Examining the Impact of Student-Generated Screencasts on Middle School Science Students’ Interactive Modeling Behaviors, Inquiry Learning, and Conceptual Development

Student activities involving screencast production can serve as scaffolds to enhance inquiry behavior, heighten explanation development, and encourage the connection of conceptual ideas developed by eighth grade science students engaged in interactive computer modeling. Screencast recordings enabled students to simultaneously combine their narrative explanations with a visual record of their computer modeling activity. Students (n=210) generated numerous screencasts and written explanations during an online exploration regarding global climate change. The quasi-experimental design used in this study prompted student groups in four classrooms to screencast their final explanations concerning their modeling activity, while groups in the four control classrooms used a text entry tool to provide their explanations. Results indicated that student groups constructing screencast explanations spent 72% more time with the model (t=7.13, p<.001, d=2.23) and spoke an average of 131 words compared to the 44 written by control classroom groups (t=3.15, p=.002, d=0.99). Screencast groups were 42% more likely to describe their inquiry behavior activity when prompted by two design components developed to measure on-task behavior (t=2.89, p=.003, d=0.90). Knowledge integration was also heightened as 24% of the screencast groups provided scientifically normative ideas to support their explanations compared to less than 5% of the text entry groups.