This is a concluding talk that was delivered by Sugat Dabholkar towards the end of the CTSI project. This talk gives an overview of the motivation for the project, its execution, and some details about the co-designed units. 

In the digital age of learning, the importance of the role of technology-enhanced learning environments and curricula in engaging students in authentic scientific inquiry practice has been recognized early on in Learning Sciences research (Edelson, Gordin & Pea, 1999). However, the nature of these authentic practices itself is changing at a rapid pace with the incorporation of newer technological tools and research methods, especially computational ones. This calls for the design of new learning environments that effectively and authentically incorporate these research practices. Our work involves making cutting-edge ideas in modern sciences accessible to school students and engaging them in contemporary science inquiry practices (Dabholkar & Wilensky, 2019; Dabholkar, Swanson & Wilensky, 2019).

As a part of his doctoral research work, Sugat has been working with teachers who partner as active co-designers in modifying their existing science curricula to include computational tools and practices (Dabholkar, Peel, Anton, Horn & Wilensky, 2020). This co-design approach foregrounds teachers’ views on curriculum alignment with students' learning outcomes, teaching strategies, and expectations (e.g. Allen & Penuel, 2015; Matuk et al., 2017). Our co-design work entails developing new curricular units with teachers by modifying their existing curricular units.

The CTSI project was conducted as a collaborative project between The Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling (CCL), Northwestern University, USA, and the Centre of Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education (CoESME), IISER Pune, India. The project involved three phases:

• 1. A CT-SI (Computational Thinking and Scientific Inquiry) workshop for teachers,

  2. Co-design meetings with teachers, 

  3. Classroom implementations and interviews