Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver

• PhD
• Managing Director at Indiana University Bloomington

Skills in collaborative problem solving (CPS) are essential for the 21 st century, enabling students to solve complex problems effectively. As the demand for these skills rises, understanding their development and manifestation becomes increasingly important. To address this need, we present a data-driven framework that identifies behavioral patter...

Disagreement is often perceived negatively, yet it can be beneficial for learning and scientific inquiry. However, students tend to avoid engaging in disagreement. Peer critique activities offer a promising way to encourage students to embrace disagreement, which supports learning as students articulate their ideas, making them available for discus...

The PrimaryAI project focuses on developing an upper elementary integrated curriculum that covers life science, artificial intelligence (AI), and computer science concepts. The PrimaryAI curriculum uses both problem-based learning (PBL) and game-based learning (GBL) to engage students and situates the curriculum in a real-world context. The curricu...

Understanding students’ multi-party epistemic and topic based-dialogue contributions, or how students present knowledge in group-based chat interactions during collaborative game-based learning, offers valuable insights into group dynamics and learning processes. However, manually annotating these contributions is labor-intensive and challenging. T...

This study highlights how middle schoolers discuss the benefits and drawbacks of AI-driven conversational agents in learning. Using thematic analysis of focus groups, we identified five themes in students’ views of AI applications in education. Students recognized the benefits of AI in making learning more engaging and providing personalized, adapt...

Collaborative game-based learning offers opportunities for students to participate in small group learning experiences that foster knowledge sharing, problem solving, and engagement. Student satisfaction with their collaborative experiences plays a pivotal role in shaping positive learning outcomes and is a critical factor in group success during l...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly finding broad application in every sector of society. This rapid expansion of AI has increased the need to cultivate an AI-literate workforce, and it calls for introducing AI education into K-12 classrooms to foster students’ awareness and interest in AI. With rich narratives and opportunities for situated pr...

The goal of this paper is to present several methods of visualizing student activity and collaboration in PBL in ways that provide insights into the complexity of PBL classrooms. These representations include Chronologically Ordered Representations of Discourse and Tool- Related Activity (CORDTRA) and Social Network (SNA) Diagrams as well as severa...

Because implementing and orchestrating collaborative problem-based learning (PBL) in K-12 classrooms requires teachers to manage multiple activities and access various teaching resources at the same time, this is an exceptionally complex task for designers to develop tools for orchestration support as well as for teachers to coordinate. The aim of...

Successfully engaging in collaborative problem solving is an essential constituent of professional and general life skills. Collaborative problem solving is also used to engage learners in collaborative processes relevant to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Here, learners co-construct knowledge by transactively building on each other’s cont...

Learning analytics dashboards (LADs) are often used to display real-time data indicating student learning trajectories and outcomes. Successful use of LADs requires teachers to orient their dashboard reviews with clear goals, apply appropriate strategies to interpret visualized information on LADs and monitor and evaluate their interpretations to m...

Introduction This study reports on a classroom intervention where upper-elementary students and their teacher explored the biological phenomena of eutrophication using the Modeling and Evidence Mapping (MEME) software environment and associated learning activities. The MEME software and activities were designed to help students create and refine vi...

Collaborative game-based learning environments offer the promise of combining the strengths of computer-supported collaborative learning and game-based learning to enable students to work collectively towards achieving problem-solving goals in engaging storyworlds. Group chat plays an important role in such environments, enabling students to commun...

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) research has become pervasive in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education over the last several decades. Guided by sociocultural and social constructivist theories of learning, CSCL focuses on shared meaning making and is influenced by the three pillars of CSCL: enabling tec...

This chapter discusses problem-based learning as a powerful pedagogy that is able to facilitate students’ higher order thinking, knowledge development, and transferable knowledge and skills. Grounded in the constructivist approaches, problem-based learning is a robust methodology for teaching and learning. Problem-based learning supports learners’...

With accelerating advances in artificial intelligence, it is clear that introducing K-12 students to AI is essential for preparation to interact with and potentially develop AI technologies. To succeed as the workers, creators, and innovators of the future, we argue students should encounter core concepts of AI as early as elementary school. Howeve...

This research is aimed at developing novel theory to advance innovative methods for examining how collaborative groups progress toward productively engaging during classroom activity that integrates disciplinary practices. This work draws on a situative perspective, along with prior framings of individual engagement, to conceptualize engagement as...

Recent years have seen the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in every facet of society. The ubiquity of AI has led to an increasing demand to integrate AI learning experiences into K-12 education. Early learning experiences incorporating AI concepts and practices are critical for students to better understand, evaluate, and utilize AI...

