmented with social networking technology in the form of a structured online notebook that connects to the efforts of peers working on the same assignments. The existing course addresses problem solving per se and is independent of any particular content. As such, it provides a simple platform in which to test the contribution of social networking to the development of effective problem solving. Student feedback is used to improve the efficacy of the social networking environment through iterative updates.