New Perspectives in Science Education

Traditional e-learning is an integral part of today’s teaching and learning at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. While smartphones and tablet computers are widely used among students, the educational potential of these mobile devices are not exploited yet.

Interviews with teachers revealed that many students have problems to comprehend formula-based correlations with several variables. They neither have a clear idea how strong the influence of the individual variables is on the final result, nor about their mutual interference. Furthermore they often cannot even estimate the relevance of the result.

This is where “BOKU grasp” steps in. This mobile application enables students to actually comprehend the relationship while altering one or more parameters in real time and get instant feedback in different ways like interactively changing icons and intuitive colour codes. A history in graphical and tabular presentation enables the students to reflect on successful parameter combinations.

The expectation of improved learning outcomes facilitated by “BOKU grasp” is based on two central findings of brain research. Firstly, the brain is not made for absorbing abstract information like a formula, but it is perfect in drawing rules from a series of examples; secondly, we can reproduce or apply competence significantly better in the same or similar situation where they had been developed. (Spitzer, Manfred, 2002 and 1996).

While the technological implementation is well advanced, the pedagogical one is currently developed with the teachers. Use cases in forest engineering or soil science combine various settings from class room teaching to situated learning in the field with self-study or collaborative settings. First practical experiences clearly demonstrate that teachers have difficulties to integrate the new tool and the unusual learning mechanism into their traditional educational concepts – based on input instead of construction.

Therefore the next steps will be a number of meetings with teachers for rethinking the didactical design of their courses (all excursions) based on frequently experienced problems of their students. In addition we will define the necessary research settings for assessing the impact of “BOKU grasp” in different learning situations – from classroom via home office to on-site collaborative learning.