Collaborative game-based learning environments offer significant promise for creating effective and engaging group learning experiences. These environments enable small groups of students to work together toward a common goal by sharing information, asking questions, and constructing explanations. However, students periodically disengage from the l...

This exploratory paper highlights how problem‐based learning (PBL) provided the pedagogical framework used to design and interpret learning analytics from Crystal island: ecojourneys, a collaborative game‐based learning environment centred on supporting science inquiry. In Crystal island: ecojourneys, students work in teams of four, investigate the...

This special issue joins the recent but growing effort to expand knowledge in the learning sciences, by examining the notion of participation in teacher-researcher collaborative design (co-design). Co-design is not just a means to an end; it is a context where professional learning happens. Each of the seven papers describes teacher-researcher coll...

Prior research has highlighted that for teachers to develop robust practices, they need to develop rich professional vision (PV)—the ability to see nuanced issues of teaching and learning in situ, interpret them, and respond. In the context of problem-based learning (PBL), PV involves guiding student-centered learning and understanding when to prov...

For this chapter we will briefly discuss the importance and ubiquitous nature of complex systems throughout biology, life sciences and many other STEM domains. We then explore various theoretical perspectives which have been used in the teaching and learning of systems and systems models- from Systems Dynamics and Systems Thinking, Structure-Behavi...

A core aspect of scientific inquiry is developing and revising models. This practice is supported by shared epistemic criteria to evaluate the “goodness” of models (and other epistemic products). A prominent criterion used by scientists is evidential fit. The use of epistemic criteria is gaining traction in science education; however, there is a ga...

Assessing group collaboration is a critical element in Problem-based Learning (PBL). In asynchronous online PBL settings, facilitators encounter challenges to assess group collaboration because of delayed responses, lack of social cues, and the orchestration load. Teacher dashboards have the potential to support facilitators to assess collaboration...

As PBL has gained popularity across disciplines, its move from small medical-school inquiry groups into large-class undergraduate inquiry has led to an increasing need to understand the elements of successful PBL implementations in large classrooms. In this study, we investigated how PBL was appropriated among students to develop historical thinkin...

In this paper we contrast two locally situated models of supporting teacher learning using video reflection: a one-on-one coaching model that was implemented to support teachers in a wide-spread rural school district where in-person meetings were challenging, and a video club model that was implemented in a large, centrally organized school distric...

Students across disciplines struggle with sensemaking when they are faced with the need to understand and analyze massive amounts of information. This is particularly salient in the disciplines of both history and data science. Our approach to helping students build expertise with complex information leverages activity theory to think about the des...

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a technology that is profoundly reshaping society and enabling rapid improvements in science, engineering, and mathematics, as well as information technology itself. This has generated increased demand for fostering an AI-literate populace as well as a growing recognition of the importance of promoting K-12 st...

Scientists use epistemic criteria to evaluate products of scientific inquiry, such as models. Engaging students with epistemic considerations as part of scientific practice is a growing focus of science education. Recent research has shown that students are able to identify and describe criteria for good scientific models. However, we know little a...

In this chapter, we present our theory of transfer as a progressive re-mediation of object-oriented activity. Building on sociocultural theories of learning, our approach explicitly articulates the role of students’ object or motive of activity in shaping how and when they treat mediators (i.e., conceptual tools such as visual tables for organizing...

Learning analytics (LA) is providing new methodologies that are being applied to the design and application of dashboards to support teaching and learning. However, few studies attempt to understand how instructors interact with an LA dashboard and how self-regulated learning (SRL) activities and emotions of instructors occur and co-occur in the in...

This study examines how middle school students develop an increasingly coherent understanding of aquatic ecosystems. As part of a broader design research study that used Structure‐Behavior‐Function (SBF) theory as an organizing conceptual representation, we created two instructional units that focused on pond and aquarium environments. We coded and...

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) has a history of being interdisciplinary from its conception. Its beginnings have included computer scientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and educational researchers. These collaborations have been fruitful but have also posed challenges (Suthers et al., 2013). This article builds on the a...

Collaborative inquiry learning affords educators a context within which to support understanding of scientific practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. One approach to supporting collaborative science inquiry is through problem‐based learning (PBL). However, there are two key challenges in scaffolding collaborative inquiry lea...

Problem-based learning (PBL) designs are addressing the demands and potentials of an information-saturated era where accessing inquiry resources and new information is reconfiguring tutor-facilitated dialogues. Unclear is how incorporation of CSCL tools and the rich digital multimodal resources they collaboratively access and generate are re-shapin...

Purpose The authors explored shifts in social interactions, content engagement and history learning as students who were studying one pandemic simultaneously experienced another. This paper aims to understand how the Net.Create network visualization tool would support students as they tried to understand the many complex interactions in a historica...

