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Chen, Chen

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Chen, Chen
Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.1b456ad7-1f81-4772-8cfa-c7b49a1d14da

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    The Impact of High School Life Science Teachers’ Subject Matter Knowledge and Knowledge of Student Misconceptions on Students’ Learning
    (American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), 2020-03) Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Sadler, Philip; Sunbury, Susan
    One of the foundational assumptions in education is that greater teacher knowledge contributes to greater gains in student knowledge, but empirical evidence in support of this assumption is scarce. Using a U.S. sample of 79 biology teachers and their 2749 high school students, we investigate whether teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK) and knowledge of students’ misconceptions (KOSM) in high school life science are associated with students’ posttest performance on multiple-choice test items designed to reveal student misconceptions, after controlling for their pretest scores. We found that students were more likely to answer an item on the posttest correctly if their teachers could answer the question correctly, themselves (SMK). Teachers’ ability to predict students’ most common wrong answer (KOSM) for an item predicted even better student performance. Items for which a particular wrong answer rose above others in popularity saw an even greater benefit for teacher KOSM.
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    Going Over the Cliff: MOOC Dropout Behavior at Chapter Transition
    (Informa UK Limited, 2020-01-02) Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Sadler, Philip; Sasselov, Dimitar; Fredericks, Colin; Malan, David
    Participants’ engagement in massive online open courses (MOOCs) is highly irregular and self-directed. It is well known in the field of television media that substantial parts of the audience tend to drop out at major episodic, or seasonal, closures, which makes creating cliff-hangers a crucial strategy to retain viewers (Bakker, 1993; Cazani, 2016; Thompson, 2003). Could there be an analogous pattern in MOOCs—with an elevated probability of dropout at major chapter transitions? Applying disjoint survival analysis on a sample of 12,913 students in a popular astronomy MOOC that built participants’ cultural capital (hobbyist pursuits), we found a significant increase in dropout rates at chapter closures. Moreover, the latter the chapter closure was positioned in the course sequence, the higher the dropout rate became. We found this pattern replicated in a sample of 20,134 students in a popular computer science MOOC that introduced participants to programming.
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    E-Readers Are More Effective than Paper for Some with Dyslexia
    (Public Library of Science, 2013) Schneps, Matthew; Thomson, Jenny M.; Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Pomplun, Marc
    E-readers are fast rivaling print as a dominant method for reading. Because they offer accessibility options that are impossible in print, they are potentially beneficial for those with impairments, such as dyslexia. Yet, little is known about how the use of these devices influences reading in those who struggle. Here, we observe reading comprehension and speed in 103 high school students with dyslexia. Reading on paper was compared with reading on a small handheld e-reader device, formatted to display few words per line. We found that use of the device significantly improved speed and comprehension, when compared with traditional presentations on paper for specific subsets of these individuals: Those who struggled most with phoneme decoding or efficient sight word reading read more rapidly using the device, and those with limited VA Spans gained in comprehension. Prior eye tracking studies demonstrated that short lines facilitate reading in dyslexia, suggesting that it is the use of short lines (and not the device per se) that leads to the observed benefits. We propose that these findings may be understood as a consequence of visual attention deficits, in some with dyslexia, that make it difficult to allocate attention to uncrowded text near fixation, as the gaze advances during reading. Short lines ameliorate this by guiding attention to the uncrowded span.
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    Shorter Lines Facilitate Reading in Those Who Struggle
    (Public Library of Science, 2013) Schneps, Matthew; Thomson, Jenny M.; Sonnert, Gerhard; Pomplun, Marc; Chen, Chen; Heffner-Wong, Amanda
    People with dyslexia, who ordinarily struggle to read, sometimes remark that reading is easier when e-readers are used. Here, we used eye tracking to observe high school students with dyslexia as they read using these devices. Among the factors investigated, we found that reading using a small device resulted in substantial benefits, improving reading speeds by 27%, reducing the number of fixations by 11%, and importantly, reducing the number of regressive saccades by more than a factor of 2, with no cost to comprehension. Given that an expected trade-off between horizontal and vertical regression was not observed when line lengths were altered, we speculate that these effects occur because sluggish attention spreads perception to the left as the gaze shifts during reading. Short lines eliminate crowded text to the left, reducing regression. The effects of attention modulation by the hand, and of increased letter spacing to reduce crowding, were also found to modulate the oculomotor dynamics in reading, but whether these factors resulted in benefits or costs depended on characteristics, such as visual attention span, that varied within our sample.
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    Romantic Transfer: From Science to Social Ideologies
    (2017-05-04) Chen, Chen; Haste, Helen E.; Selman, Robert L.; Schneps, Matthew H.
