Scaffolding, State-Based Modeling, and Multiple Representation: User Interface Concepts Implemented in an Interactive Online Learning Environment for Synergistic Learning of Physics and Computational Thinking

Abstract

With funding from the NSF STEM + Computing Program, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and student researchers collaborated on development of our Scaffolded Training Environment for Physics Programming (STEPP). STEPP is a synergistic learning environment for high school and college students in introductory physics courses to acquire physics concepts and Computational Thinking (CT) through formative experiences modeling and simulating kinematics using modeling tools based on Finite State Machines (FSMs). Three STEPP learning modules have been developed on 1D kinematics, 2D kinematics, and the Newton’s Laws of Motion. The modules have been field tested with physics teachers and students at several high schools and a university and are available to the public. The use of FSMs, coupled with the scaffolded approach of STEPP, allows STEPP to provide students with simulations that are physically accurate yet initially described by natural-language states in accord with their intuition. The STEPP architecture is based on scaffolding. Scaffolding in the modules allows the student to understand physics concepts through increasingly detailed module designs. Such concepts include displacement, velocity, and acceleration. In each level of each module, students model physics problems as FSMs and see the resulting simulations displayed in a variety of representation methods: animations, graphs, vectors, free-body diagrams, numbers, and equations, all of which are displayed synchronously. We focus on three user-interface features grounded in educational theories and implemented in STEPP: FSM-based modeling, software-enabled scaffolding, and multiple representations, all of which are applicable to educational applications in many disciplines.