Creating Science Learning Tools from Experts’ Investigation Tools: A Design Framework

The use of scientific investigation tools is receiving considerable attention as a result of an increased emphasis in the educational community on open-ended inquiry. One potential source for these tools is the scientific community. Scientific visualization technologies, in particular, offer significant promise for education because of their use of visual representations to facilitate exploration of complex data. Unfortunately, the tools that are used by scientists are inappropriate for learners because of their reliance on the tacit knowledge of expert users. Through a careful consideration of the differences between scientists and science students and the design of a series of scientific visualization environments for learners in grades 8-16, we have developed a design framework for the creation of science investigation tools based on those of scientists. The framework highlights five critical issues for the construction of tools to support inquiry-based learning: motivating context, learner-appropriate activities, data selection, scaffolding interfaces, and support for learning. We have applied this framework to the design of ClimateWatcher, a scientific visualization environment for the investigation of issues related to global climate and climate change that is now in use in middle school, high school, and university settings.