Using Scientific and Engineering Practices with Education Technology in the Science Classroom

Lynn Cominsky, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy Director, EdEon STEM Learning and Casey Lewiston, Main developer of the LbyM WebApp, Systems Administrator for EdEon And Dr. Laura Peticolas Associate Director at EdEon STEM Learning, and Hannah Hellman, English Department, EdEon at Sonoma State University

While scientists place sensors in ecosystems, the ocean, and space, to understand the world around us, teachers struggle to implement scaffolded lessons that incorporate coding, electronics, and scientific data into their science classes. There are many reasons for these challenges, one of which is the lack of student-tested education technology that models modern scientific practices. Sonoma State University’s Learning by Making (LbyM) browser-based app has been tested by over 900 students in more than 30 science classes over 3 years. You, too, can run the freely available LbyM customized open-source Web App in your classroom—all you need is a computer that connects to the internet in your classroom, a Chrome-based browser, and the Arduino driver.

LbyM is an integrated ninth-grade CSTEM (Coding, Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) course that incorporates mathematical skill-building and computational thinking into science experiments that replicate real-world problems and solutions. Throughout the course, students develop and use models, plan and conduct investigations and experiments, analyze and interpret data that they collect, and construct explanations to demonstrate their understanding. The understanding that students develop is then related to the overarching themes of Energy and Matter, using coding combined with light, temperature, and other inexpensive sensors. For the past two years, LbyM has utilized its Web App for both software and hardware-based lessons. The Web App enables students to undertake personally relevant investigations in physical science, using the programming language Logo, to read sensors and obtain and analyze data. Figure 1 shows the layout of the Web App.

“By using a progressive Web App structure, we get all these advantages with an App that can be installed and used offline just like traditional software”

Figure 1: The LbyM Web App Graphical User Interface (GUI) has five main elements:

A menu bar, buttons, a text editor, an area for output, and the terminal. The Canvas output window is used to start the course by teaching coding using Turtle Logo. Selecting the tabs labeled Plots or Data brings up formats that are used in Units 2 and 3, as well as the experimental units. Code for all units appears and can be edited in the Text Editor.

Learning by Making begins using the coding elements of the Web App with three skill-building units that teach the fundamentals of coding (Unit 1: Sea Turtle Life Cycle), and then progress into the building and testing of simple electronic circuits (Unit 2: Going with the Electron Flow) using an inexpensive microcontroller (such as an Arduino), which connects directly into the Web App via a computer USB port. The third unit centers on employing Arduino-connected light and temperature sensors to control and modify simple experiments (Unit 3: Doing Science with Sensors). In the spring semester of the yearlong LbyM course, students engage in more individualized experimentation using additional types of sensors through units such as Water & Soil, Light & Energy, and Mud-based Fuel Cells. Water & Soil teaches students about sources of water and their effects on the Earth's surface, which is of particular importance in California where the curriculum is designed. Light & Energy teaches students about radiation energy and solar cells. The Mud-based Fuel Cell unit offers students the chance to build their organic battery, for which they measure the output using the Web App.

A typical output at the end of Unit 1 is shown in Figure 2

Figure 2: This image shows the result of a simulation of the life of a female sea turtle. Code is executed by clicking the "Go" button near the top left or by typing go into the terminal window on the lower right.

Here there are turtle tracks from the mother as she crosses from the ocean to the nesting spot, a nest with a clutch of three eggs, and hatchling tracks away from the nest as they emerge, only to be foiled by rocks or tire tracks across the beach. This simulates problems that turtles encounter as they try to navigate to the safety of the ocean waters, which are too often of human origin.

Figure 3. This is an example of the Plots window showing the results of a soil moisture experiment. The top plot shows the readouts from the soil moisture sensor, while the bottom plot shows the calibrated results of the temperature sensor.

Using a web browser to connect to simple electronic circuits and sensors was not possible before 2020, and our earlier versions of LbyM used Unix and custom software to perform these functions. However, with the release of the Web Serial API in August 2020, we were able to build an App that can provide a simple interface for student use. We started using the Web Serial API before its official release, which allowed us to start building the preliminary version of the LbyM Web App in April 2020 while we continued to use the Unix deployment in classrooms. Although we originally had not planned to migrate away from Unix until at least 2022, the pandemic greatly accelerated our move to browserbased control as our specialized Unix servers, located in individual classrooms, could not provide access to students who were learning from home. The LbyM Web App solved this problem, allowing students to use any computer with a compatible browser to conduct their experiments using kits of parts that we shipped to each school for distribution to their students. By the 2020/2021 academic year, half of our partner schools successfully switched to the WebApp version of our curriculum and reported increased student satisfaction and useability. By 2023, all schools had switched over to this new platform and are seeing positive outcomes in the classroom. Figure 3 shows an example of a soil moisture experiment from the Water & Soil unit.

Using the web as a platform gives us a lot of advantages including quick updates, high availability, high security, and convenient access from any computer regardless of that computer’s operating system or hardware. By using a progressive Web App structure, we get all these advantages with an App that can be installed and used offline just like traditional software. The course also helps students learn more about using Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which are increasingly important in industry and scientific applications today. Interfacing with other sensors is relatively easy, as sensors connect to analog/digital converter pins on the microcontroller, and no new code is needed to read out the sensors.

Looking forward, we are continuing to build out the infrastructure of the LbyM system to make it more reliable, and scalable, as we look at introducing the program to new schools. At the same time, we are always keeping an eye out for ways to make the interface more feature-rich while remaining intuitive and accessible so teachers can integrate it into their instruction with ease.

To use the web app, simply navigate to http://app.lbym. org and start coding. If you are interested in learning more about its use in the LbyM integrated CSTEM curriculum, please contact Prof. Lynn Cominsky at HYPERLINK "mailto:cominsky@sonoma.edu" cominsky@sonoma.edu.

Learning by Making: STEM Success for Mendocino County, an “Investing In Innovation” (i3) program, was funded from 2013-2018 by the U.S. Department of Education. SSU"s "Developing a Student-Driven STEM and Computer Science Curriculum for Rural Students" is currently funded by ED’s Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program (2018-2023). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Education.

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