WISE

Key concepts in WISE:

Inquiry practices - engaging students in the intentional process of diagnosing problems, critiquing experiments, distinguishing alternatives, planning investigations, revising views, researching conjectures, searching for information, constructing models, debating with peers, communicating to diverse audiences, and forming cohernet arguments.

Knowledge integration - learners hold multiple conflicting ideas about virtually any scientific phenomenon, and at the same time deliberately develop their repertoire of views concerning a given scientific phenomenon. What is needed is that students develop a cohesive, coherent, and thoughtful account of scientific phenomena.

Pattern - used to elicit the repertoire of student ideas, add promising normative ideas to the mix, and support the process of combining, sorting, organizing, creating, and reflecting to improve understanding. E.g. make a conjecture, review an evidence, reflect on ideas.

Inquiry map - used to communicate the pattern to the students to investigate a topic. This cannot be too detailed, otherwise the students will fail to engage in inquiry. If it is too broad, students will flounder and become distracted.

Context - the context of problems must be immediate and accessible to the students. Students do not have connections to issues outside their immediate surroundings. Designer make sure students have access to information relevant to the problems / topics they are studying.

Pivotal cases - use of natural experiment to illustrate an important comparison. E.g. compare objects in a hot car and cold room to illustrate why they feel different even their temperature are the same.

Argument representation - student understanding of scientific material can be enhanced if they have a way to represent arguments. E.g. SenseMaker in collaboration with evidence pages (e.g. web resources or pages provided by designers) allows students to represent arguments.

Modeling and simulation - E.g. Causal Modeler allows students to represent the relationships among factors influencing water quality.

Making Thinking Visible!

Other features: students work in pairs and learn from one another (Vygotsky zone of proximal development), show and tell by students to other students, branching pattern: allow students to specialize in one of several topics, use of mobile device like Palm to "beam" malaria to each other, lifelong learning instill into students, continual review with teachers and designers.

Reference:

Linn, M., Clark, D., & Slotta, J. (2003). Wise design for knowledge integration. Science Education, 87(4), 517-538.