Computing the Context Effect for Science Learning

International audienceIn science learning, context is an important dimension of any scientific object or phenomenon, and context-dependent variations prove to be as critical for deep understanding as are abstract concepts, laws and rules. The hypothesis presented is that a context gap between two students can be illuminating to highlight the respective general-particular aspects of an object or phenomenon. Furthermore, provoking a perturbation during the learning process to obtain the emergence of such an event could be a productive tutoring strategy. The authors introduce the emergence of context effects as a problem space, to be modeled in the system, and propose a model of the contextual dimension (MazCalc) associated with an analytical view of its modeling, based on a metaphor in physics. A Learning Scenario (Gounouy) has been designed and tested with two groups of learners in Guadeloupe and in Quebec, and MazCalc has been instantiated for this pilot study. Finally, an architecture of a Context-Aware Intelligent Tutoring System is presented, with services to learners, teachers and researchers

Elaborating the Context Calculator: A Design Experiment in Geothermy

Abstract. This paper presents a research project in science education that is positioned at the intersection of computer science and context in learning. The main objective is to improve learning process by creating a software tool that participates, from the inception to the achievement, in the design of leaning scenarios, based on context effects, and, to show that context effects’ learning is an efficient method in the development of student’s knowledge regarding a concept. The software will compute differences between two – or more – external contexts based on specific parameters, related to the phenomenon or object that students are expected to study. The elaboration of the calculator (“the MazCalc”) is conducted using the design based research theory, meaning that several iterations of learning field experiments are conducted in order to collect relevant data which are used for the tool creation. In this paper, the design of the scenario involves students from North America and from the French West Indies and the concept studied is about geothermal energy. The instantiation of the context calculator is made with the geothermal object of study, and the differences are computed in the calculator between the two contexts mentioned. This example makes possible to validate the link between context effects predicted and observed, and also to study the impact of external context on the learning process. This study has been conducted thanks to the GEOTREF project support. Keywords : Modelling, Context, Science Education, Learning, Context Effects, Geotherm