Theorizing Computer Simulations

Doug Smith ETEC 511

Students are frequently asked to work on questions involving, for example, the price of food and clothes, the distribution of pizza, the numbers of people who can fit into an elevator, and the speeds of trains as they rush toward each other, but they are not meant to use any of their actual knowledge of clothing prices, people, or trains They know that they are entering a realm in which common sense and real-world knowledge are not needed. Jo Boaler - What's Math Got To Do With It?

An often heard complaint heard about mathematics and science education is that it is not real-life. Through years of subject avoidance, confusion and general distrust of why we need to know math or science in todays technologically enabled society, the public are looking for deeper meaning in education. This debate on what is real life is extended into the science laboratory where there is a growing tendency to use computer simulations in place of hands-on laboratory activities. A typical lab simulation has students sitting on chairs, leaning towards a computer monitor and tapping away on a keyboard. In many respects, this part of the lab is no different from any number of daily activities that people face each day. Of course the details of the work are unique: the computer could be running any number of science simulators that are linked to learning objectives and exploratory learning. Absent from the above scene are things that non-digital natives are used to from their experience in science labs: a lack of movement and collaborating, where the chairs discourage the cross-pollination of ideas. As well, there is no tactile feedback from the activity. For example, a simulator may apply a 3000 N force on an object, but the student will have no idea or scale of magnitude on what 3000 N of force is. Furthermore, evaluation is one hallmark of science education, yet this is missing from the simulation. If there is one thing that computers do well it is their ability to avoid computational errors. As a result, it is suggested that students are

missing out on a critical component of science exploration, which is the finding and analysis of experimental error. Juxtaposed against this seemingly unrealistic setting is the idea that current pedagogy delivers a real-life experience in todays classrooms. To alleviate the age-old condition of students simply answering procedural questions, textbooks and educators have made attempts to make curriculum content more relevant by placing scientific questioning into an appropriate context. For example, take a question in math about equivalent ratios. A real-life situation could be to ask students to compute how many mp3 songs they can hold on an mp3 player. Despite the seemingly realistic goal, this question is no more real-life than a computer simulation. No student would make this computation in real life: what they would do is add songs until their mp3 player was full. This is not real-life but rather an example of pseudoteaching or pseudocontext, a phrase coined by Boaler (2009).

So when does science education stop simulating and become real life? All too often this division is not realized even in a well-intentioned hands-on lab activity. Pre-made lab templates, cookbook recipe procedures, and strongly prompted questioning leaves many labs in a worse condition than the computer simulation. Degandes (2011) gives an excellent synopsis of how a conventional hands-on lab can do little to summon and construct new knowledge. A science simulated lab may be unrealistic but it is no less realistic than many conventional labs or lessons, albeit in a different way. Whatever the simulated lab loses in hands-on activities is possibly gained by accuracy and the revealing of misconceptions in ways that cannot be achieved by traditional methods (Kucukozer, 2008). Arguably the modern-day computer simulation lab brings us closer to the real truth than it is immediate ancestor.

References Boaler, J. (2009). Whats Math Got to Do with It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject. New York: Penguin Books. Dgende, D. (2011, February 22). Pseudoteaching: Laboratory Experiments. Journey in Technology. Retrieved October 10, 2011, from http://journeyintech.blogspot.com/2011/02/pseudoteaching-laboratory-experiments.html Kucukozer, H. (2008). The effects of 3D computer modelling on conceptual change about seasons and phases of the Moon. Physics Education, 43(6), 632-636. doi:10.1088/00319120/43/6/011