The Impacts of Automatic Scaffolding on Students’ Acquisition of Data Collection Inquiry Skills

We explore in this paper if automated scaffolding delivered via a pedagogical agent within a simulation can help students acquire data collection inquiry skills. Our initial analyses revealed that such scaffolding was effective for helping students who initially did not know two specific skills, designing controlled experiments and testing stated hypotheses, acquire those skills. These results provide evidence towards realizing rigorous, scalable, performance-based assessment of scientific inquiry skills and the efficacy of an automated scaffolding approach. Introduction Science educators and reseachers agree that cultivating inquiry and critical thinking skills are necessary for students to become scientifically literate [1], [2], [3], [4] and to be well-poised for the demands of the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century [5]. However, learning inquiry skills is challenging for students (e.g. [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]). These challenges can lead to many false starts [11], misconceptions [12], and failure to learn targeted science principles [13]. Given the importance of inquiry and these challenges, it is important to understand how best to foster learning of these skills (cf. [13], [14]). Relevant to this paper, we consider skills at designing and conducting experiments (cf. [1]). Some studies showed that explicitly teaching strategies like controlling for variables [15] can lead to acquisition [16], [17], [18], [19], retention [18], [20], and transfer [16], [17], [18] of the strategy over pure discovery methods. Others showed that long-term, repeated practice also promotes skill acquisition, without instruction [21], [22], [23]. Scaffoldingbased approaches, on the other hand, may strike a balance between these extremes by providing help only when students need it (cf. [24], [25]). For example, providing structure (scaffolding) during open-ended inquiry activities can foster learning (e.g. [26]). Similarly, individualized, real-time feedback may also help students learn inquiry skills [27]. Towards promoting the learning of data collection inquiry skills, we determine if scaffolding can help students acquire two such skills [1]: testing one’s stated hypothesis, and designing controlled experiments [28], [29]. This work is conducted within the context of a web-based inquiry learning environment, called Inq-ITS, in which students conduct inquiry using simulations [29]. The learning environment was augmented to provide real-time, automated scaffolding as students collect data with the simulation. This scaffolding is driven, in part, by data-mined models that determine when students are off-track [30], [28]. A randomized, controlled experiment was conducted with two groups of students, those who received data collection scaffolds and those who did not, to determine if scaffolding impacted data collection skill acquisition in one set of inquiry activities on phase change, a middle school physical science topic. We hypothesize that our automated scaffolding approach that provides just-in-time feedback can improve students’ data collection skills.