1. d
SINQ
Scientific INQuiry
Social Computing
December 12, 2011
Michael Gubbels June Ahn, Ph.D.
Graduate Student
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science College of Information Studies
College of Education
Johnny Wu
Graduate Student
Department of Computer Science
2. The Problem
How can children be encouraged to think about their
authentic questions that arise in their day-to-day
experience using an inquiry process rooted in scientific
methods?
Challenges
● Encouraging scientific thinking about authentic questions
● Present conceputal model of scientific inquiry process
○ Not intimidating or boring
○ Relevant
● Focusing on informal learning contexts
3. Informal Learning Context
i.e., Situations that are informal in their setting and organization
Example
In a grocery store, a parent answers their child's questions about UPC bar codes or food origins.
Characteristics
1. Questions tend to arise organically, so their askers are automatically engaged
2. Parents can present new concepts using a language that promotes understanding
3. Learning tends to seemlessly follow questions
To design and build an online environment where we can take advantage of
Goal these characteristics and this informal style of learning can unfold.
7. Project
Design an online environment that supports and
scaffolds a collaborative inquiry process for questions
that arise in day-to-day experience.
Contributions
1. Use of collective intelligence to provide
Not
instructional scaffolding mutually
exclusive
2. Explicitly incorporating instructional scaffolding
into interface design
9. "I wonder why some people get hungry faster than others?"
Votes
"I get hungry fast."
"Solving this will help people feel
better about themselves"
"Curious about this too
I always wonder this every day"
"I’m one of the people who gets
hung. faster"
10. Observations of KidsTeam Session
● No votes against questions
● Reasons for voting fall into three categories
1. I have also wondered about this.
2. This affects me directly.
3. I find this interesting.
● These form the basis of the voting mechanism in our
prototype.
13. User Study Summary
● Interface functioned as expected
● Easy to ask and contribute to questions
● Users felt the interface helped them ask good questions
Some flow of site (expectations, badges) was unclear
