Turning Transfer Inside Out: The Affordances of Virtual Worlds and Mobile Devices in Real World Contexts for Teaching About Causality Across Time and Distance in Ecosystems

Abstract

Reasoning about ecosystems includes consideration of causality over temporal and spatial distances; yet learners typically focus on immediate time frames and local contexts. Teaching students to reason beyond these boundaries has met with some success based upon tests that cue students to the types of reasoning required. Virtual worlds offer an opportunity to assess what students actually do in a simulated context. Beyond this, mobile devices make it possible to scaffold and assess learning in the real world. Situating learning outside, in the target contexts, bypasses many of the challenges of transfer. A study investigated the learning of fifth and sixth graders (n = 38) while they used a virtual world called EcoMUVE, designed to support learning of ecosystems concepts and complex causal dynamics, and Mobile Broadband Device (MBDs) components, designed to assess and support learning and transfer in a real pond ecosystem. The experiences of two classes were contrasted as reference populations; one class participated in the MBD experience first, followed by the learning components in EcoMUVE; the other participated in EcoMUVE first, followed by the MBD components. Rich and triangulated data was collected to illuminate how students experienced and responded to the curriculum components. Both classes made learning gains in EcoMUVE. Students who completed EcoMUVE prior to their MBD experience transferred concepts to their pond explorations. Both classes made learning gains at the pond following the MBD support and revealed more expert reasoning about the importance of change over time and distant drivers in ecosystem dynamics.

Action at an attentional distance: A study of children's reasoning about causes and effects involving spatial and attentional discontinuity

“…In related work, we also tested the idea of offering students “Virtual Binoculars” on a mobile device as part of an ecosystems curriculum intervention so that students could view the upper watershed approximately 20 miles away when they stood at a local reservoir. It made a significant difference in the kinds of questions that students asked about impacts on the reservoir with greater attention to the possibility of distal impacts (Grotzer et al, ).…”

Toward a Learning Progression of Complex Systems Understanding

“…Grotzer and colleagues also found that students often reason about immediate effects rather than cascading or indirect effects. They fail to realize that a change in one population can have impacts on populations that are not directly linked through domino-like or cyclic complex causal relationships (Grotzer & Basca, 2003;Grotzer et al, 2015). Grotzer and Tutwiler (2014) outlined a number of characteristics of complex systems that may contribute to these learning challenges.…”

“…However, we argue that content within a crosscutting concept can also be ordered in a learning progression to facilitate learning. Within the science education literature, learning about systems phenomena has most notably been anchored in the study of complex systems (Grotzer et al, 2015;Wilensky & Rand, 2015;Yoon, 2011;Yoon, Goh, & Park, 2018), which investigates how interactions between system components at lower scales give rise to higher scale processes and structures (Sweeney & Sterman, 2007;Wilensky & Reisman, 2006;Yoon, 2008). The way that schools of fish move through the water and herds of ungulates roam the savannah provide vivid examples of how individual actions and interactions lead to large-scale patterns.…”

Using Mobile Location‐Based Augmented Reality to Support Outdoor Learning in Undergraduate Ecology and Environmental Science Courses

“…Augmented reality can be used to alert students to an opportunity to observe something meaningful that connects with ideas they have been learning; and tips, reminders, and reflective prompts embedded in the experience can encourage students to adopt practices of observation that mirror those used by experts (Klopfer and Squire , Dunleavy and Dede , Grotzer et al. ).…”

“…Augmented reality visualizations can be used to communicate changes over time by embedding views or narratives that describe the history of a place (Zimmerman and Land , Grotzer ), or by pointing to evidence of change over time that may be present within the landscape. Ecosystems can have long “memories”—the abiotic conditions, species composition, and relationships present may depend on what happened at the site last season or long ago.…”