Abstracts - Earli

secondary vocational education and 125 grade nine students. Preliminary results showsignificantly better learning gains in the experimental condition. Further analysis of students’relational and translational processes and their connection with learning outcomes will bepresented at the conference.The effects of visualization on generating alternative solutions that support design projectsBat-Sheva Eylon, The Weizmann Institute of Science, IsraelShay Soffer, The Weizmann Institute of Science, IsraelThe study was carried out in the context of a collaborative project between academy and industry("Physics and Industry"). Sixty seven 11th-12th grade physics students worked in teams during 1-1.5 year on an authentic design project culminating in a working prototype. For example, onegroup designed a system for checking the road accident history of a motor vehicle. The programused the approach of "systematic inventive thinking" starting with design of many alternativeimaginary solutions and then converging through an iterative process on the final product. Weinvestigated the effect of using a thinking tool enabling students to visualize microscopicphenomena in an imaginary fashion ("amazing dwarfs") on the design of the projects. Analysis of30 portfolios showed that the visual thinking tool enabled students to come up with manyalternative solutions (about 80% presented a total of 6-20 solutions. These solutions were founduseful in constructing the final physical projects. Also, the results highlight the importance ofguiding students in the process of designing imaginary solutions, in characterizing the desiredsolutions, and in identifying similarities and differences between solutions beyond their visualappearance. Peer and expert reviews of intermediate products (e.g. the imaginary alternativesolutions) were very effective in advancing the problem-solving process.Visualizing ScienceMarcia Linn, University of California, Berkeley, USAHee-Sun Lee, Tufts University, USAAlthough visualizations in precollege science courses have often failed, the Technology-EnhancedLearning in Science (TELS) research program reports stunning impacts of visualizationsembedded in inquiry projects on student learning. This presentation will analyze whenvisualizations succeed and identify factors that interfere with their success. Students grapple withmultiple, conflicting, and often confusing ideas while learning science. Research has shown thatinstruction is both effective and durable when teachers use students’ ideas as a starting point andguide the learners as they articulate their repertoire of ideas, add new ideas includingvisualizations, sort out these ideas in a variety of contexts, make connections among ideas atmultiple levels of analysis, develop ever more nuanced criteria for evaluating ideas, and regularlyreformulate increasingly interconnected views about the phenomena. We refer to this process asknowledge integration. TELS research teams have designed 18 modules that include embeddedvisualizations to promote knowledge integration. We found that successful modules introduced thevisualization in the context of a personally relevant problem such as global warming, airbag safety,or recycling of materials. In addition, visualizations were most successful when they wereintroduced using a pattern that involved eliciting student ideas, enabling learners to interact withthe visualization to test their conjectures, stimulating students to engage in a collaborativediscussion to develop class criteria about valid scientific evidence, and encouraging students toreflect on the evidence and to sort out their ideas. In a cohort comparison study, over 50 teachersin 16 schools and 5 states showed that for life science, physical science, earth science, chemistry,physics, and biology, experience with TELS resulted in improved understanding of the science– 174 –