Zacharias C. Zacharia

University of Cyprus · Department of Education

Using simulations and games in education has risen sharply in the last decade, together with studies reporting on their learning effects. This article has three objectives: (a) to present the main features of simulations and games used for educational purposes as well as their hybrid forms; (b) to discuss how gamification can be employed to facilit...

We extended research on scaffolds for formulating scientific hypotheses, namely the Hypothesis Scratchpad (HS), in the domain of relative density. The sample comprised of secondary school students who used three different configurations of the HS: Fully structured, containing all words needed to formulate a hypothesis in the domain of the study; pa...

In this study, we aimed at examining pre-service teachers’ capability to design inquiry learning activity sequences (i.e., inquiry learning spaces or ILSs) after receiving proper training. These ILSs were developed in the context of the Go-Lab ecosystem. The Go-Lab ecosystem includes virtual laboratories (simulations; https://www.golabz.eu/labs) an...

We designed and implemented two learning activity sequences with a focus on modelling and simulating trophic relations in marine ecosystems. Both implementations involved fifth graders, in two different samples (n = 24 for the first and n = 23 for the second sequence). The sequences differed only in the method used for undertaking modelling and sim...

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed account of Go-Lab, an ecosystem that supports teachers in creating Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). T...

The present paper reports on work undertaken within the frame of the STE(A)M IT project on integrated STEM education (Erasmus + program; Grant agreement 612845-EPP-1-2019-1- BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD). We will focus on a comprehensive review of grey and scientific literature published on integrated STEM and how this background desk research informed the...

Toward the end of 6th grade, some bright and highly motivated science-oriented Israeli students and their parents are required to make a decision: whether or not to enrol in a non-mandatory advanced science programme for 7th graders (≈12 year olds) upon entering middle-school. In other words, for many students, entry into the STEM pipeline begins a...

The current literature provides evidence that there is still gender bias and inequality in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields and the digital sector (e.g., digital technologies, Computer Science, Information Technology, Information and Communication Technology, Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity). This document, prepare...

Lay Description What is currently known about this topic A challenge for designing and assessing software scaffolds has always been to both structure and problematize student work. Structuring is needed to assist students in managing complex, open‐ended tasks by simplifying them and reducing complexity. Problematizing inquiry for students would com...

On completing middle‐school (ninth grade), Israeli students must choose which discipline(s) to major in upon entering high school. This study, grounded in Expectancy‐Value Theory (EVT), identified and modeled the factors that contributed to students' academic choices from their own subjective perspectives. We collected qualitative and quantitative...

This paper presents how a model-based inquiry approach can support the development of students’ conceptual understanding about prey–predator systems as well as their cognitive skills. To do so, we developed a sequence of activities which involved three cycles of scientific inquiry. The first cycle revolved around the playing of a role-playing game...

In this chapter we describe a study in which we analyzed student modeling-based learning discourse data to investigate young students’ understandings of models and model use in science. We used rich case studies of modeling-based learning of 48 fifth-grade students in three different classes, who met with the same teacher once a week for a total of...

This chapter focuses on model-based inquiry in computer-supported environments, especially through the use of the Go-Lab platform (www.golabz.eu). Go-Lab is an online learning platform that offers students the opportunity to engage in inquiry-based science learning, in a structured and supportive manner, by providing environments for learning (i.e....

The aim of this study was to identify an optimum way to support students when designing experiments in a computer-supported inquiry learning environment. For this purpose, we evaluated the impact of two different configurations of an experiment design tool on students’ content knowledge and inquiry skills in the context of electric circuits. The tw...

The present study employed a quasi-experimental design to assess a computer-based tool, which was intended to scaffold the task of designing experiments when using a virtual lab for the process of experimentation. In particular, we assessed the impact of this tool on primary school students’ cognitive processes and inquiry skills before and after t...

The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ actions while experimenting with a blended combination of Physical Manipulatives and Virtual Manipulatives (PMVM), as opposed to physical manipulatives (PM). The participants of the study were 70 undergraduate students of a university in Cyprus. Two groups of students were selected from each co...

The prevalence of smart devices among young people is undeniably large, but concerns that they distract learning may be limiting their use in schools. In this study we demonstrate how tablet computers can be used effectively for teaching science. A digital biology lesson was designed in the Go-Lab environment and tested with 28 students (16–18 year...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a professional development (PD) program on teachers’ development of inquiry competence (inquiry skills, definitions of inquiry, pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science as inquiry). Our approach drew on constructivist learning and situated cognition, built upon nine critical featu...

The present study employed two different Go-Lab scaffolds/tools. These tools were used by primary school students to carry out successive learning tasks during experimentation. The first tool assisted learners in formulating hypotheses, while the second tool guided students in designing experiments (EDT). Both tools were designed to take into accou...

The purpose of this paper is to present how a model-based inquiry approach could support the development of students' conceptual understanding about the prey-predator system and cognitive skills. In so doing, we developed a sequence of activities, which involve three cycles of scientific inquiry. The first cycle involves, among others, playing a ro...

