Home PublicationsJRTEPast IssuesVolume 28 Number 5

Edited by Diane McGrath

Volume 28 Number 5 Summer 1996

Multimedia Science Projects: Seven Case Studies

Kansas State University

Abstract

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by and Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Education grant administered by the Kansas Board of Regents office.

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Introduction

A constellation of beliefs based on both enthusiasm and theory has come to dominate much of the literature on multimedia as a teaching and learning tool. Many educators hope and expect that the use of multimedia in constructivist classrooms will lead to improved student attitudes, motivation, understanding, transfer, equity, and responsibility for one's own learning. Research, however, has been slow in coming, perhaps in part because the methods we have traditionally used are not adequate for measuring or evaluating what we think is really happening in these learning situations.

Many teachers and researchers can thank Fred d'Ignazio (See "The Multimedia Sandbox," his regular column in The Computing Teacher and Learning and Leading with Technologysince 1989) for their enthusiastic belief in multimedia as a set of tools to take a learner anywhere he or she wants to go. In addition, numerous anecdotal reports, a number of them by software and hardware companies, speak of wonderful projects and highly motivated students (e.g., Carangelo, 1991; Winston, 1995). At conferences teachers encounter student-produced kiosks, multimedia term papers, and other long-term technology-based projects that appear to have a large impact on students involved. Our own informal observations had also indicated that this kind of project appears to be equally motivating to girls and boys (McGrath, 1990). In this study we take a close look at seven multimedia science projects and examine science attitudes and understanding, student responsibility for learning, and gender equity in terms of both attitude and expertise.

Theoretical Perspective

Three theoretical perspectives lead us to focus on multimedia projects for learners as a means of enhancing student learning, responsibility, and enthusiasm. These are constructivism, learning as design, and multiple intelligences.

Constructivism. Authors of articles about multimedia in education typically consider themselves constructivists and view the paradigm as changing from teacher-centered telling of information to learner-centered constructing of knowledge. Constructivism is an epistemological belief about how we know what we know, a belief that has no necessary connection with what has come to be known as the constructivist classroom or constructivist teaching methods. Indeed, as Jonassen (1995) reminds us, from a philosophical-constructivist point of view it doesn't matter how the classroom experience is arranged because learners construct their own understandings even in a behaviorist classroom.

Nevertheless, a popular and appealing connection is made between the idea that each person constructs understanding from experience and the notion that we could help that construction process along if we set up a cognitively rich learning environment (e.g., Papert, 1980; 1993). Teachers in constructivist classrooms typically promote sustained projects, often with cooperative learning, the building of artifacts, a real audience, and authentic assessment. Indeed, features of what is called the constructivist classroom have come to be part of the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1993, 1996).

Learning as design. In two influential books, Papert's (1980) Mindstorms and Perkins' (1986) Knowledge as Design, the authors discussed, in very different ways, learning as a design process. Papert (1980) was interested in developing tools that children might be able to use to think, explore, solve problems, and construct knowledge, and then letting youngsters loose to work on long-term projects. In Papert's learning environment, teachers help learners by asking questions and guiding them toward concepts they need to progress to the next step on their projects. Perkins (1986) focused on knowledge itself as a design, with a structure, a purpose, model cases, and means of evaluation; he showed in excellent detail how to teach for understanding so as to make clear to learners what the design elements are for the subject being studied. In a third book on this view of learning, Learning to Design, Designing to Learn (Balestri, Ehrmann & Ferguson, 1992), the authors contend that by designing, students learn design skills and, more importantly, come to understand the ideas underlying their design and become strongly engaged in the learning process. The fundamental premise behind designing for learning is that people learn by working with a subject matter. As Perkins (1992) puts it, "Learning is a consequence of thinking" (p. 8).

Related arguments for student design of multimedia artifacts as a means of learning focus on motivation, collaboration, understanding, and the development of cognitive skills. Blumenfeld et al. (1991) make an excellent case for the motivational value of long-term projects in which students design artifacts. Scardamalia and her colleagues (Scardamalia, Bereiter, McLean, Swallow & Woodruff, 1989; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991) discuss how students' joint constructions on a computer network can help develop knowledge-building communities. Lehrer, Erickson and O'Connell (1994) propose that design of hypermedia-based artifacts can "be used to encourage students to think about how to represent an idea, to think about how to link different representations of an idea, and to think about relationships among ideas" (p. 229). Carver, Lehrer, Connell & Erickson (1992) analyze in some detail the cognitive skills involved in designing hypermedia documents: project management, research, organization and representation, presentation, and reflection.

