Research design and methods

EcoMUVE is being developed using an iterative design process informed by consultation with an advisory panel of ecosystems scientists and a team of teachers. In year one, we have developed an overview of the curriculum design and a prototype of the first module.

In year two, we will employ a design-based research methodology to conduct a series of evaluation pilots with two to four classrooms. We will also develop and pilot the second MUVE module. This formative research will influence the redesign of materials and software.

In year three, we will conduct rigorous reliability tests of both modules in ten classrooms. We will also conduct research to investigate factors that lead to adoption and successful implementation among teachers and students, as well as to examine student learning. The researchers will utilize classroom observations, interview and focus groups, student and teacher surveys, and discussion boards to collect data.

Difficulties in understanding ecosystem concepts

Many ecosystems concepts require students to reason about complex causal patterns that do not fit with their default assumptions about that nature of causality. For the past ten years, The Understandings of Consequence Project has been studying how students reason about ecosystems concepts and the embedded causal patterns.

When reasoning about ecosystems concepts, students tend to:

• make direct, linear connections.
• confuse cyclic nature of matter recycling with the domino-like pattern of energy transfer.
• focus on individuals, not populations.
• miss non-obvious causes of decay.
• think in terms of active agents, not energy transfer.
• miss causes and events that are separated in space and time.

The Understandings of Consequence Project is supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. ESI-0455664 to Tina Grotzer with earlier NSF support (REC-9725502, REC-0106988 to Tina Grotzer and David Perkins.) Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Multi-User Virtual Environments

A MUVE is an immersive simulated world, in which each student has a virtual avatar and moves through a world that models a real-world setting, interacting with other students and with computer-based agents. MUVEs allow simulated experiences otherwise impossible in school settings.

Specific affordances of MUVEs for helping students learn various aspects of causality:

• MUVEs can slow down or speed up time.
• MUVEs can zoom in or out to display phenomena at various scales.
• MUVEs can help students understand spatially distributed phenomena by enabling movement through space.
• Students can collect data by placing simulated measuring tools into an virtual environment.
• MUVEs can support microworld simulations in which students can make predictions, then change a variable or rule and observe what happens.

Module 1: Pond ecosystem

For our first EcoMUVE module, we are building a pond ecosystem modeled after Black’s Nook, a real pond in Cambridge, MA.

Photo of Black's Nook Pond in Cambridge, MA

Screenshot of EcoMUVE pond ecosystem prototype

In this pond EcoMUVE, students will:

• Move around, into and under the water of the pond.
• Observe and collect both macro- and micro-organisms.
• Create a food web of the species that they find.
• Measure variables – e.g., temperature, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, nitrates, pH, temperature – in and around the pond and tributary.
• Visit the pond at different points in time.
• Talk to residents and make observations.
• Communicate with teammates.
• View data over time using tables and multi-line graphs.
• Use a student notebook to record and analyze their findings.
• Create representations of their understanding of complex causality.

Our intention is not to replace students going out into nature, but provide new ways of accessing the relationships in an ecosystem.

Real ecosystem experiences	Virtual ecosystem experiences
Physical, sensory experience – can see, touch, hear, smell	Immersive simulation
Limited to one or few visits	Can move forward and backward in time over long time periods
Snapshot view – see what's there	View change over time (e.g., population shifts, decomposition, eutrophication)
Actual scale	May change scale, zoom in and out
See what can be seen	See what's small, hidden, nocturnal, rare, microscopic
Limited to small area	May explore over distances
Use measurement tools	Collect and view simulated data that could be hard to measure (e.g., population sizes)

Visualization tools

A submarine tool allows students to view and learn about the microscopic organisms in the pond, helping students understand that ecosystems also involve non-obvious causes—ones that are hard to detect with the naked eye.

A food web tool allows students to collect the populations in the ecosystem and build an interactive food web. Students will dynamically interact with the domino causality of food web relationships, helping them move beyond noticing only direct effects.

Module 1 scenario

For Module 1, we are building a scenario in which students discover a fish kill at the pond and have to visit the pond at different points in time to figure out what happened.

The complex causality of the fish kill scenario is as follows:

• A new development upstream has been overfertilizing the lawns.
• Excess rainfall causes fertilizer runoff into a tributary leading to the pond.
• Fertilizer causes algal bloom.
• As algae dies, the increase in dead plant matter causes an increase in bacteria decomposers.
• Bacteria uses up the dissolved oxygen (DO) in water.
• Other conditions—cloudy hot days with no wind—also contribute to a decrease in DO.
• Eventually this leads to a fish kill event just before dawn.