Overcoming challenges of teaching climate change: Exploring effects of multiple scaffolds on web-based learning about climate change

 

        Climate change is one of the most important issues. A special report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls for urgent action to avoid catastrophic environmental breakdown. To reach the target requires the efforts from not only governors and politicians but also all citizens. This project, therefore, responds to this call aiming to raise the public’ understanding about climate change. Our major goal is to prepare citizens with the capacity to pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and the supporting concepts appropriately.

　　There are three challenges needed to be addressed to reach the aforementioned goal. The first challenge involves the abstract and complex phenomena of climate change. Many learners possess merely fragmented concepts and/or misconceptions. The second challenge attributes to learners lacking experiences about evaluating arguments or explanations. Many of them do not know how to evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it. The third challenge relates to the open-ended feature of the hypermedia learning environment. The rich information and multiple representations consisted in the hypermedia place large learning demands and require learners utilizing sophisticate monitoring and regulating strategies to reach learning goals. Our short-term goal is to develop instructional activities and formative assessments about climate change. We then develop instructional supports to address challenges regarding conceptual understanding, evaluating scientific explanations, and reading comprehension in the hypermedia environment, respectively.

　　Planning for instructional supports requires careful considerations for what type of scaffolding to deliver, when to scaffold, and determining whether the scaffold is taken in. To explore the effectiveness of the scaffolding designs, multiple modals of trace data, including learners’ responses to the formative assessments, activity logs, eye movements, etc. will be analyzed using data analytics techniques. Influences of learners’ characteristics, such as prior knowledge, scientific epistemology, perceptions and attitudes toward climate change etc., on learning process and outcomes will be explored as well.

        We hope to combine multiple data sources to portray the dynamic process of self-regulated learning and to provide timely supports to facilitate effective climate change education in the hypermedia learning environment.