Symphony: A case study for exploring and describing design methods and guidelines for learner-centered design

Learner-centered design is an evolving software design perspective addressing the needs of learners—a specific audience trying to work in and understand new work practices in which they have a novice or naïve understanding. Learner-centered design involves designing software that incorporates work support features (or scaffolding features) informed by social constructivist learning theories. By adopting a constructivist “learning by doing” perspective, scaffolds should support learners so they can mindfully engage in previously inaccessible work activity, which in turn allows those learners to progressively gain a better understanding of the new work.; While there is an intuitive notion of “learner-centered design”, there is less specific design information for developing learner-centered software. As a result, learner-centered software results from “educated guesses” and ad-hoc design approaches rather than from systematic design methods. Thus there is a need for specific design guidance to facilitate the development of learner-centered tools that help learners see the tasks, terminology, tools, etc. in the new work context and engage in that work.; The research in this dissertation provides a more specific base of learner-centered design descriptions, methods, and guidelines to analyze work practices and design and evaluate scaffolds. The research approach involves using the development of Symphony—a scaffolded integrated tool environment for high-school students learning the work of computational science inquiry—as a case study to develop the learner-centered design approach. Symphony incorporates a variety of science tools with process scaffolding to support students in performing complex air pollution investigations.; Six ninth-grade students used Symphony to investigate air quality questions for several weeks in an environmental science class. The student testing helped assess the effectiveness of the software scaffolding and in turn, the learner-centered design methods and process used to develop the software. By reflecting on the analysis, design, usage, and evaluation of Symphony, this research contributes process scaffolding guidelines; a concrete articulation of and design process for learner-centered design; methods for designing and evaluating learner-centered scaffolding; and an example of a high-functionality scaffolded environment that supports learners engaging in complex, new work activity, such as the work of science inquiry.