Collaborative game-based learning environments integrate game-based learning and collaborative learning. These environments present students with a shared objective and provide them with a means to communicate, which allows them to share information, ask questions, construct explanations, and work together toward their shared goal. A key challenge...

Video and co-design can be powerful tools to enrich problem-based learning experiences. We explore how a teacher and researcher engaged in co-design of a PBL experience focused on human-centered robotics as well as the resulting design. They explored the question “How can we design a robot that serves a need in our local community?” We highlight th...

Purpose Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is widely used in different levels of education across disciplines and domains. Researchers in the field have proposed various conceptual frameworks toward a comprehensive understanding of CSCL. However, as the definition of CSCL is varied and contextualized, it is critical to develop a share...

Purpose This paper aims to present a model of collaborative inquiry play: rule-based imaginary situations that provide challenging problems and support agentic multiplayer interactions (c.f., Vygotsky, 1967; Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). Drawing on problem-based learning (PBL, Hmelo-Silver, 2004), this paper provides a design case to articulate the r...

Across the articles in this special issue, there is a clear and important focus on how people learn through mobility, which allows them to move across contexts as they learn. This commentary considers ways mobile technologies can support learning with a focus on understanding the affordances to of the mobile technologies develop new learning practi...

Narrative and collaboration are two core features of rich interactive learning. Narrative-centered learning environments offer significant potential for supporting student learning. By contextualizing learning within interactive narratives, these environments leverage students’ innate facilities for developing understandings through stories. Comput...

The goal of this paper is to report on a meta-analysis about the effects of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) in STEM education. The analysis is based on 316 outcomes from 143 studies that examined the effects of CSCL published between 2005 and 2014. Our analysis showed that the overall effect size of STEM CSCL was 0.51, a moderate b...

Facilitation of problem‐based learning (PBL) activities is complex, yet central to the goals of this pedagogy. Productive facilitation that meets the goals of PBL is a skill that must be developed and practiced. This chapter reviews the epistemology underlying PBL and its facilitation, the goals of PBL facilitation, and characteristics of good faci...

Purpose This paper aims to lay out the goals and challenges in using information for ambitious learning practices. Design/methodology/approach Through a review of the literature, the authors integrate across learning, information sciences and instructional design to identify challenges and possibilities for information searching and sense-making...

Core Ideas Citizen scientists learned how to develop sound methods to rule out plausible explanations through the use of models. Citizen scientists engaged in increased levels of discussion about models following project participation. Developing models may help prepare citizen scientists for independent endeavors. Citizen science programs pose ex...

Secondary school students following a problem-based human-centered robotics (HCR) curriculum designed and built robots as a way of engaging with engineering design practices. In this preliminary analysis, we identified a shift in a focal classroom from technically to socially focused robot designs across two semesters. This poster considers how tea...

As PBL has gained popularity across disciplines, there is an increasing need to understand how to successfully implement PBL in a large classroom. In this study, we investigated how PBL was used to support development of historical thinking skills in a large university history class. Video analysis showed that the instructor interacted with both th...

A full text view of this article can be found at the following link provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt Initiative: http://rdcu.be/BCAh This paper presents a middle school human-centered robotics (HCR) learning experience and the ways in which it supported students’ orientation to technical and social aspects of Science, Technology, Engineer...

In this study, we examine the nature of scientific discourse among participants enrolled in two citizen science projects as they engage in collaborative modeling and problem solving. Specifically, we explore the nature of their conversation as they use, the Mental Modeler, an online collaborative modeling tool to facilitate science engagement, syst...

Framing of failure as constructive can help students to engage in authentic practices of iterative design and to leverage failure in future experiences. In contrast to classroom norms that privilege “right” answers and perfect final submissions, classrooms that position failure and iteration as norms prepare students for the realities of complex pr...

Dominance is a problematic phenomenon describing that a student monopolizes discussion time or seeks to control or direct learning goals in the process of collaborative learning. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of visualization (e.g. the pie chart, the social network) and the presentation tools (i.e. electronic white board) design...

An important part of “doing” science is engaging in collaborative science practices. To better understand how to support these practices, we need to consider how students collaboratively construct and represent shared understanding in complex, problem-oriented, and authentic learning environments. This research presents a case study centered on th...

Science education today has become increasingly focused on research into complex natural, social and technological systems. In this study, we examined the development of high-school biology students’ systems understanding of the human body, in a three-year longitudinal study. The development of the students’ system understanding was evaluated using...

This study explores the motivations and barriers for participation and persistence in an innovative citizen science pilot project with Virginia Master Naturalist volunteers. The project combines self-guided online training, in-person meetings, and collaboration through social networking and “mental modeling” to support on-the-ground development and...