The case-based computerized laboratory (CCL) is a chemistry learning environment that integrates computerized experiments with emphasis on scientific inquiry and comprehension of case studies. The research objective was to investigate chemical understanding and graphing skills of high school honors students via bidirectional visual and textual representations in the CCL learning environment. The research population of our 3-year study consisted of 857 chemistry 12th grade honors students from a variety of high schools in Israel. Pre-and postcase-based questionnaires were used to assess students' graphing and chemical understanding-retention skills. We found that students in the CCL learning environment significantly improved their graphing skills and chemical understanding-retention in the post-with respect to the prequestionnaires. Comparing the experimental students to their non-CCL control peers has shown that CCL students had an advantage in graphing skills. The CCL contribution was most noticeable for experimental students of relatively low academic level who benefit the most from the combination of visual and textual representations. Our findings emphasize the educational value of combining the case-based method with computerized laboratories for enhancing students' chemistry understanding and graphing skills, and for developing their ability to bidirectionally transfer between textual and visual representations. ß A growing body of research is concerned with the contribution of external representations to high-level cognitive processing of information

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Informal learning relates to actvites that occur outside the school environment. These learning environments, such as visits to science centers provide valuable motvatonal opportunites for students to learn science. The purpose of this study was to investgate the role of the pre-academic center in science educaton and partcularly to explore its efects on 750 middle-school students' attudes toward science, their scientfc thinking skills and self-efcacy. Pre and post-case based questonnaires were designed to assess the students' higher order thinking skills-inquiry, graphing, and argumentaton. In additon, a fve-point Likert scale questonnaire was used to assess students' attudes and self-efcacy. The research results indicated a positve efect of the pre-academic science center actvites on scientfc thinking skills. A signifcant improvement in the students' inquiry and graphing skills was found, yet non signifcant diferences were found in argumentaton skill. The students signifcantly improved their ability to ask research questons based on reading a scientfc text, and to describe and analyze research results that were presented graphically. While no signifcant diferences were found between girls and boys in the pre-questonnaire, in the post-questonnaire the girls' scores in inquiry skill were signifcantly higher than boys' scores. Increases in students' positve attudes toward science and self-efcacy were found but the results were not statstcally signifcant. However, the program length was found to be an important variable that afects achievement of educatonal goals. A three-dimensionbased framework is suggested to characterize learning environments: organizatonal, psychological, and pedagogical.

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