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Title: Examining how prior knowledge impacts students’ discussions and knowledge construction during computational model building
Student discussions have been shown to be beneficial to student learning (Chi & Wylie, 2014), however, the impact of prior knowledge on these discussions is not fully understood. In this research, we analyze students’ synchronous spoken discussions to study how prior knowledge impacted group discussions and knowledge construction while constructing computational models of 1D and 2D motion. We present a method for evaluating the impact of prior knowledge on student discussions and individual work. We illustrate this method through a case study analysis of two groups with students across a spectrum of prior knowledge. Our exploratory findings suggest that students with low prior knowledge greatly benefit from group discussions followed by individual model construction.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2017000
NSF-PAR ID:
10348701
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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