The WISE Project

The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) project was developed by reasearchers from UC-Berkeley to address the lack of inquiry in science classes. Inquiry is defined as
...engaging students in the intentional process of diagnosing problems, critiquing experiments, distinguishing alternatives, constructing models, debating with peers, communicating to diverse audiences, and forming coherent arguments.

The WISE was designed from a knowledge integration perspective, which has two main tenets: first, that learners have many conflicting ideas about science phenomenon which have been gathered through personal experiences; and second, that learners deliberately build their views of scientific phenomenon, often in discussion and through working with others.

WISE is a series of projects that groups of students access through the internet. The projects guide students through an exploration of a specific topic, using built-in and linked web pages, evidence pages and a Notes feature where students record their thoughts about questions and assess sources of information. Other features might include recording results of experiments and discussing results with classmates or other classes. WISE projects are developed by teams of researchers, teachers, scientists and curriculum developers. In order to help guide project development, the researchers developed the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration Framework, which has four tenets:

  1. making thinking visible
  2. making science accessible
  3. helping students learn from each other
  4. promoting lifelong learning
Making thinking visible is accomplished in more than one way. Students' thinking is made visible with the use of the Notes pages. Teachers' thinking is made visible through the use of feedback and grading of students' work. Design teams have created models and simulations that make scientists' thinking visible.

Making science accessible is accomplished by careful design of the science content so that it is at an appropriate level for the students. Another way that science is made accessible is by providing scaffolding in terms of the instructional detail for a series of projects. While first projects provide a lot of detailed steps, subsequent projects provide less instruction.

Helping students learn from each other is promoted through the curriculum design by encouraging students to respond to ideas and alternatives. Online asynchronous discussions, Show and Tell for peer review of projects, and the branching feature to provide for student specialists on topics also help students learn from each other.

Promoting lifelong learning is built into the design of WISE. Although the steps of inquiry may be presented in a different order in different projects, students will recognize that many of these steps are used in most scientific inquiry. By providing a basis for knowledgable inquiry, WISE promotes learning that will continue after work with the projects is over.


Reference
Linn, M., Clark, D. & Slotta, J. (2003). Wise design for knowledge integration. Science Education, 87(4), 517-538.