NoRIS: supporting computational science activities through learner-centered design
Chris Quintana, Kasem Abotel, Elliot M. Soloway · International Conference of Learning Sciences · 1996
Computational science provides scientists with a variety of tools and methods to help them investigate scientific problems. Computational science is becoming increasingly important, not just for scientists, but also for students who need to gain expertise with similar investigations for their scientific careers. However, because students lack the expertise of professional researchers, complexities arise that pose obstacles to students trying to use computational science to conduct scientific investigations: complexity in the number of diverse investigative tasks to perform, in the lack of tools for supporting certain activities, and in the variety of existing tools and interfaces that students have to learn. In order to address these complexities, we have used learner-centered design to guide the implementation of NoRIS, a computational tool used by nuclear engineering students investigating particle distribution problems. By using different scaffolding strategies, we found that we were able to build a tool that helps support nuclear engineering students investigating problems from their domain.