Thanks for introducing me to SIMSCIENTIST.  Valid assessments are something the STEM education field certainly needs. Is your goal to develop assessments that would be valid for any curriculum? Does your pilot testing include students who may not be using Simscientist as their curriculum? 

I'd also be interested in hearing some more about the progressions you're hypothesizing, for example about population dynamics.   Have you written these up yet?

Thank you for visiting our project about how learning of crosscutting concepts progresses across three topics in middle school Earth sciences! This exploratory project involves designing, developing, and testing instructional modules with embedded formative and summative benchmark assessments. In addition to any questions you may have about the project itself, please share ways you have successfully supported learning of the crosscutting concept content through your instruction.

Thanks for the video and tackling the critical and confounding topic of assessing the crosscutting concepts! We certainly struggle with that in our projects. I am also interested in more information about the progressions you developed. I am envisioning you were guided by progressions for the CCCs that are specified in the NGSS? How did you decide which elements were critical so as to arrive at the 5 levels? What did the timeline for assessing the crosscutting concepts look like as the students progressed through the 3 different modules? Do you expect to see a deeper understanding after each module? 

Hi Brian and Rachel,

Thank you for asking about the progressions for the three crosscutting concepts at the heart of this study. Working with our advisors, we drafted hypothetical progressions for each of these three crosscutting concepts. This work was informed by the learning progressions in the NGSS, which describe what students should know and be able to do at the end of each grade band. However, our aim is to support teaching and learning within a single year. Working with a teacher co-developer, and iteratively testing early prototypes and versions of the modules informed the development of levels that describe how student learning of a crosscutting concept might progress in this shorter timeframe. We're now collecting data and plan to evaluate our hypothetical progressions this summer. We plan to share the progressions and findings after that step is complete. 

I teach middle school physical science and am always looking for resources that help shift science ed "from recall of facts to multidimensional learning and application." I regularly use PhET and Simbucket, but SimScientists is new to me. Are the platform and/or your modules available to a wider audience than the pilot groups? If not, do you have a timeline in mind? Thanks for sharing your work!

Matt,

Yes, theoretical progressions are interesting, but, as I'm sure you know, the actual learning curves that students follow may be quite different.  It will be particularly interesting to see what you find for students who are not using SimScientist.

Thanks for sharing. SimScientists is very interesting, I'm not familiar with it. Can it be adapted for use outside the classroom, in informal learning environments such as outdoor environmental centers? 

Hi Donna, This is a wonderful question! The beauty of SimScientists is that it can pair well with a wide variety of learning environments. Each assessment module is organized around topics such as Predator-Prey interactions or Plate Tectonics. The items and tasks in the modules are aligned to NGSS practices, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. In theory, instructors teaching the content using the NGSS could adapt these tools to use in their classrooms or informal learning environment. One caveat is the modules are Flash-based, which means they will not work on most mobile devices including Apple products and Android. We are in the midst of converting some of the suites to HTML5, which is compatible with mobile devices, but we do not yet have a timeline for when the Earth sciences modules will be ready  for mobile device use. To answer your question, SimScientists can absolutely be adapted for a wide variety of learning environments, but the modules for now must be completed using a laptop or computer that supports Flash.

Do you have future plans to target high school science classes as well? We've found many teachers struggling to incorporate cross-cutting concepts into traditional disciplinary frameworks, and I'm curious is SimScientists might help them in this work.