Multiple intelligences. Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligences also supports student creation of multimedia projects. Gardner holds that people have many intelligences, and that schooling typically focuses on only a few of these. The design and construction of multimedia artifacts, however, can draw on many intelligences (e.g., artistic, logical, linguistic, and musical) and can thus serve to exercise a number of skills and involve students with different dominant intelligences.

The current study. These theoretical perspectives suggest that a project-based classroom in which students work with a particular subject-matter for a purpose of demonstrating what they have learned to a real audience should help improve (a) the attitude with which students approach their work, (b) the quality of their work, and (c) their sense of ownership for that work. We may expect learners to work hard, enjoy it, develop a sense of pride and purpose in their work. We do not know whether this anticipated involvement and effort will carry over to performance on a standardized test. It is likely that no traditional measure of learning will gauge this sense of responsibility, this serious personal investment, in a multimedia project. But these outcomes should show up in their expressed and observed attitudes and behaviors and in some evidence of developing expertise and leadership.

Research

There is very little research on constructivist (student-constructed) multimedia and hypermedia. Studies have focused on the design skills learned in the process (Carver et al., 1992; Lehrer et al., 1994; Wisnudel, 1994); planning skills, cooperative learning, concept development, and reflective learning (Toomey & Ketterer); motivation (Blumenfeld et al.); and the process of creating a group project among second graders (Reilly, 1992). A good deal of evidence indicates that multimedia compositions are highly motivating, but very little research attention has been focused on understanding the effects of these compositions. Lehrer et al. (1994) looked at the changes in organizational structure of nodes and links after classmate review of a project and found increased elaboration. Spoehr (1993; 1994) has been studying the nature of the projects constructed for history by evaluating the conceptual structures reflected in the projects. She found that student hypermedia authors produce more complex concept maps. There is not much indication in the research of any age differences, classroom and teacher factors, or good evaluation methods other than concept maps. In the current study, we looked at teacher and student reflections on student learning, attitudes toward the project and the process, and for evidence that students made connections among what they were doing in the classroom, in the multimedia projects, and on their field trips.

Research has been fairly silent on the question of how to best set up and run multimedia projects from a teacher's point of view. Nor has it told us what we would like to know about how long it takes to get students to change from the more traditional learning to the active learning we anticipate from a constructivist classroom or even whether this predicted change actually takes place. In this study, we hoped to learn more about that process of change.

There is also not much solid research on the question of whether multimedia construction is a good way to bring about enthusiasm, access, and understanding for learners of different backgrounds, interests, talents, gender, race, or ethnicity. Some data on field dependency lead us to believe that multimedia projects might enhance equity in some fields of study. Research indicates that female, Hispanic, and African-American learners, for example, are often field-dependent learners and that this may be an important reason for their lower achievement in and interest in mathematics and science (Oakes & RAND Corp., 1990; Stiff & Harvey, 1988). According to the Oakes and RAND review, "...because mathematics, science, and technology are taught most often as abstract and disconnected from other people, these subjects are more appealing to white males than to women or minorities" (p. 171). As instruction proceeds over the grade levels, these subjects become more abstract, more divorced from people and community, and more often taught by books than by activities, girls and minorities tend to lose interest, and when they have a chance to do so, drop out. It therefore seems likely that putting computer-based tools in the hands of students and letting them produce multimedia projects on science topics associated with their own region of the state, as we did in the current study, will connect all kinds of students to authentic science issues in their own communities, that is, to people, and thus connect them more to science itself.

The context. This study was carried out in the context of a staff-development project funded by an Eisenhower grant for teacher enhancement in science. It was a one-and-one-half year study; the first semester was aimed at secondary teachers, and the second year was a repetition for elementary and middle school teachers. Teachers read about and discussed concepts about enhancement of science teaching from a constructivist point of view and did their own multimedia project. They then developed a plan for a similar project in their own classes, implemented and evaluated the process as students tried it out (with on-site and telephone technical assistance), and finally they assessed the entire experience and presented their projects and observations to a public audience at a conference. Ehrmann & Balestri (1992) suggest that the best way to learn science and other subjects is to set up a design studio in which to work. Their own classrooms were these teachers' design studios.

Within this framework, the researcher and graduate assistants (research staff) wore several hats. We were teachers, guides, coaches, and on-site technical assistants to both teachers and students. We also wanted to study the process of learning multimedia-production skills and constructing multimedia science projects in different kinds of classrooms, and so we were also participant observers in a multisite case study. These sites were at a great distance from our campus, and the grant paid for on-campus training for teachers, two meetings for the secondary teachers, and three visits to each of the seven project classrooms. These limitations will help you understand our methods and observations.

