Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of ExampleWiki

Modern multimedia -- especially the internet -- enables educators to let students choose from examples of their interest before or after they gather in class to discuss the formal principle which underlies all those examples. With example choice (Reber et al., accepted for publication), we have developed a theoretical framework with implications for practice. In this project, we would like to seize the opportunity both to deepen the understanding of example choice and to implement this new idea in practi ce. We will build on our experiences and knowledge accumulated from previous projects including POSBase (Chen et al., 2004). ExampleWiki will be a learning environment for the use in science education. The potential benefit of example choice in science tr aining is substantial; the teacher would get a tool that combines what students must learn with what they are interested in. It could mean that with this evidence-based teaching tool, Norwegian schools could combine (a) the ideal of L97 of connecting math ematics and science education with everyday life experience and (b) excellent performance. Our first laboratory study on example choice shows that students are both more interested and use more time to learn the presentation. In this pre-project we sha ll provide ExampleWiki, a web-based platform with a backend database that combines formal principles with students' personal interests by providing real life examples. This platform will allow entering, editing and retrieving formal principles and example s. In addition, we build a network group of scientists and practitioners who help find formal principles and examples. In this pre-project we shall focus on mathematics teaching, with applications in science. The platform will support self-regulated lear ning that is adapted to the students' skills and needs. It fits well the thematic domain A in the "program plan" of Utdanning2020, with its emphasis on learning materials and learning contents.