Aim
Educational Philosophy
Learning Environment
Evaluation
SCHOOL/UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS
Exploring Minds Interactive   Electronic Network
TSU Variable Stars Project
MOLA and VCL
Metacognitive Tools for Meaningful Learning

 

 

Aim

Exploring Minds is a scientific/literacy interdisciplinary project designed to stimulate an interest in earth/space and biological science within middle, secondary, and postsecondary students. The aim of the Exploring Minds educational project is to engage students in learner-centered self-directed case based instruction by incorporating other subject areas using an emerging curriculum. Students actively participate and learn science, mathematics and technology in a collaborative format with their teachers, university educators, community resources, and practicing scientists. The classroom teacher is the catalyst in this endeavor by facilitating the instruction and learning process.

Educational Philosophy

The educational philosophy that guides this project is the notion that students are curious and actively engage in learning situations that present challenges through problem-oriented tasks; using authentic and meaningful materials, in their quest to answer self-initiated questions. This philosophy adheres to the dictum that coming to know new information presented in meaningful contexts is better understood when thinking about the processes necessary to accomplish product outcomes challenge the student.

Thinking and learning are enabling processes but they are not synonymous. The former is a process that moves from some beginning event to some conclusion or solution. The latter is a process that focuses on increasing or perfecting the execution of the solutions in the form of a product outcome.

During the former, the student is presented with challenging situations/problems that require thoughtful consideration before engagement, then reflective thought in the processes that will be necessary to plan a course of action that eventually leads to a resolution or solution. The latter focuses the student on achieving prescribed outcomes by presenting the student with predetermined steps to follow to reach these given learning outcomes. When lessons are designed to obtain prescribed answers with little contemplation for their resolution, they are product oriented. However, lessons that engage students by immersing them in problem-oriented tasks with authentic materials, and provide them with multiple venues to reach a resolution or solution using divergent paths are less focusing and allow for more thinking.

Learning Environment

The focus of this project is on ways that teachers and students become a "community of thinkers." The classroom is a place where ideas are shared through interactive learning environments in an atmosphere of coming to know through understanding and discussion. A learning environment where teachers think about their subject in ways that promote and invite students to participate by offering lessons and assignments that require critical thinking (thinking about thinking in ways to bring about change in one's experience) and imaginative thinking (exploring future possibilities with existing ideas) rather than emphasizing rote memorization of facts.

A community of thinkers is defined as an active group of students and teachers striving to learn more about a discipline by engaging in critical and imaginative thinking. Developing a community of thinkers focuses on the kinds of thought processes needed by the teacher and students to achieve learning outcomes. Within our community of thinkers, teachers and students ask questions, seek answers, and reflect on their thoughts and feelings as they engage in problem-oriented investigations.

Learning contexts that encourage students to think about learning enables them to learn principles instead of learning prescriptions that they may not understand or partially understand. Building communities of thinkers involves social interaction between teachers, students, and members of the community in ways that new information is incorporated (integrated and related to other knowledge sources in memory) rather than compartmentalized (isolated due to rote memorization). Such a community is situated within an emergent curriculum that evolves when ideas are negotiated between teachers and students.

Evaluation

Students are evaluated in both the cognitive and affective domains. Evaluations of students' portfolios (working and report) on the Explorers restricted web site are assessed by the teacher. Statistical analyses of student concept maps and interactive vee diagrams are conducted by the teacher and by researchers at TSU's Center of Excellence in Information Systems. Timed writings and concept maps are used to assess students' prior knowledge, world experience, and degree of spontaneous relationships between course content and the specific topic of study in the self-directed cases.

Student essay exams are scored by the teacher and may be scored according to idea units or root indicators by researchers at TSU. Qualitative evaluations are analyzed by coding the data using NU*DIST to organize the data. Within these assessments the degree of melding the societal and formal school curriculum will be determined. This will help us to better understand how culturally diverse learners cope with knowledge acquisition through self-cases using their prior knowledge and world experience.

SCHOOL/UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS

The project teams scientists at TSU and Goddard Space Flight Center with students at a number of different public and private high schools. Among these are the University School of Nashville, Davidson Academy, and Hunters Lane High School in Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, and George Washington High School Campus in New York City.

Undergraduate and graduate students who qualify and are accepted into TSUs Center for Automated Space Science (CASS) and the Center for System Science Research (CSSR) programs function under the auspicies of the Explorers educational program. Students participate in these NASA and NSF sponsored research educational programs from TSU, South Carolina State Universtiy, and Western Kentucky University.

The project is directed by Marino C. Alvarez, Ed.D., of Tennessee State University's Department of Teaching and Learning within the College of Education. Dr. Alvarez oversees the administration of the project with support from the Center of Excellence in Information Systems at TSU, the Tennessee Space Grant Consortium, which is a member of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Programs under NASA, and the TSU/NASA Network Resources Training Site (NRTS).

