The Center for Technology Enhanced Learning of Science

By Robert Tinker and Ken Bell

Five years ago we created the Center for Technology Enhanced Learning (TELS). The TELS Center has created a unique vision of the effective use of information technologies in science learning. The basic idea is that students integrate their growing understanding with prior knowledge through guided exploration of highly interactive software, thoughtful questioning, and dramatic visualizations.

TELS combines the development of new teaching materials and research on classroom use of these materials with graduate training. TELS has been extraordinarily productive. We have:

• Developed 18 curriculum modules that address challenging topics in secondary science.
• Engaged 104 teachers in over 42 schools nationwide.
• Tested modules in 330 classes with over 14,000 students.
• Trained more than 40 Fellows and nine post-doctoral scholars who have received fellowships, tenure, and other awards.
• Administered over 20,000 annual benchmark assessments and over 24,000 pre-tests and post-tests.
• Published 106 academic papers, with 32 more in press.
• Presented at over 200 conferences.

The TELS Center is a huge enterprise that, in addition to the Concord Consortium, includes the University of California, Berkeley; Arizona State University; Mills College; Christopher Newport University; North Carolina Central University; Pennsylvania State University; the University of Toronto; the Technion Institute of Technology; and public schools in Acton (MA), Berkeley (CA), Mount Diablo (CA), Norfolk (VA), Durham (NC), and Tempe (AZ).

Middle school and high school science modules

Try out the modules—they are free and available online. There are at least two for each of the six common middle and high school science courses. Go to http://wise.berkeley.edu/, join, sign in, go to Projects, and then to the TELS Project Family.

These modules demonstrate the value of the collaboration supported by the TELS Center. The authors are primarily graduate students at Berkeley and Arizona State. Many of the modules take advantage of Concord Consortium models based on BioLogica and the Molecular Workbench. The technology to deliver the modules online was developed at Berkeley, Toronto, and the Concord Consortium. The modules were tested at schools near TELS partners in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Virginia. An impressive network of people and partners worked to make each part a success.

TELS instructional materials have a wide audience, including more than 25 research groups internationally. Curriculum materials have been translated into six languages. For example, graduate students in Korea presented research findings using Korean versions of the Global Warming and Rock Cycle modules at the East-Asian Association for Science Education meetings in 2007.

In support of its work, TELS has developed new resources for researchers, an improved approach to the design of materials based on design principles and patterns, a platform for developing, deploying, and studying the modules, a targeted professional development program, a national test-bed of diverse schools and teachers, and new assessments.

Sailing with TELS Technology

We call TELS the “Educational Accelerator” because we wanted to use our tools to help accelerate the work of others with similar interests. We have developed technologies that are helpful to anyone developing applications of information technologies to STEM education. Borrowing the concept of a particle accelerator, but on a far more modest scale, we make it possible for others to: increase the sophistication of the software studied; create high-quality learning activities; customize tested activities to new curricular standards; test instructional patterns and principles that have succeeded in other research; design embedded assessments to test ideas about how students learn; expand the number of students in studies; and increase the amount and detail of data collected.

These advantages result from open source software developed for TELS called the Scalable Architecture for Interactive Learning (SAIL). SAIL features the ability to author and deliver sophisticated, highly interactive applications to student computers in educational contexts. SAIL was developed to support applications that must run locally, such as probeware and computationally intense models like the Molecular Workbench. Such applications are of fundamental importance to STEM education because they support learning through inquiry of real and virtual worlds. While not restricted to this class of applications, SAIL is uniquely able to integrate them into complete, interactive learning activities. If you want to become involved in SAIL software development, contact us.

TELS research has driven the development of SAIL, but other projects are using and expanding it. Several projects at the Concord Consortium have already made important contributions to SAIL. It is in use at Northwestern University; the University of Hawaii, Manoa; Michigan State University; UCLA; Maximilians University, Munich; the University of Twente; and other European Union universities.

TELS research

TELS has gathered compelling evidence for the impact of technology-enhanced instruction on student acquisition of important science concepts and their integration to create robust knowledge. The TELS partners have created, tested, and refined materials that cover middle and high school science content that teachers have identified as particularly difficult to learn. At the TELS schools, we have explored the contribution of instructional materials, principal leadership, professional development, assessment strategies, and improved supports for students.

In a study of 9,000 students in the first year of implementation, TELS modules showed improved outcomes compared to the typical curriculum, a result we published in Science. 1 We attribute these gains to the features of the TELS design, which include: guided inquiry based on interactive visualizations, models, and probeware; relevant contexts that interest students; ample time for reflection; a focus on integrating prior experiences with new observations, student collaboration, comprehensive activities, and easy implementation. We have developed new assessment strategies that give us unprecedented detail about the degree of student knowledge integration that results from only a few weeks of exposure to TELS materials in an entire year. 2

We have begun to disentangle the effects of technology on student and teacher success with science. We used evidence from the first year classroom trials and teacher responses to improve the materials. Using these proven materials, reliable outcome measures, powerful logging capabilities, and experienced teachers allows TELS to detail specific benefits in design studies, comparison studies, and case-based analyses. One interesting study showed that students who systematically explored models learned more.

Robert Tinker (bob@concord.org) is President of the Concord Consortium. Ken Bell (kbell@concord.org) is the Project Manager for TELS.