While Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is essential in the high school curriculum, it often carries a reputation of being formidable and overwhelming. The resulting unease students often face inhibits their ability to learn effectively; thus it can be beneficial to integrate a more familiar approach to teach them…

Purpose: When using embedded, student-centered assessment tools for maker education, understanding the characteristics of a body of evidence can help teachers guide the assessment process. This study aims to examine assessment artifacts from a makerspace program and present a set of qualities that emerged, which researchers and maker educators can…

The study used activity systems analysis to characterize the processes, dynamics, and tensions in the social practices developed by a class of academic low-achievers in a knowledge-building environment augmented by analytics-supported reflective assessment. A class of 37 Grade 9 low-achievers and an experienced teacher participated this study.…

In this paper, we investigate an approach to supporting students' learning in science through a combination of physical experimentation and virtual modeling. We present a study that utilizes a scientific inquiry framework, which we call "bifocal modeling," to link student-designed experiments and computer models in real time. In this…