Vol. 9 No. 3

Special Issue: Design Education

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Guest Editors' Introduction

Articles

Guest Editors' Introducation

Wendy C. Newstetter

...In this issue of The Journal of the Learning Sciences, we offer three articles on middle-school-age children learning in the context of design. Two articles report on research projects in formal educational settings with large numbers of students; the other cronicles one girl's learning over a weekend in an informal online setting. The three work together nicely as companion pieces. Implications and findings for future work discussed in one study are examined in greater detail in a companion article. It is hoped that readers will come away from this issue with a much richer understanding of both the affordances of design for learning but also the difficulty of leveraging, orchestrating, and monitoring such activity.......

Read more of the "Guest Editors' Introduction" in JLS Volume 7, Number 3 & 4.


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Abstracts

Designing to Learn About Complex Systems

Cindy E. Hmelo, Douglas L. Holton, and Janet L. Kolodner

Complex systems are commonly found in natural and physical science. Understanding such systems is often difficult because they may be viewed from multiple perspectives and their analysis may conflict with or extend beyond the range of everyday experience. There are many complex structural, behavioral, and functional relations to understand as well. Design activities, which allow explorations of how systems work, can be an excellent way to help children acquire a deeper, more systematic understanding of such complex domains. We report on a design experiment in which 6th grade children learned about the human respiratory system by designing artificial lungs and building partial working models. Structure-behavior-function models are used as a framework for the cognitive analysis of the domain. The design activities helped students learn about the respiratory system. The design students indeed learned more than students receiving direct instruction. They learned to view the respiratory system more systematically. As expected, because of the short time they spent on the exercise, they understood more about structure than function and more about the functions of different parts of the respiratory system than its causal behaviors. This early Learning by Design experiment makes several important suggestions about successful learning from design activities: (a) the need to define design challenges functionally; (b) the importance of dynamic feedback; (c) the need for multiple iterations toward a solution; and (d) thinking aobut design as a system of activities and allocating time so that the full system can be carried out, allowing its full set of affordances to be realized.


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Engineering Competitions in the Middle School Classroom: Key Elements in Developing Effective Design Challenges

Philip M. Sadler, Harold P. Coyle, and Marc Schwartz

Engineering challenges that involve both the design and building of devices that satisfy constraints are increasingly employed in precollege science courses. We have experimented with exercises that are distinguished from those employed with elite students by reducing competition and increasing cooperation through the use of tests against nature, large dynamic ranges in performance, initial prototype designs, and alternative methods of recording and presenting results. We find that formulating easily understood goals helps engage students in fascinatingly creative processes that expose the need for a scientific methodology. Such challenges engage male and female students equally, helping to erase the gender disparity in familiarity with the technology and skills common to physical science.


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Situated Support for Learning: Storm's Weekend with Rachael

Amy Bruckman

Although much attention has been paid to the content of support for learning, less attention has been given to its context. This article introduces the notion of "situated support," and argues that the identity of the source of support and the connectedness of that support to other elements of the learning environment are of primary importance. MOOSE Crossing is a text-based virtual reality environment designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children 8 to 13 years of age. A microanalysis is presented of the situated nature of support for learning on MOOSE Crossing over the course of 1 weekend where a 12-year-old girl learned to write simple computer programs.


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