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of mobile learning among young learners. Specifically, we investigated whether the use of mobile devices for data collection during field trips outside the classroom could enhance fourth graders’ learning about the parts of the flower and their functions, flower pollinators and the process of poll...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM), virtual manipulatives (VM), and a blended combination of PM and VM on primary school students’ understanding of concepts in the domain of electric circuits and whether any possible differences relate to the processes that students engage in du...

The focus of this paper is on the contribution that active touch sensory feedback offered through physical or virtual (with haptic feedback) manipulatives, makes to students' learning through science experimentation. Both theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence are presented. The theoretical perspectives were drawn from two types of theorie...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether learners with different science content knowledge backgrounds, namely physics and science education graduates, construct models differently in the same computer programming environment with graphically represented program language and for the same subject matter (1D collisions). To do so, we sele...

Despite the abundance of research in Modeling-based Learning (MbL) in science education, to date there is only limited research on MbL practices among K-6 novice modelers. More specifically, there is no information on how young/novice modelers’ modeling enactments look so that researchers and educators have an idea of what should be expected from t...

To provide teachers and students with more usable, desirable and useful online labs, the foremost step is to understand their existing usage patterns and experiences with such labs. This step was implemented with two online surveys, one targeting teachers and the other students. Altogether 915 respondents from 23 European countries were involved. R...

Inquiry-based learning is gaining popularity in science curricula, international research and development projects as well as teaching. One of the underlying reasons is that its success can be significantly improved due to the recent technical developments that allow the inquiry process to be supported by electronic learning environments. Inquiry-b...

The aim of this review is to identify specific types of guidance for supporting student use of online labs, that is, virtual and remote labs, in an inquiry context. To do so, we reviewed the literature on providing guidance within computer supported inquiry learning (CoSIL) environments in science education and classified all identified guidance ac...

This deliverable presents the structure for the evaluation activities in Go-Lab. It identifiesthe interventions, stakeholders, and outcomes that make up the Go-Lab evaluation matrix.The core of this deliverable is a discussion and presentation of the evaluation instrumentsthat will be used in the evaluation to measure the impact (outcomes) of the G...

This study investigates whether Virtual Manipulatives (VM) within a Physical Manipulatives (PM)-oriented curriculum affect conceptual understanding of electric circuits and related experimentation processes. A pre–post comparison study randomly assigned 194 undergraduates in an introductory physics course to one of five conditions: three experiment...

Few studies have focused on peer assessment at the secondary school level. Consequently, we know very little about the quality of the feedback secondary school students can produce and its potential usefulness. This study was implemented in the context of reciprocal online peer assessment of web-portfolios in a secondary school science course. We e...

Given the importance of laboratory experimentation for science education, many researchers have attempted to investigate and document the value of using Physical Manipulatives (PM; real-world physical/concrete material and apparatus) and Virtual Manipulatives (VM; virtual apparatus and material, which exist in computer-based simulations) in science...

This study aimed to identify if complementing representations of concrete objects with representations of abstract objects improves students’ conceptual understanding as they use a simulation to experiment in the domain of Light and Color. Moreover, we investigated whether students’ prior knowledge is a factor that must be considered in deciding wh...

The world needs young people who are skillful in and enthusiastic about science and who view science as their future career field. Ensuring that we will have such young people requires initiatives that engage students in interesting and motivating science experiences. Today, students can investigate scientific phenomena using the tools, data collec...

Science Created by You (SCY) learning environments are computer-based environments in which students learn about science topics in the context of addressing a socio-scientific problem. Along their way to a solution for this problem students produce many types of intermediate products or learning objects. SCY learning environments center the entire...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether physicality (actual and active touch of concrete material), as such, is a necessity for science experimentation learning at the kindergarten level. We compared the effects of student experimentation with Physical Manipulatives (PM) and Virtual Manipulatives (VM) on kindergarten students’ understa...

Although research has come to recognize the importance of studying classroom-based student–teacher discourse in science, the emphasis remains largely on teachers' abilities to ask questions and provide students with feedback, or on students' abilities to ask questions or engage in argumentative discourse. Consequently, little research has focused o...

This study aimed to investigate the effect of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM), virtual manipulatives (VM), and a blended combination of PM and VM on undergraduate students' understanding of concepts in the domain of Light and Color. A pre–post comparison study design was used for the purposes of this study that involved 70 participan...

Models and modeling are considered integral parts of scientific literacy, reflecting educators’ efforts to introduce and engage students in authentic scientific inquiry through Modeling-based Learning (MbL) approaches in science. Over the years research has developed a considerable amount of knowledge concerning MbL. Our purpose in this paper was t...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whole classroom discourse during modeling-based learning in science, seeking to describe the discourse's characteristics, its relation to the micro-context in which it took place and to the student-constructed models, and to ascertain when it becomes productive. Additionally, we aimed to describe how who...

