Examining High School Students' Learning from Collaborative Projects Related to Alternative Energy

Abstract

Constructivist learning theory is used to examine students' individual understandings from a collaborative science-writing project on alternative energies supported by Web 2.0 technologies. We examine how high school chemistry students (n=30) make sense of alternative energy constructs through analyzing changes in pre- and post-intervention concept maps. Through statistical and structural analysis of their concept maps, we investigate changes in the students' understandings about alternative energy. Our findings suggest that students increased their knowledge about alternative energies at different levels, reflecting both surface and deep learning of related environmental education concepts, as well as creating strong connections between concepts related to safety, costs, and health for different types of alternative energy. In addition, student elaboration increased for all energy types, suggesting that the jigsaw pedagogy was successful in improving individual understandings.