Inquiry-Based Learning: Cognitive Measures & Systems Support (Home)

Geology: From Observation to Hypothesis

One of the most mature and popular inquiry-oriented courses at Hampshire is Professor John Reid's Evolution of the Earth. In this course teams of students develop and work on research projects carried out in the field at local sites, such as particular locales on the Connecticut River or Holyoke Range. An important aspect of the course is helping students to make initial, geologically relevant observations about a scene and to generate initial hypotheses and research ideas from their observations.

The Geology project currently consists of two prototypes for software that will support and partially automate features of John Reid's classroom exercises for building observation skills: Observation Notebook and Observation Guide. The goal is to teach students how to think scientifically, and to entice teachers to use investigative pedagogy.

Observation Notebook:

• presents users with a structured sequence of images about which to make observations. The exercise is divided into 6 phases:
  1. blurred image, general observations
  2. high-resolution image with zoom, detailed observations
  3. affiliated images of the same location (from different times, vantage points, etc.)
  4. computer coaching to generate observations that cover the important areas in the image
  5. prediction-based question and answer session
  6. framing of a detailed hypothesis in English.
• provides an intuitive notebook-like interface for recording and refining observations.
• embeds data in the image to allow for simple measurements at later stages of the exercise.
• through voice-over Socratic questions, invites the student to develop hypotheses based on the observations of the landscape and they data they measure.

Observation Guide:

• provides an intuitive interface for providing observations in a machine-understandable form (a frame-based knowledge representation system)
• includes agents that monitor the user's observations and provide feedback to the user. For example, some agents point out patterns in the observations or features of the image that have not yet been observed, while others suggest related reading or provide tutorials on background materials.

The first versions of the Observation Notebook and Observation Guide software and associated classroom activities will be tested in the 1999/2000 school year.

A Screen from an Early Observation Notebook Prototype: