The realities of large class sizes, insufficient funding, and inadequate physical capacity for lab-based learning makes it challenging for science teachers to deliver instruction effectively while also providing the individualized attention that each student needs.

To help address these issues, this program utilizes a blended learning curriculum to support science students in independent learning and lab activities. This program will be open and available to students through the use of web-based resources, and purposefully requires a minimum of hands-on time from the teacher. This open-source and student-driven mode of science education will allow a wider group of students access to lab experiences by removing the need for teachers to design and implement every lab experience that students are exposed to.

Additionally, by reducing the amount of time that teachers need to spend preparing lab activities, and by making lab activities more self-directed, teachers will be able to spend more time working with individual students. The pilot unit delivers content and lab experiences for a hands-on “water” unit with ties to real-world environmental issues.

The fully-implemented program consists of mini-units designed to be integrated within existing course curriculum; each mini-unit consists of roughly 4-6 student-driven lessons, with 2-3 of those lessons consisting of independent student-led lab activities. Full-scale implementation of this program would seek to provide science classrooms with an additional 1-2 lab activities weekly.

The Platform

To ensure wide access and maximum ease of use, the program utilizes web-based resources to deliver content and activities to students. Each mini-unit within the program will have it’s own webpage, and a “master” page for each science content area provides links to all of the mini-units available for that subject. Within each mini-unit, independently-guided lessons will be linked; each lesson will have its own page, consisting of text, diagrams, presentations, links, videos, and forms.

To view the program framework, click here.

Standards Met

This program addresses multiple standards for students from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In particular, the pilot unit will focus on the ISTE student standards involving knowledge construction (standard three), computational thinking (standard five), and creative communication (standard six).

To effectively work through the program, students will need to confidently use technology to collect research and analyze that research for accuracy (standard 3b), and they will need to utilize digital tools to collect and analyze data during the hand-on portions of the program (standard 5b). Throughout the program, every effort will be made to connect science to the real world; as a result, the students will be required to explore real-world issues and problems (standard 3d) as they explore the content and conduct experiments. Finally, the students will leverage technology in order to share their findings with their teacher and classmates; because the ideas being explored are interwoven, the students will need to be capable of using digital resources to communicate their understanding of these complex ideas (standard 6c).

Click here to view the complete list of ISTE standards.

The Activity

The pilot program, which guides sixth grade earth science students through a unit on water, consists of four lessons: (1) an introduction to the chemistry of water, (2) an overview of the water cycle, (3) an investigation of the impacts of water on the earth’s surface, and (4) an introduction to the basics of water pollution. Each lesson begins with a preliminary reading and includes a formative assessment to help students check their knowledge and understanding. The pilot lesson includes an embedded presentation to guide students through the lab activity, as well as a formative assessment of their knowledge after completion of the lab.

To view the pilot lesson, click here.

The Reading

This preliminary reading provides the background content knowledge needed for the activity. Depending on how the teacher chooses to incorporate this lesson, the information reviewed in the reading might be new to students, or it might be review. This reading reviews the ways that the water cycle interacts with the rock cycle, and explores three basic factors that can alter the amount of erosion that occurs.

The Activity

This activity has students create four demonstrations that illustrate the impact of the three factors they read about on the amount of erosion that occurs. The embedded presentation walks students through the lab process as they manipulate the volume of water, the presence of groundcover, and the slope of the ground to view the impact of those changes on the erosion of the soil. For additional guidance, videos are provided.

The Assessment

This formative assessment tests students on their knowledge by asking questions related to the reading, as well as the activity they completed. The assessment is "graded", so students are provided with instantaneous feedback after they submit their work.

If the teachers would like to track or use this data, they are able to instruct students to record or report their scores.

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