What are the students' perceptions of the effectiveness of teaching the scientific and engineering practices of the NGSS in the virtual environment. 42 Table 3: Student ratings of the frequency of the activities involving the science and engineering practices……….
ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT
The school emphasizes that its community culture shapes students to become ethical persons by emphasizing the virtues of respect, honesty and integrity. The school provides opportunities for students to serve each other and local communities so that students learn compassion and responsibility for others.
AREA OF INQUIRY
In 2020, after the first year of implementation, the science teachers wanted to evaluate whether their redesign had indeed been successful in helping students meet the performance expectations of the NGSS. They were committed to teaching students the NGSS SEPs and covering key content in their curriculum.
LITERATURE REVIEW
At the level of the structure of online learning environments, there are several strategies that have proven to be effective. One literature review on NGSS alignment with curricula (Fulmer et al., 2018) found that this problem is both phenomenological and design-based.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
According to Anderson, online courses must balance independent learning with meaningful and well-structured student-student interaction. On the online platform there are new ways to interact: sound, text, graphics, video and virtual reality. Teacher-teacher interaction in the form of collaboration and teacher-learning communities increases teacher effectiveness in all environments.
Moreover, it is not known how all these different parts interact with each other in the service of learning. This study will focus on the three main types of interaction, teacher-student, student-student and student-content. For the teacher-student and student-student categories, I have chosen to evaluate the most valued teaching practices identified in
For the interaction between students and the content, I chose two teaching practices typical of running labs in a virtual environment, teachers running labs for students to observe and take notes, and students simulating labs at home or doing experiments at home. Finally, for student-content interactions that involve a significant amount of teacher-to-teacher content design and combine the new tenth grade curriculum's focus on NGSS science practices, I will assess student perceptions of five science practice activities that teachers said were taught them in some form during the semester. The focus of this study will be how tenth grade science teachers taught their subjects in an online environment during the pandemic to increase these three types of interaction and how students benefited from this teaching.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
PROJECT DESIGN
As an outcome measure, I administered a survey to the students at the end of the semester that had them rate the effectiveness of the teaching strategies and the SEPs, reassessed their interest in science, and then collected their scores on the final, summative assessment of the semester. To determine the most effective teaching strategies, I surveyed the students at the end of the semester about the frequency and effectiveness of the six selected lessons. It consisted of questions about the frequency of the teaching strategies using a 4-point Likert scale, and then questions about the strategies. effectiveness for learning on a 5-point Likert scale.
At the end of the survey there were three open-ended questions on the most effective strategies for teaching scientific knowledge and skills. I analyzed student responses through a standard calculation of the mean, standard deviation, standard error, and confidence interval for both frequency and. To determine the effectiveness of teaching SEPs online, I again surveyed students at the end of the semester on the frequency and effectiveness of activities and assignments that engaged them in the five science and engineering practices.
It consists of questions about the frequency of learning strategies using a 4-point Likert scale and then questions about the effectiveness of learning activities on a 5-point Likert scale. It was important to determine whether the frequency was different. teaching practices would result in differences in student outcomes across teacher departments. To determine whether online learning had an effect on students' interest in science, I conducted a survey among students at the beginning and end of the semester and then combined the student responses.
FINDINGS
Students saw only minor differences in the frequency of participation in the SEPs, with negligible differences in the ratings of different teachers. It appears that teachers engaged students in SEPs at roughly the same rate and frequency over the course of the semester as they did in instructional practices (see Figure 11). The analysis of the changes in the z-scores per quartile shows that the virtual learning environment had a positive influence on the scores of the lowest performing students compared to the average, and a negative influence on the scores of the highest performing students ( see Table 6).
A paired t-test showed that the mean z-score for the lowest quartile increased by 0.43 from their ninth grade to their tenth grade science scores (p=0.028), indicating that these students improved significantly compared to the other students. In the complexity of all the changes the teachers had to make, could explain why the variation occurred. One explanation could have to do with the demographic breakdown of the students in the evaluations.
