The Progress Portfolio: Designing Reflective Tools for a Classroom Context

A great deal of effort has gone into developing open-ended inquiry activities for science education as well as complex computer tools for accessing scientific data to help students learn science. To be successful with these tools and activities, students need to learn a set of inquiry skills and to develop a new mode of classroom work: reflective inquiry. In this paper we describe the design of the Progress Portfolio, a software environment to promote reflective inquiry, and we examine the influences of the unique practices and features of classroom contexts on our design process. Keywords Children, collaborative learning, education applications, learner-centered design, inquiry support tools THE NEED FOR REFLECTIVE INQUIRY There is increasing effort in science education to engage K12 students in more active and authentic learning in which students take responsibility for conducting sustained inquiries [11]. Students are being asked to formulate researchable questions, design their ow...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Ben Loh, Josh Radinsky, Eric Russell, Louis M. Gomez, Brian J. Reiser, Daniel C. Edelson
• Keywords: CHI 1998, Human Computer Interaction, Open-ended Inquiry Activities, Reflective Inquiry, Tools