Teaching math in my chemistry class was challenging.

And there were so many lessons that used math: stoichiometry, density, ideal gas laws, pH values, just to name a few. I observed that students learned symbol manipulation heuristics to solve problems like plug-and-chug and rarely leveraged concepts experts might use. As a result, students struggled solving problems where their heuristics did not fit. To address this issue, I spent the past six years researching how to design digital learning environments that help students develop a deeper understanding of math concepts, which in turn support their ability to solve science problems.

A Design Based Research Approach

Image from, Easterday, M. W., Lewis, D. R., & Gerber, E. M. (2014). Design-based research process: Problems, phases, and applications. Boulder, CO: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

In my work I take a design-based research (DBR) approach to solving problems and developing theory. DBR is “a process that integrates design and scientific methods to allow researchers to generate useful products and effective theory for solving individual and collective problems of education” (Easterday, Lewis, and Gerber, 2014). Using DBR I develop tools that help overcome problems, but also theory that can help solve a class of problems. To the right is a model of the general process.

Methodologies

I use a multimodal approach to develop theory on problems. I am always willing and excited to learn new approaches to answer my research questions. Below is a sample of different data collection and analysis I have used in my work.

Think Alouds,

Eye Tracking,

MOXO Sensors,

LOG Data,

Pre/Post Tests,

Interviews,

Quantitative Analysis,

Interaction Analysis,

and Qualitative Analysis

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Think Alouds, Eye Tracking, MOXO Sensors, LOG Data, Pre/Post Tests, Interviews, Quantitative Analysis, Interaction Analysis, and Qualitative Analysis 〰️

Theories I Draw From

Central Theories in My Dissertation

  • Constructionism

  • Symbolic Forms

  • Intelligent Tutoring System

To understand a problem and come up with solutions, I draw from various fields including cognitive science, philosophy, HCI, socio-cultural theory, and AI.

Publications

Shi, J., Shah, A., Hedman, G., & O'Rourke, E. (2019, May). Pyrus: Designing a collaborative programming game to promote problem solving behaviors. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12).

  • Many educators might be interested in encouraging certain behaviors in classes such as cooperation or communication. This paper defines an approach to designing learning environments which encourage certain behaviors.

  • I was responsible for determining and writing the methodology of this project. I also contributed to the initial analysis of data and overall direction of the findings from our experiment.