Educational Design Framework for a Web-Based Interface to Visualise Authentic Cosmological “Big Data” in High School
Abstract
The changing landscape of science and science education has provided an impetus to re-imagine how science can be taught in schools. The dawn of the Big Data era, especially in astronomy, and the notion of “Science as Practice” are some of the developments driving this need for a re-imagination of science education. This current work contributes to this agenda by exploring the features an educational design framework for developing a web-based interface that will support school students to engage with Big Data in the context of authentic science inquiry. The aim is to bring authentic data into the classroom, in a way that allows students to experience Science as Practice, providing teachers with the scaffolding resources to implement this into their classroom. The paper explores the challenges associated with the educational design for such inquiry-based projects, and how these may be overcome. A preliminary user interface design is presented, and guidelines for construction and direction are discussed.
Date
12/04/2021
Citation
The changing landscape of science and science education has provided an impetus to re-imagine how science can be taught in schools. The dawn of the Big Data era, especially in astronomy, and the notion of “Science as Practice” are some of the developments driving this need for a re-imagination of science education. This current work contributes to this agenda by exploring the features an educational design framework for developing a web-based interface that will support school students to engage with Big Data in the context of authentic science inquiry. The aim is to bring authentic data into the classroom, in a way that allows students to experience Science as Practice, providing teachers with the scaffolding resources to implement this into their classroom. The paper explores the challenges associated with the educational design for such inquiry-based projects, and how these may be overcome. A preliminary user interface design is presented, and guidelines for construction and direction are discussed.
