Center for InnovativeLearning Technologies

Visualization, Modeling,and Formative Assessment

Eric BaumgartnerGraduate School of Education

University of California at Berkeleyebaum@socrates.berkeley.edu

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Designing for formative assessment

• Role of visualization and modeling • Case study: Strawberry Creek

– Causal modeling– Data visualization

• Lessons learned

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Strawberry CreekPartnership Project

WISE/UC Berkeley• Britte Cheng• Aaron Glimme• Rodney Kopish• Ernest Lo• Sherry Seethaler• Jim Slotta• Henry Spliethof

CILT• Eric Baumgartner

UC Berkeley• Sean Brophy

Vanderbilt University• Sherry Hsi

Concord Consortium

Drawing on ideas, themes from LT field

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Strawberry Creek Curriculum

• How healthy is Strawberry Creek?• Internet and field research components• Two week high school integrated

science unit– First pilot March 1999

• Roles for visualization and modeling– Causal modeling of complex systems– Support for analyzing field data

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Supporting causal modeling

• Make complex relationships visible• Provide researchers with explicit

representation of student understanding• Inspirations

– Concept maps (Novak)– Model-It (Michigan)– Stella (HPS)

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Build a model of water quality

Strawberry Creek: http://wise.berkeley.edu/

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Capture student explanations

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Capture change over timevia model database

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Redesigning forformative assessment

How can students assess their models?• Provide access to model database

– Provide comparison tools– Provide annotation tools

• Provide ‘running’ models to give direct feedback

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Model-It: Running modelsfor direct feedback

Model-It: http://www.cogitomedia.comHi-CE: http://hi-ce.org/

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Supporting analysisof field data

• Provide multiple representations that relate to local landscape

• Leverage visual inferences• Scaffold comparisons of tests and sites• Inspirations

– ArcView/GRASS (ERSI, Baylor)– WorldWatcher (Northwestern)– BGuILE (Northwestern)

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Viewing data fromStrawberry Creek

Strawberry Creek: http://wise.berkeley.edu/

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Redesigning forformative assessment

• How can we assess student use of visualizations?– How can students assess analyses?

• Support expressive use of multiple representations– “Comparison database” tracks student use– Provide prediction tools– Provide annotation tools

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WorldWatcher: Supporting prediction and comparison

WorldWatcher: http://www.covis.nwu.edu/sciviz/sciviz.html

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Progress Portfolio: Supporting documentation and annotation

Progress Portfolio: http://www.ls.sesp.nwu.edu/sible/

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Lessons learned

• Major shift: Assessment for learners and teachers as well as for researchers

• Leverage visualization and modeling opportunities for formative assessment– Make thinking visible– Support expressive representations