But since the students rated group work as one of the most effective strategies, this does not seem to explain the differences. There are a number of notable results from the paired t-tests on the interest survey responses (see Table 8). There are a number of important differences in the degrees of interest of the females and males.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Structure online instruction to privilege continual teacher feedback on student work through the
- Discontinue student at-home experiments in favor of observing teacher experiments and expand the use of
- Provide extra-credit activities, summer enrichment units and other means to address the learning
- Promote student interest in science and engineering careers through more assignments that apply
Inquiry-based learning is the foundation of NGSS (Council, 2011) and has been shown to be highly effective in teaching not only science knowledge but also SEPs (Pedaste et al., 2015). The interactive video core labs have a structure that is very similar to inquiry-based learning progressions; they start with phenomena, prompt students to propose explanations, and test their proposals with feedback mechanisms (Pivot Interactives, n.d.). Teachers can frame this activity within SEPs instruction, provide specific instruction on how to develop science skills before key labs, and then have students assess their thinking afterward in order to create a self-directed learning progression similar to the guided that Mamun et al.
Although not the central focus of this study, the findings for question three provide a glimpse into the learning lags of the students. One such project that the students did last year that the teachers had to abandon this year was building a fire extinguisher. Teachers can offer this as an extra-credit assignment and provide resources and after-school tutoring to guide the students.
If the school and the teachers don't have the resources, they can find a summer science program that already exists and promote it to the students. It is a credit to the work of the teachers that students became more interested in science and men more in engineering, although very slightly, although they sat at home and were not involved in practical laboratories and other activities to which they are inclined not. enjoy. The school can invite professionals in the STEM fields to talk to the students about their work in order to increase students' awareness of the different STEM careers (Byars-Winston, 2014), either periodically or through a career scholarship structure .
DISCUSSION
While some findings, such as the effectiveness of teacher feedback and group work, are consistent with the research literature on online learning, other findings, such as the varied impact of virtual learning on lower and higher achieving students, have no parallel in the. The limitations of the data prevent further investigation into the possible causes of these differences. It is difficult to say that the conclusions from this study will apply to other virtual learning environments that are tailor-made and not forced on teachers by a global pandemic.
One of the topics that is very interesting is the impact of school closures during the pandemic on student learning (CREDO, 2020). This study does not provide sufficient evidence to accurately determine any potential student learning losses during a virtual learning semester. Such a study should include a comparison between students, curriculum, and student learning outcomes from previous years compared to Fall 2020.
The interactive videos of the hub labs appear to be a powerful format for approaching real lab experiments and inquiry-based learning. How to best recreate laboratory experiments in a virtual science classroom is one of the most important questions for virtual science learning. The findings of this study suggest that fostering interest in science is possible even in online courses, but more can be done to discover the key levers to stimulate this interest when students cannot engage in hands-on STEM work.
The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: A rapid review of the evidence. Values Underpinning US STEM Education: An Analysis of the Next Generation Science Standards. Evidence on the potential impact on the educational outcomes of vulnerable children learning at home during COVID-19.
A literature review of the factors that influence e-learning and blended learning in relation to learning outcomes, student satisfaction and engagement. Development of the Science, Technology, and Mathematics Educational and Career Interest Scale for High School. Finding fit: Perceptions and integration of next generation science standards by elementary teachers.
Prevalence and correlates of PTSD and depressive symptoms one month after the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in a sample of Chinese university students quarantined at home. Efficacy of the technological engineering design approach: Imposed cognitive demands within design-based biotechnology instruction. A study of the psychological status of elementary school students who were quarantined at home during the 2019 coronavirus disease epidemic in Hangzhou, China.
APPENDICES
Excellence Academy 10th Grade Science Student Profile Survey (Aug/2020)
Q9 I would like to learn knowledge and skills related to SCIENCE because they can be useful in helping me prepare for college. Q11 I am interested in working in a career that allows me to use skills or knowledge related to ENGINEERING. Q12 I would like to learn knowledge and skills related to ENGINEERING because they may be useful in helping me prepare for college.
Excellence Academy 10th Grade Science End of Semester Survey (Dec/2020)
