Abstract
Increasingly, multi-representational educational technologies are being deployed in science classrooms to support science learning and the development of representational competence. Several studies have indicated that students experience significant challenges working with these multi-representational displays and prefer to use only one representation while problem solving. Here, we examine the use of one such display, a multi-representational molecular mechanics animation, by organic chemistry undergraduates in a problem-solving interview. Using both protocol analysis and eye fixation data, our analysis indicates that students rely mainly on two visual–spatial representations in the display and do not make use of two accompanying mathematical representations. Moreover, we explore how eye fixation data complement verbal protocols by providing information about how students allocate their attention to different locations of a multi-representational display with and without concurrent verbal utterances. Our analysis indicates that verbal protocols and eye movement data are highly correlated, suggesting that eye fixations and verbalizations reflect similar cognitive processes in such studies.
Highlights
Multi-representational educational technologies are being deployed in science classrooms to support science learning and the development of representational competence
Achieving representational competence in mathematics or science is non-trivial as scientists have developed a host of diagrams, graphs, models, and pictures to represent the objects of study in their respective domains
Students must master representational systems unique to chemistry, they must concurrently apprehend mathematical representations of quantitative data that result from laboratory experiments
Summary
Multi-representational educational technologies are being deployed in science classrooms to support science learning and the development of representational competence. Our analysis indicates that verbal protocols and eye movement data are highly correlated, suggesting that eye fixations and verbalizations reflect similar cognitive processes in such studies As part of their normal course of instruction in science, students must develop a set of skills for constructing, interpreting, transforming and coordinating domain-specific external representations for learning and problem solving. In chemistry (and several other science disciplines) students routinely learn and solve problems while engaging with dynamic, multi-representational visualizations of previously imperceptible objects and phenomena Chief among these are innovative educational technologies that include animations, simulations and virtual laboratories (e.g., Russell, Kozma, Jones, Wykof, Marx, & Davis, 1997; Stieff, 2005; Stieff & Wilensky, 2003; Wu, et al 2001). Many of these tools include multiple representations that are dynamically linked to help students both perceive the relationship between the representing and represented world and connect various external representations together
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