Collaborative discovery in a scientific domain

Collaborative Discovery Scientific Domain

This study compares Pairs of subjects with Single subjects in a task of discovering scientific laws with the aid of experiments. Subjects solved a molecular genetics task in a computer micro-world (Dunbar, 1993). Pairs were more successful in discovery than Singles and participated more actively in explanatory activities (i.e., entertaining hypotheses and considering alternative ideas and justi...

Concept Discovery in a Scientific Domain

Confronting ideas in collaborative scientific discovery learning

This study investigated how collaborative knowledge construction within a scientific discovery (or inquiry) learning environment can be assisted with tools that aim to support students’ proposition generation and testing processes. Sixty-six fourth year pre-university education students participated in a kinematics learning task. The instructional goal of the learning activity was to develop st...

Providing Expert Advice in the Domain of Collaborative Scientific Inquiry1

We describe an “expert coach” for students’ collaborative information seeking and knowledge construction. This coach compares an expert’s prespecification of the evidential relations among “snippets” of HTML-based text with the current state of a diagram constructed by students in the course of collaborative scientific inquiry. The expert advises the students by pointing out information that ma...

Supporting scientific discovery processes in Discovery Net

The activity of e-Science involves making discoveries by analysing data to find new knowledge. Discoveries of value cannot be made by simply performing a pre-defined set of steps to produce a result. Rather, there is an original, creative aspect to the activity which by its nature cannot be automated. In addition to finding new knowledge, discovery therefore also concerns finding a process to f...