Research questions. The research questions that formed the central focus for this qualitative study formed three clusters:

• Science understanding and attitudes. Do teachers and students believe that students learned from this project? Is there evidence that students make connections among ideas and concepts from class, field trips, and project? Do students like doing this kind of science project?
  
• Gender and attitude. Are there gender differences in attitudes toward science or multimedia? Do leaders of both sexes emerge? Do both girls and boys become experts in some aspect of the project, either scientific or technological?
  
• Responsibility for learning. Do students take responsibility for their own learning when doing this kind of project? How do they do this? How long does it take to get them into the new problem-solving independent-learning mode?

Consider this research exploratory, a sort of first step in a "design experiment," if you will (Brown, 1992). In a setting in which teachers are permitted and encouraged to design their own ways of having students create multimedia science projects, with only a few parameters set for them, we expect to learn something about what such classrooms are like, how they function, and what the obstacles are. We can hope to find tentative answers to our research questions and, perhaps, come up with suggestions for teachers who want to try such projects. The next step will be to take these ideas as hypotheses and move them to more tightly controlled situations for a closer look.

The Current Study

The context. This study was carried out in the context of a staff-development project funded by an Eisenhower grant for teacher enhancement in science. It was a one-and-one-half year study; the first semester was aimed at secondary teachers, and the second year was a repetition for elementary and middle school teachers. Teachers read about and discussed concepts about enhancement of science teaching from a constructivist point of view and did their own multimedia project. They then developed a plan for a similar project in their own classes, implemented and evaluated the process as students tried it out (with on-site and telephone technical assistance), and finally they assessed the entire experience and presented their projects and observations to a public audience at a conference. Ehrmann & Balestri (1992) suggest that the best way to learn science and other subjects is to set up a design studio in which to work. Their own classrooms were these teachers' design studios.

Within this framework, the researcher and graduate assistants (research staff) wore several hats. We were teachers, guides, coaches, and on-site technical assistants to both teachers and students. We also wanted to study the process of learning multimedia-production skills and constructing multimedia science projects in different kinds of classrooms, and so we were also participant observers in a multisite case study. These sites were at a great distance from our campus, and the grant paid for on-campus training for teachers, two meetings for the secondary teachers, and three visits to each of the seven project classrooms. These limitations will help you understand our methods and observations.

Research questions. The research questions that formed the central focus for this qualitative study formed three clusters:

• Science understanding and attitudes. Do teachers and students believe that students learned from this project? Is there evidence that students make connections among ideas and concepts from class, field trips, and project? Do students like doing this kind of science project?
  
• Gender and attitude. Are there gender differences in attitudes toward science or multimedia? Do leaders of both sexes emerge? Do both girls and boys become experts in some aspect of the project, either scientific or technological?
  
• Responsibility for learning. Do students take responsibility for their own learning when doing this kind of project? How do they do this? How long does it take to get them into the new problem-solving independent-learning mode?

Consider this research exploratory, a sort of first step in a "design experiment," if you will (Brown, 1992). In a setting in which teachers are permitted and encouraged to design their own ways of having students create multimedia science projects, with only a few parameters set for them, we expect to learn something about what such classrooms are like, how they function, and what the obstacles are. We can hope to find tentative answers to our research questions and, perhaps, come up with suggestions for teachers who want to try such projects. The next step will be to take these ideas as hypotheses and move them to more tightly controlled situations for a closer look.

Method

Participants

Participants were 10 teachers of grades 3-11 from rural schools in Kansas and their science students. Eight were women and two were men. Classroom sizes varied considerably, from 6 to 24. In three cases, pairs of teachers and their classes worked together on a project; therefore, although we studied 10 teachers, we had only seven case studies.

During the first semester of the research, three of the five teacher participants (Group 1) were high school biology teachers, and the remaining two were a seventh-grade computer and science teachers working on the same project. During the second part of the research, one of the five participants (Group 2) was a middle school computer teacher recruited to teach science, two were a sixth grade science teacher and an eighth grade technology preparation teacher working together, and two were elementary teachers of third and fourth grade working together. All 10 had been recruited to be part of a teacher enhancement project.

Student participants were108 of the students of these 10 teachers. Judging informally from observation only, 105 appeared to be Caucasian, 1 Asian American, 1 African American, and 1 of East Indian heritage.

