A case study to distill structural scaffolding guidelines for scaffolded software environments

Abstract

A challenge for HCI researchers and designers involves developing software tools for learners to support them in mindfully doing and learning complex new work practices. Such "learner-centered" tools incorporate scaffolds software features that address the cognitive obstacles learners face so they can engage in the work in an educationally productive manner. However, designers still lack specific scaffolding design guidelines for developing effective scaffolded tools. The HCI contribution of this paper is a set of scaffolding guidelines distilled from an empirical case study. The study evaluated Symphony, a scaffolded environment for high school students learning science inquiry. The study evaluated the "effects with" the Symphony scaffolds, which described how students worked with the scaffolds to do their science work. The scaffolds were evaluated using several usability and learner-centered criteria, and the resulting information was correlated with structural characteristics of the scaffolds to distill a set of structural scaffolding guidelines.