Broad research goal: "Facilitating sensemaking in bioscience undergraduates to connect theory with practice through leveraging the affordances of technology."
Sensemaking is a stance towards science learning and the way scientists construct knowledge. It is an important 21st-century skill for all bioscience undergraduates to possess.
Karyotype: an Interactive case-based technology-enhanced learning environment (TELE) for facilitating sensemaking during clinical diagnosis of genetic disorders.
Summary: “Navigating scientific challenges, persevering through difficulties and coping with failures are hallmarks of a successful scientist”. Identifying oneself as a scientist stems from a sense of belonging to the field. This sense of belonging helps in building a persons professional identity i.e how we perceive ourselves within our occupational context and how we communicate this to others. This professional identity of a person affects one’s persistence in a particular field or profession. Identity crisis with respect to one’s profession has been identified as a major problem faced by students in various research studies. (McLean 2013, Ruz 2018, Kuchynka 2019, Nadelson 2015, Estrada et al 2019).
Summary: It is important to understand PI and the development of PI (PID) within the context of a discipline. Working towards this goal, We have done
i) A systematic review of the literature on PI and its development in biosciences
ii) Designed and developed a prototype learning environment for sensemaking (DBR-1)
iii) Conducted a study to investigate students' sense making and reasoning process while solving a problem in a professional context.
Summary:
i) Review article : Professional identity development in biosciences: A systematic review of the literature
ii) Design and development of Karyotype 1.0: learning environment (LE) for sensemaking and reasoning
iii) Study 1 (N=26) to investigate students' sensemaking and reasoning process while solving a problem in a professional context.
iv) Study 2 (N=68) to investigate the relationship between students’ self-efficacy, interest and their performance on reasoning & sensemaking tasks.
Summary:
i) Design and development of Karyotype 2.0 : LE for sense making and reasoning
ii) Study 3 (N=11)
iii) Publishing research findings (2 conference publications, 1 Journal publication)
Summary:
i) Data analysis and reporting findings from study 3 (N=11)
ii) Workshop with teachers (N = 40) for effective adaptation of Karyotype to other topics in biology.
iii) Codesign and development of OER with college teachers (JeevAdhyayan)
iii) Publishing research findings (1 conference publications, 1 Journal publication WIP)
Summary:
Contributions of thesis:
Karyotype, an open-source learning environment, was designed and tested with 100+ students and 40+ teachers to advance sensemaking in biology."
Karyotype's pedagogy was successfully adapted and tested across 15+ biology topics.