| dc.description.abstract | Digital learning material is associated with grand expectations among educational
policy makers. Several attempts to introduce this new technology
with the purpose of enhancing learning have been made in recent years. The
schooling system has, however, been rather hesitant and not so ready to
adopt this kind of teaching aid. The aim of this thesis is to probe into students‘
practical problems of understanding computerised science learning
material involving animated sequences and educational text. For the purpose
of this investigation an application describing the different events in the
carbon cycle was developed. Two studies present analyses of students‘ reasoning
and actions when working collaboratively with the task of making a
written account of what is illustrated in the learning material. Both studies
present examples of identified phenomena that were observed in more extensive
empirical materials. The data is represented by video recordings of
students‘ interaction with each other and the interface. Results from the
studies reveal students‘ propensity for concentrating their attention to
prominent characteristics of the animated display and to describe the animated
models in correspondence to their resemblance of objects and occurrences
in everyday life. In study II it is revealed how students, when constructing
a written report of the described events, derive noun phrases from
attentionally detected objects in the animation and from the educational text.
In their effort to express themselves in colloquial language, when preparing
their report, they deliberately select verbs that differ from the educational
text. These courses of action together, contribute to give the report on what
happens in the process a non-scientific explanation. It is concluded that
students, lacking definite access to the relevant subject matter knowledge,
consequently, cannot judge whether they have given an approvable account
or not. Findings from the studies show that the school context with its explicit
stipulations of assignments and implicit request for expressing oneself
in your own words frames the learning and creates conditions for how the
technology is used and understood. The results indicate that animated models
of scientific concepts risk inferring misconceptions if students are left on
their own with interpreting information from the learning material. Despite
the detected problems of students‘ interpretations of the described phenomena,
the results indicate that animated learning material can proffer an exploitable
resource in science education. Such a prospect is the ability of
animation to engage students in discussions of the subject and to make them
recognise otherwise unobservable phenomena. | en |