The purpose of this study was to investigate secondary school students’ unmediated peer assessment skills. Specifically, 36 seventh graders, without receiving any kind of support, were anonymously assigned to reciprocally assess their peers’ science web-portfolios. Additionally, students’ attitudes towards and intentions about the use of unsupporte...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether physical or virtual manipulative experimentation can differentiate physics learning. There were four experimental conditions, namely Physical Manipulative Experimentation (PME), Virtual Manipulative Experimentation (VME), and two sequential combinations of PME and VME, as well as a control condition...

The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of two different cooperative learning approaches, namely, the Jigsaw Cooperative Approach (JCA) and the Traditional Cooperative Approach (TCA), on students’ learning and practices/actions within the context of a WebQuest science investigation. Another goal of this study was to identify possible p...

The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for analyzing and evaluating student-constructed models of physical phenomena and monitoring the progress of these models. Moreover, we aimed to examine whether this framework could capture differences between models created using different computer-based modeling tools; namely, computer-based pr...

In this paper we investigate the ways that a graphical and a textual Computer-based Programming Environment (CPE) support student inquiry in science during scientific modeling. We analyzed the conversations of 78 sixth-graders (39 students per CPE group) that took place during the construction of models, as well as, student-constructed models speci...

Science Created by You (SCY) is a project on learning in science and technology domains. SCY uses a pedagogical approach that centres around products, called ‘emerging learning objects’ (ELOs) that are created by students. Students work individually and collaboratively in SCY-Lab (the general SCY learning environment) on ‘missions’ that are guided...

We comparatively describe 94 pre-service elementary teachers’ epistemologies in three different data sources: (a) a semi-structured interview, (b) an asynchronous on-line discussion about a physical phenomenon and (c) a reflection about the discussion of the second activity. Using a discourse based analysis, we analyzed the data in terms of the pre...

We described and compared 94 pre-service elementary teachers' epistemologies during three different activities: one semi-structured interview, an asynchronous on-line discussion about a physics problem and their reflection on the discussion of the second activity. Using discourse-based analysis, we analyzed the data in terms of the teachers' underl...

This chapter presents the current state of the art on technologically supported inquiry learning. The learning processes involved in inquiry learning are briefly presented, as well as an outline of typical inquiry learning environments as consisting of a mission, a source of inquiry and tools for expressing knowledge along with cognitive scaffolds...

This study aimed to investigate the comparative value of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM) in a sequential combination with virtual manipulatives (VM), with the use of PM preceding the use of VM, and of experimenting with PM alone, with respect to changes in students' conceptual understanding in the domain of heat and temperature. A pr...

We compare the effect of experimenting with physical or virtual manipulatives on undergraduate students’ conceptual understanding of heat and temperature. A pre–post comparison study design was used to replicate all aspects of a guided inquiry classroom except the mode in which students performed their experiments. This study is the first on physic...

The first aim of this study was to contribute to a growing body of research in teacher-student classroom discourse, by describing, in detail, the discourse "moves" of a teacher during science conversations. Our second aim was to develop an enriched analytic framework that can account for the context, the content and the purpose of the discourse mov...

This study investigated acquisition and transfer of the modeling ability of fifth graders in various domains. Teaching interventions concentrated on the topic of marine ecosystems either through a modeling-based approach or a worksheet-based approach. A quasi-experimental (pre–post comparison study) design was used. The control group (n = 17) recei...

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate value of combining Real Experimentation (RE) with Virtual Experimentation (VE) with respect to changes in students' conceptual understanding of electric circuits. To achieve this, a pre–post comparison study design was used that involved 88 undergraduate students. The participants were randomly...

We report on a study in which we designed and implemented an activity sequence within the context of ecosystems aimed at fostering scientific modelling skills and enhancing conceptual understanding among fifth graders through the use of Stagecast CreatorTM. We describe how activities supported students to improve and expand their models by adding n...

This article reports on a research effort that investigated whether the use of Microcomputer-Based Labs (MBLs), implemented within an inquiry-based activity sequence on phase transformations (melting and freezing), contributes to the development of fourth grade (9-10 year-old) students’ conceptual understanding and ability to construct and interpre...

In this study we introduced a peer feedback tool to secondary school students while aiming at investigating whether this tool leads to a feedback dialogue when using a computer supported inquiry learning environment in science. Moreover, we aimed at examining what type of feedback students ask for and receive and whether the students use the feedba...

This special issue comprises a series of six papers selected from a large pool of papers originally presented at the CBLIS 2003 conference. The special issue highlights the important role of educational research in designing and evaluating learning environments for scientific thinking.

This study investigated how individuals’ construction of explanations—a way of ascertaining how well an individual understands a concept—develops from an interactive simulation. Specifically, the purpose was to investigate the effect of interactive computer simulations or science textbook assignments on the nature and quality of postgraduate scienc...

This study investigated the effectiveness of using an inquiry-based approach in teaching ninth-grade genetics. The inquiry method enables students to assume an active role in the construction of knowledge and has been shown to positively affect some of the important aspects in the process of learning science, such as conceptual understanding, probl...

This study investigated the effectiveness of using an inquiry-based approach in teaching ninth-grade genetics. The inquiry method enables students to assume an active role in the construction of knowledge and has been shown to positively affect some of the important aspects in the process of learning science, such as conceptual understanding, probl...