Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center an NSF Science of Learning Center

Roy Pea and Brigid Barron, LIFE Leads in Informal Learning, have created a new graduate course at Stanford University:

The aim of this three-unit seminar is to explore through multiple lenses and comparative considerations the understanding of fundamental phenomena in cognition, thinking and reasoning, discourse, and interaction. The course offers grounding in socio-cultural/ situated and cognitive science perspectives on these topics, and comparisons will highlight their differing values, contributions, and tradeoffs, and will investigate efforts to develop theory and methodologies that incorporate both lines of research. A primary focus of this course is on informal learning outside school settings for children as well as adults, in contrast to formal, designed learning environments. For those concerned with school learning, a point of interest is that we will sometimes be concerned with domain learning, as in mathematics, science, technology, with text and new media literacy, but also with issues of evolving personal identity, social networks, and interests that occur by virtue of cognition in learning and activity.

The LIFE Center is advised by three advisory boards. Its Advisory Council is the overarching body that reviews and provides advise on the overall progress and positioning of the Center. On February 21st and 22nd, 2006, LIFE’s leadership team met with the Advisory Council at Wallenberg Hall on the Stanford campus to review LIFE’s progress. Council members John Bruer (chair), John Seely Brown, and Henry Kelly first received reports from Michael Posner (chair of LIFE’s Science & Technology Review Board) and Shirley Malcom (chair of LIFE’s Education, Collaboration, and Outreach Board). They then reviewed the external evaluation report of LIFE from Year 1, followed by in-depth discussions with LIFE leadership about programmatic issues associated with interdisciplinary science and long-term plans associated with LIFE.

The LIFE Center has recently purchased an island in the Second Life (SL) 3-D virtual world created in 2003 by San Francisco based Linden Lab Research, Inc. Linden Lab rents virtual land in their virtual world and almost everything else is built and owned by its users (who are called residents). Since opening to the public in 2003, SL has grown explosively and today is inhabited by over 100,000 people from around the planet.

The LIFE Center’s private island is called Terra Vita (Earth Life in Latin), a name chosen via a survey of LIFE Center members. There is room for many of LIFE’s research, education, and outreach goals to be addressed in SL. John Bransford, Drue Gawel, and Baba Kofi Weusijana of the University of Washington’s College of Education have a research project underway to investigate the relationship between learning and interactivity in Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs). Participants will experience a variety of problem solving environments, build learning theories based upon their experiences, and then relate their theories to the research literature (compared to the more typical procedure of learning simply by reading about these kinds of studies). There are many types of learning environments LIFE Center members and collaborators might build in order to help people learn more about learning, transfer and assessment and to conduct research on these topics.

Examples include….

• Environments that teach about theories of learning
• Constructivist environments for synchronous group learning
• Constructionist environments for asynchronous and individual learning
• Environments for just-in-time learning and knowledge management
• Environments for assessing peoples’ preparation for future learning
• Environments for virtual LIFE Center meetings or events

With Terra Vita, the LIFE Center members are able to build permanent learning environments that can be visited by others. Having the island allows LIFE to control other options (like scripting rules, land formation, etc.) and it provides an easy to find place where we can invite students, researchers, and research participants from around the world. Most importantly, the island will allow us to collaboratively design IRB-approved experiments that protect the rights and privacy of human participants and let them learn from their activities.

Second Life purposefully resembles the “Metaverse” in the Science Fiction book “Snow Crash” (Neal Stephenson, 1992). Linden Lab’s goal was to create a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate. SL is not a game, it is a platform where you build environments including games. SL works under both Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP. SL residents retain the intellectual property rights to the objects they create, although they are required to offer the game’s creators an open license to it. SL residents can radically change their appearance, stream in media, design, buy and sell objects, buildings, vehicles, clothing, etc. SL also allows residents to write scripts with its own Java/C-like language.

The LIFE Center is in the process of setting up a center-wide zoning board to administer the island. If you want to do a research project on Terra Vita, you will need approval from your local IRB. Individuals with a credit card (for identification purposes) can get a free account and the client software from http://SecondLife.com. We hope to see you online!

Byron Reeves, a LIFE Strand Leader in Implicit Learning, conducts laboratory experiments on how people respond to media (see picture). He uses physiological measures of heart rate and skin conductance to understand the relationship between arousal and learning. Due to the interdisciplinary focus of LIFE research, a similar data collection space is now being set up in the College of Education at the University of Washington.

Tiffany Lee, a graduate student researcher in the Everyday Science & Technology Group, has been learning about this research approach and working with John Bransford (LIFE PI) and Nancy Vye (LIFE Strand Leader in Formal Learning) on the use of the equipment in LIFE research studies. New developments in sensor technologies have significantly reduced the cost of this kind of research. The new lab is being set up with the Infiniti ProComp System, which is also being used by Reeves. The initial LIFE research using this new lab will focus on the relationship between people knowledge and learners’ physiological responses.

