Exploring student engagement and transfer in technology mediated environments

Computer-supported environments designed on learning science principles aim to provide a rich learning experience for students. Students are given opportunities to collaborate, model their understanding, have access to real-time data and engage in hypotheses testing to solve authentic problems. That is to say that affordances of technologies make it possible for students to engage in mechanistic reasoning, a complex inquiry-oriented practice (Machamer, Craver & Darden, 2000; Russ et al., 2008). However, we have limited understanding of the quality of engagement fostered in these contexts. This calls for close observations of the activity systems that the students participate in. The situative perspective focuses on analyzing interactions of individuals (students) with other people, tools and materials within activity systems (Greeno, 2006). Importantly, as the central goal of education is to provide learning experiences that are useful beyond the specific conditions of initial learning, analysis of such interactions sheds light on key experiences that lead to transfer of mechanistic reasoning skills. This is made possible, as computer-supported contexts are activity systems that bring forth trends in students’ engagement. From a curriculum design perspective, observing student engagement can be a useful tool to identify features of interactions (with technological tools, peers, curriculum materials) that lead to successful learning. Therefore, the purpose of the present studies is to explore the extent to which technological affordances influence students’ engagement and subsequent transfer of reasoning skills. Specifically, the goal of this research is to address the following research questions: How do learners generalize understanding of mechanistic reasoning in computer-supported learning environments?, What kinds of engagement with technological tools are needed to facilitate high quality conceptual understanding of the problem?, and How does engagement with technological affordances influence transfer of mechanistic reasoning skills?Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Suparna Sinh