Appraisal

Overview | Environments | Content and Goals | Features | Comparison | Failures | Suggestions

Overview

The Sea Urchin Virtual Lab is intended for a complementary learning and teaching tool to study high school cell biology required by the National Science Standards. It is also an alternative lab tool for those learners who do not have access to a real lab setting. It give students "an opportunity to investigate more problems/variables, form hypotheses, and analyze data without the limits of real time experiments." Biology teachers can integrate virtual labs into classroom or assign it as homework. Students can also use the Virtual Lab on their own off school. Our team believes that overall, the Sea Urchin Virtua Lab, once developed, is going to be a very useful product. However, there is room for improvement by following certain educational theories. Top

Intended Environments

The Virtual Lab is intended to be used in classroom as part of high school cell biology curriculum, but can also be used standalone by anyone who has Internet access all over the world. Teachers can assign it as homework. Students can use it on their own. It is very flexible. As far as the content concerned, it is appropriate for the indented learning purpose in all these possible environments. However, as we will address in details in the following sections, the information about how to use the Virtual Lab is inadequate or missing. Since the Virtual Lab is online and no permission is needed to use it, it is accessible to anyone. The designers cannot just assume any user knows "how to use." Considering various users and environments, a section of “how to use the lab” definitely needs to be included in the first page of the web site. Top

Content and Goals

The Virtual Lab allows high school student to study cell biology by conducting virtual labs of sea urchin spawning, fertilization, and development sequence. Using sea urchins to study cell biology is appropriate and widely accepted. Historically, sea urchins were a key model system in elucidating a variety of classic developmental problems, including the mechanisms of fertilization and egg activation, cleavage, gastrulation, and the regulation of differentiation in the early embryo. Gametes can be obtained easily, sterility is not required, and the eggs and early embryos of many commonly used species are beautifully transparent. All these make sea urchin a appropriate candidate to study cell biology. However, the information of "why sea urchins are used" was not included in the product. From cognitive perspective, students need to learn not only "what" and "how" but also "why".

We believe the content itself is appropriate, complete, and accurate for the intended learning purpose, since the content was well selected by a very experienced high school biology teacher and two biologists, based on requirements set by the National Science Standards. But, the information about content, the metadata, seems inadequate or missing. For example, there is no explanation about how the lab connects to other components of the whole curriculum or to cell biology in general. When the Virtual Lab is used in classroom under teacher's instruction, students may still get this information from their teachers (assuming teachers know the role of the lab in the whole curriculum). The Virtual Lab can also be used standalone off school and used by some accidental visitors. How can they know the connection or relationship between the lab and the whole curriculum or cell biology in general?

Based on our conversation with product producers, the learning goals or objectives the product intended for seems clear for them. However, these goals are not expressly indicated in the product. According to behavioral perspective, in order to achieve better learning outcome, goals or objectives have to be specified and clearly listed in the web site so that students have a clear idea what they are expected to achieve. Top

Key Features

Simulation/being virtual is one of the product's key features. According to media response theory, students can construct understanding of concepts by manipulating and observing simulations of real lab experiments, because the learners respond to the virtual labs as real ones. Simulating can also effectively overcome the time restraint of the real labs, thus improve the efficiency and flexibility of learning. The virtual lab can be finished within half hour, but it usually takes 3 hours or so to do a same real time lab.

Authentic activities is the product's another key feature. According to activity theory, if the aim of education is to provide students with the means to actively engage in the culture of which they are part, then they should have access to, and participate in, similar cultural activities to those of adults or experts. In the Virtual Lab, high students engage in the same activities as expert biologists do, manipulating variable, formulating hypothesis, collecting and analyzing data, and testing hypothesis.

Interactivity/feedback (online assessment) is one of the product's key features. It is an appropriate and effective feature to motivate and engage high school students in learning. According to cognitive approach, interactive computer programs can support actives in which students construct understanding of concepts by manipulating and observing simulations. However, the interactivity seems limited only to manipulation and instant feedback to the manipulation. From perspective of cognitive theory and activity theory, only manipulating is not enough. To foster students to develop scientific thinking, the product should expand the interactive feature to allow students to ask questions, to debate over controversial and confused issues, exchange ideas, and receive feedback to their inquiry, in short, to build a collaborative learning environment involving students, teachers, and experts.

Using various multimedia/Visualization

Using of multimedia is appropriate and effect for learning. Explanatory graphics are added to text to help the leaner understand the material. Based on cognitive theory and research evidence, presenting words and explanatory pictures at same time can foster deeper cognitive processing in learners, because mentally constructing pictorial and verbal representations of the material and mentally connecting them enable and encourage learners to actively process the information. Graphics are in the Virtual Lab relevant rather than decorative. Animation is appropriately used to illustrate processes and procedures. Flash is employed to simulate the real time lab and allow students to manipulate. But, directions to complete labs are placed on a separate screen from the application screen in which the directions are to be followed. When directions and the application are separated from one another on the screen, people must use their scarce cognitive resources just to match up. Then, they have fewer cognitive resources to use to mentally organize and integrate the material. Some multimedia such flash and shockwave movies need plug-in to play. But, the web site does not have instructions to guild users to download and install appropriate plug-ins.

Delivering online is one of product's key features. It has pros and cons. On one hand, it can potentially reach greater group of learners since Internet access is becoming more and more universal. Also, if it is meant for potential worldwide use, it could be useful if it is translated to some other languages as well." On the other hand, it may restrict uses by yet another group of learners who do not have Internet access, especially when the virtual lab is assigned as homework. Top

Comparison to Other Alternatives

The best available alternative serving the same learning purpose is the real time labs. Obviously, the Virtual Lab has several advantages over the real time labs.

However, the Virtual Lab is not as tangible as the real time labs and therefore cannot totally replace the real time labs. It can be best used as a complementary learning tool to develop student's scientific reasoning ability which cannot be easily achieved in the real time labs because of cost and time constraints and the nature of the real time labs. From this point of view, the producer's intention to use the Virtual Lab in classroom with the real time labs is appropriate and can produce best learning results. As indicated before, the Virtual Lab can also be used standalone off school on the learner's own pace. But, under this condition, the learning outcome might be weaken, because, without monitoring, high school students are prone to be less engaged in lab activities.

There are very few web-based products that are at the same level of the Virtual Lab. One product that is similar in content and concept is produced by the University of Wisconsin in Madison. [http://worms.zoology.wisc.edu/urchins/suwelcome.html].

Like the Virtual Lab, it is designed as a supplement learning tool to implement multimedia and computer-based learning materials in the college cell biology classroom. Many of the features in this web site are similar to the Virtual Lab components. Some graphics and animation are even "borrowed" from the Virtual Lab's parent website [http://www.stanford.edu/group/Urchin/]. But, there is no interactivity and manipulation in this product. Students can only read but not interact with the content presented. Top

Possible Failures

The product could fail if users don't fully understand how to use it and how it connects to the whole curriculum, or don't know how to configure computer settings to appropriately display interactive contexts. According to activity theory, it could fail if teachers are not comfortable with the idea of using the technology and seeing it as an exciting opportunity rather that a threat. Lacking collegial and institutional support could also cause the failure because although individual teachers may be ready to adopt technology, obstacles are often put in place in schools where not everyone is in favor of the technology or when the administration feels that the technology is causing it to lose control. Top

Suggestions

Review Notes

Once again, since the Virtual Lab does not yet exist, our appraisal is based on what they thought the Virtual Lab would look like, several existing virtual labs from which they wanted to get some elements, and our imagination. Top