Exploring Minds Interactive Electronic Network

Exploring Minds Interactive Electronic Network is an active venue for professors, teachers, researchers, and students to reflect, negotiate, and evaluate the teaching/learning process that enables systemic changes to occur under meaningful and thoughtful circumstances.  Ideas are revealed in narrative and visual formats through electronic journals, conceptual arrangement of ideas, and V diagrams so that metacognitive tasks such as self-monitoring, reflective and imaginative thinking, and critical analyses is a crucial part of the learning process.  The basic premise that underpins Exploring Minds is that the mind deals with meaning and meaning is the basis for conceptual understanding of facts and ideas.

This restricted portion of our site contains a Director Console, Coordinator Console, Student Console, Teacher Console, Researcher Console, Guest Console, and Parent Console. All information is entered electronically by students and collected for analyses in a database at our TSU web server. Teachers are active learners with their students. They facilitate the learning process by guiding students in their inquires, evoking discussions, and involving their students with other affiliated schools whose students may be engaged in similar research topics.

Teachers manage their student electronic accounts by assigning passwords, determining the degree of portfolio sharing among students, and responding to student inquires. The Researcher Console permits the researcher to view and respond to students under the direction of their teacher, but it does not allow them to mangage student records or mangage groups. Students post their thoughts, feelings, progress, inquires, and data in their individualized electronic notebook. Likewise, they plan, carry out, and finalize their case-based research using electronic transmissions in the communications section and are also able to develop and receive feedback of their concept maps and interactive vee diagrams. Each student has their own electronic portfolio for storing and sharing items related to their case research. Their peer edited papers are posted on the WWW for others to read and react. Students present their research reports with their teachers, scientists, and university educators at international, national, and state science, mathematics, technology, and literacy conferences.  There are many unique features including an Action Research component that are part of this ensemble.

The Exploring Minds Network is used as a research tool in gathering basic information, as a method of disseminating research results, and as a form of communication between scientists, teachers, and students.

TSU Variable Stars Project

The students perform actual research and data analysis. In the Variable Star project, students work with astronomers from the TSU Automated Astronomy Group. Data is collected from Automatic Photoelectric Telescopes at Fairborn Observatory at Washington Camp in the Patagonia Mountains of Southern Arizona. This data contains information on the brightness of stars over a period of time. They engage in self-directed case-based study as they conduct their investigations. The Case Guide is a document for them to reference as they develop their cases.

With the Washington Camp site, the former Explorers of the Universe now Exploring Minds, is a national project. From the Fairborn Observatory the data is collected and sent to astronomers in Nashville. The astronomers at TSU program the automatic photoelectric telescope at the Fairborn Observatory via the Internet. The data is collected and transmitted back to the astronomers at the TSU site. The astronomers send the raw data to students elsewhere in Tennessee and in Virginia. The students analyze the data and send their results back to the Astronomers in Nashville. Eventually students will be scheduling the automatic telescopes themselves through an artificial intelligence package that is currently being developed (thus helping test the package).

MOLA and VCL

Two other projects are affiliated with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Teachers and students in the Explorers of the Universe project are involved in the Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and the Vegetation Canopy Lidar (VCL) Missions. Students in the middle and secondary grades are investigating self-directed cases relating to these two projects. The VCL mission will orbit the Earth and collect data of the biomass of the our planet. In the VCL mission, these students are carrying out a longitudinal study, beginning with the initial stages of the planning process, through launch in February 2000, and subsequent data gathering and analyses. The MOLA project has students mapping topography data received from the Mars Global Surveyor and developing analogies to their respective terrain locations.

Metacognitive Tools for Meaningful Learning

The Explorers of the Universe project relies on the students conceptualizing the information they are learning. Two Metacognitive Tools are used by the students for this purpose. These two tools are the concept map and the Vee Diagram. The Concept Map relies on graphically linking ideas. The hierarchical concept map encourages the student to explore the real relationships between concepts, rather than imposing an artificial structure on the concepts.

The V Diagram structures the way in which a student develops his or her research. The left side of the V concentrates on the thinking aspects (i.e. conceptual and theoretical ideas), while the right side focuses on the doing aspects (methodological concepts). In the center of the V are the focus or research questions, that are the central questions being asked. The point of the V narrows as it goes down the page, with the focus getting more exacting and concrete. On the conceptual left, categories go from World View (vague) to Concepts (focused).  The Interactive V Diagram is the only one of its kind that has been developed here at the Tennessee State University, Center of Excellence in Information Systems.

The project has the returns of empowering active research at the middle, secondary, and postsecondary school levels and increasing the participating students' ability to read and incorporate scientific literature into case-based investigations.