LIFE Center faculty John Bransford and Dan Schwartz created a new course taught in parallel at the two campuses in 2006: “Topics in Technology and Learning: Interactivity” (Stanford), “Interactivity and Transfer” (University of Washington). The goal of this course was (a) to provide LIFE and other graduate students with a cross-disciplinary view of different characterizations of interactivity with respect to learning that range from cognitive to behavioral to social to neural; and (b) to review relevant literature and conceptualize interactivity for learning. Students evaluated and designed interactive environments for learning, while reading empirical research on effectiveness.

LIFE Researchers and collaborators will be presenting a range of research studies at an upcoming interactive poster session at the American Educational Research Association conference to be held in San Francisco in April.

SESSION: Insights From Everyday Cognition: Ethnographic Studies of Science, Math, and Technology Learning
Friday, April 7th from 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Moscone Center West / 3rd Floor, Rm 3012
San Francisco, CA

ABSTRACT: In our structured poster session, we share research that examines the processes of informal learning across multiple settings relevant to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning. We explore everyday contexts where children and their parents learn by working, playing, and organizing the routines of their lives-with and without structured educational interventions. The portfolio of work presented is organized to address a common question: What are the technological, mathematical, and scientific competencies and dispositions that young people and families develop in informal contexts? Our collective goal is two-fold: to generate more robust theoretical accounts of informal learning and to inform the design of educational curricula and programs through a careful accounting of learning that takes place across everyday settings.

Click through to see session details (presenters, titles).

Session Organizer: Heather Toomey Zimmerman (University of Washington)
Chair: Philip Bell (University of Washington)
Discussant: Rogers Hall (Vanderbilt University)

Poster Presentations:

Mapping Learning Across Boundaries: The Role of Informal Contexts in the Emergence of Expertise and the Development of Interest
Brigid J.s. Barron (Stanford University), Lori Takeuchi (Stanford University), Caitlin Kennedy Martin (Stanford University), Rachel Fithian (Stanford University)

Technological Fluency in the Context of a Community-Based Computer Clubhouse
Susie B. Wise (Stanford University), Brigid J.s. Barron (Stanford University), Elizabeth Ozar (Stanford University)

Gaming to Learn What? An Ethnographic Study of Kids’ Video Game Play
Thomas J. Satwicz (University of Washington), Laurie McCarthy (University of Washington), Reed R. Stevens (University of Washington)

How Children in a Multicultural, Low-SES Community Learn Science Across Social Settings
Philip L. Bell (University of Washington), Leah A. Bricker (University of Washington), Maisy McGaughey (University of Washington), Tiffany R Lee (University of Washington), Suzanne Reeve (University of Washington), Heather Toomey Zimmerman (University of Washington), Carrie Tzou (Northwestern University)

Shared Family Narratives in Support of Learning in a Science Center
Heather Toomey Zimmerman (University of Washington), Suzanne Reeve (University of Washington)

From World to Lab and Back: Relating Children’s Understanding of Thinking in Everyday and Experimental Contexts
Tiffany R Lee (University of Washington), Jennifer Amsterlaw (University of Washington), Suzanne Reeve (University of Washington), Philip L. Bell (University of Washington), Andrew N. Meltzoff (University of Washington)

From Time to Time: Analyzing Collaborative Biological Talk Over Time in Informal Learning Settings
Doris B. Ash (University of California-Santa Cruz), Rhiannon Lorraine Crain (University of California-Santa Cruz), Mele Wheaton, Christine Bennett (University of California-Santa Cruz)

Money Matters: The Social Organization and Learning of Consequential Mathematical Practices in Family Life
Reed R. Stevens (University of Washington), Laurie McCarthy (University of Washington), Sheldon Levias (University of Washington), Veronique Mertl (University of Washington)

Understanding the Nature of Mathematical Activities in Middle-School Learners’ Family Life
Roy D. Pea (Stanford University), Shelley V Goldman (Stanford University), Angela Booker (Stanford University), Lee Michael Martin (Stanford University), Kristen Pilner Blair (Stanford University)

Math at Home for High- and Low-Achieving African-American Students
Grace Atukpawu (Stanford University), Na’ilah Suad Nasir (Stanford University), Michael Heimlich (Stanford University)

On February 8, 2006, Michelle Williams, assistant professor at Michigan State University, visited with researchers from LIFE’s Everyday Science and Technology Group to talk about possible connections between LIFE’s science learning research and her own work designing biology science curriculum for elementary students attending underserved schools. Williams is currently working with teachers and students in East Lansing to design coherent curricula around the concept of heredity.

Professor Williams presented a talk entitled “Pathways of professional learning for elementary science teachers using computer learning environments” where she reported on a three year longitudinal study of the learning trajectories of two urban elementary school teachers — a novice and an experienced teacher. The teachers were learning to teach a biology curriculum unit using an inquiry approach using the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE).

In collaboration with the other Science of Learning Centers (SLCs), the LIFE Center is pleased to announce a new web site that describes and links to the efforts funded by NSF under the Science of Learning Center program. We welcome your ideas on how best to expand the site.