Participant Observers

The research staff included the researcher, four doctoral students, and one master's student, all in the educational computing program at Kansas State University. For each group, the researcher and two graduate students were participant observers. The researcher taught the graduate course and visited each site on the third visit. The graduate students helped the teachers with the technology and then divided the locations so that each had two sites to visit, three times each.

 Teacher Workshop
 Click for more information on workshops.

Procedures

Grant and school costs, and teacher enhancement events. As a result of personal contacts with teachers in roup I and advertising by the North Central Kansas Educational Service Center, five secondary and middle school teachers volunteered for the project and had the support of their schools. Schools provided, at a minimum, a Macintosh with a color monitor, at least 4MB RAM, and a VideoSpigot video card; a field trip for the students; and substitute teachers for the six days the participants would need to miss class. The grant paid for teacher travel for workshops and a teachers-only field trip, HyperCard 2.2 (1987-1994) software for each teacher, and tuition for the teachers to receive graduate credit for this combination computer training and curriculum project.

Through contacts from Group I and word of mouth we found five elementary and middle school teachers to participate in Group II, a year-long repetition of the project. The grant did not have enough money left for the third day of the kick-off workshop, the two all-day workshops, the teachers-only field trip, or substitute teachers, but otherwise the process was comparable to the first one. To make up for the lack of support provided by those meetings, the remaining grant money was paid to four of the Group I teachers to act as mentors, advisors, and technical assistants to Group II teachers for 10-20 hours each. This plan was chosen because of the proximity of these four teachers to those in the second group. This second group was given from September to May for training and completion of student projects, because the students were younger on an average, and because the first group of teachers felt that a semester was too pressured for them as they were just becoming familiar with the technology. (See Table 1 for summary of events for each group).

Student projects and on site assistance. Group I teachers started the student projects as early as mid-February and as late as mid-April with an introduction to HyperCard (1987-1994). Each set of students collected scientific and other types of data related to a nearby natural setting and planned how to put their findings and understandings into a HyperCard stack. Students in Group I took a field trip to Cheyenne Bottoms. Teachers in Group II taught their students to use HyperCard during the fall semester. The three project groups took field trips at varying times during the year, and all three groups produced their projects during the spring semester. With or without input from students, each teacher designed the content and extent of the science to be involved in the project, group assignments, group sizes, assessment criteria, and the length of the project. Major project requirements were that (a) that teachers must get their students outside to make observations, and (b) they must have their students produce a multimedia project about those observations, as a group or in small groups and for a real audience, such as parents, other students, or the school board.

Research staff promised to make at least three visits to each school, one at the beginning of the work with HyperCard (1987-1994), one toward the middle of the project, and one at the end to see the final projects. These visits were to serve two purposes. First we wanted to provide on-site assistance to the teacher when getting started with HyperCard and when student technical questions became more difficult. Second, we were to act as participant observers, ask a lot of questions, and videotape and audiotape classroom activity when possible.

Student Presentation  at Conference

Teacher and student conference presentation. Teachers in Group I were asked to bring at least two students to a national conference on rural schools, which took place at Kansas State University several months after the conclusion of their projects. There they appeared in the exhibit hall where conference participants could see the projects and talk with the students and teachers about their experiences in doing such a project. Research staff, assisted by another graduate student, took this opportunity to interview teachers and students one last time. Group II teachers presented and discussed their students' projects to other teachers at a state conference for science teachers in April, when their students were just finishing their projects.

Types of data collected. Sources of the data used for the following analysis included (a) research staff notes written before, during, and after meetings (these were not extensive field notes, but merely occasional notes to remember events, decisions, or particularly salient events or observations); (b) videotapes of both field trips, one meeting, all school visits, and those made at the first conference; (c) audiotapes from telephone interviews, on site teacher interviews, and the conference; (4d) teacher journals; (e) student journals; and (f) the completed projects for each of the seven schools. Two of the graduate students conducted extensive interviews of their own, and their data are part of this report. These data, taken as a whole, represent several points of view: that of teacher participants, their students, and the research staff. We, unfortunately, do not have all sources of data for all project groups because of the nature, extent, and limited funding of this project; the distance of some of the sites; and occasional technical difficulties. (See Table 2 for data available from each site).

Methods and foci of analysis. Videotapes and audiotapes for Group I were scrutinized by at least two members of the research staff during the fall after the first year of the research had been completed. Several meetings of research staff were held to exchange ideas, observations, and themes, and to give new assignments for review of the videotapes. Data from both Groups I and II were given a final analysis after the end of the second year by the principal investigator, focusing on the three research questions and some unanticipated issues that emerged, such as self-esteem and audience.

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