Title
Model Construction As A Learning Activity: A Design Space And Review
Abstract
Modeling is becoming increasingly important both as a way to learn science and mathematics, and as a useful cognitive skill. Although many learning activities qualify as modeling, this article focuses on activities where (1) students construct a model rather than explore a given model, (2) the model is expressed in a formal language rather than drawings, physical objects or natural language texts and (3) the model's predictions are generated by executing it on a computer. Most research on such learning activities has focused on getting students to successfully construct models, which they find very difficult to do. In the hope that new research can find ways to remove this bottleneck, this article attempts to list all the major ideas that have appeared in the literature and might be useful to those developing new learning activities involving model construction. The ideas are organized into a design space with five dimensions: (1) modeling language types, (2) ways for describing the systems that students should model, (3) instructional objectives and their corresponding assessments, (4) common student difficulties and (5) types of scaffolding.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1080/10494820.2013.803125
INTERACTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Keywords
Field
DocType
modeling, model construction, scaffolding, interactive learning environments, interactive learning activities, constructive learning
Experiential learning,Bottleneck,Learning sciences,Formal language,Active learning,Computer science,Knowledge management,Modeling language,Cognitive skill,Natural language,Mathematics education,Artificial intelligence
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
21
4
1049-4820
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
5
0.44
30
Authors
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kurt VanLehn12352417.44