    The transfer of learning is arguably the most enduring goal of education. The history of science reveals that numerous theories transfer from natural-science to the socio-political realm, but educational practitioners often deem such transfers romantic and rhetorical, ignoring the opportunities and challenges such transfers may hold. In terms of opportunities, romantic transfer encourages students to relate science to events in social life and further to discover new ways to understand social issues and propose social hypotheses. In terms of challenge, romantic transfers are often based on superficial and even imprecise understandings of science and depend on oversimplified labels and metaphors. In many cases, the romantic transfers are imaginative. Although logically romantic transfers are based on analogical resonance, empirically they are hardly proven to be valid. Nevertheless, when students imagine social and ideological implications of the hard science terminologies and theorems, they are at risk for considering the emergent ideologies as proven by hard sciences that are often considered authoritative, objective, and universal. Literal understanding of science-inspired by still unexamined ideologies can lead to maladaptive and even dangerous social actions. Because many of the romantic transfers are interdisciplinary and controversial, teachers may avoid explicit discussion about romantic transfer with students, and do not wish to assume responsibility of doing so. However, the question remains whether avoiding explicit discussion and debates about romantic transfer would inhibit students from spontaneously romanticize science concepts. This dissertation presents four studies that systematically investigate questions of romantic transfer—informal, emergent, and metaphorical boundary transections from natural science to social ideologies that often occur unexpectedly. My first study shows that participants who scored high in transferential thinking style also scored high in scientism beliefs and that participants who scored high on both tend to give literal interpretations to (religious) text. Following, my second study shows that students who reviewed the conservation of energy in physics are more likely to believe that luck is conserved, a naïve karmic religious idea. My third study shows that students are able to transfer spontaneously from theories in physics to more politically charged contexts. Specifically, students who learned the theory of entropy are more likely to prefer tightened social control, whereas students who learned self-organization theory are more likely to prefer stronger individual agency and relaxed social control. Study-4 involved interviews with the participants from Study-3 and shows that students’ narratives about social control are largely consistent with the thermodynamic concepts they have learned. Occasionally, students can critically evaluate the plausibility of their romantic transferences. This dissertation shows that science instruction implicitly empowers students to make social hypotheses and to engage in moral-civic-political discourse. To consider pedagogies that respond to such an opportunity without falling victim to hasty generalizations, we need both science and civic educations to equip students with the methods to examine self-generated social hypothesis. We also need pedagogies that promote the awareness and tolerance of metaphors to offset the dangers of literalism.
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    Computational Thinking and Assignment Resubmission Predict Persistence in a Computer Science MOOC
    (Wiley, 2020-02-27) Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Sadler, Philip; Malan, David
    Massive open online course (MOOC) studies have shown that precourse skills (such as precomputational thinking) and course engagement measures (such as making multiple submission attempts with assignments when the initial submission is incorrect) predict students' grade performance, yet little is known about whether these factors predict students' course retention. In applying survival analysis to a sample of more than 20,000 participants from one popular computer science MOOC, we found that students' precomputational thinking skills and their perseverance in assignment submission strongly predict their persistence in the MOOC. Moreover, we discovered that precomputational thinking skills, programming experience, and gender, which were previously considered to be constant predictors of students' retention, have effects that attenuate over the course milestones. This finding suggests that MOOC educators should take a growth perspective towards students' persistence: As students overcome the initial hurdles, their resilience grows stronger.
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    The effect of first high school science teacher's gender and gender matching on students' science identity in college
    (Wiley, 2019-11-12) Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Sadler, Philip
    To encourage the formation of science identity among girls, many scholars and practitioners have suggested to assign samegender science teachers to students so that the teachers can serve as gender role models. However, direct evidence of any long‐term effect of gender‐matching is scarce. In a nationally representative survey of college students from the United States, we investigated if gender‐matching between students and their first high school science teachers was associated with students’ stronger identity in those science subjects in college. In physics, we found no gender‐matching effect. In chemistry, there was a gender‐matching effect only for women students. In biology, there were gender‐matching effects for students of both genders. In addition, we found that students in general had a lower science identity if they reported a negative influence of opposite gender domination (IOGD) on their career choices. However, for female students who were at the negative end of the IOGD scale, female biology teachers raised the level of biology identity to the grand average. Our findings suggested that the gender role model effect was strongest when the gender role models resonated with the overall disciplinary gender representation at the school or societal levels.
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    Foreseeing the Endgame: Who Are the Students Who Take the Final Exam at the Beginning of a MOOC?
    (Informa UK Limited, 2020-01-06) Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Sadler, Philip; Malan, David
    Massive open online courses (MOOCs) show highly irregular participation behaviour among users. In this study, using data from Computer Science 50x of HarvardX, we investigated one extreme, yet common strategy to foresee the endgame: taking the final problem set at the beginning of the course. We found such a strategy to be the only dominant trajectory alternative to following the sequence prescribed by the syllabus. Whereas all students who took and passed the final problem set at the beginning of the course subsequently completed the course, those who took and failed the final problem set at the beginning of the course finished the fewest number of milestones, even fewer than those who never attempted the final problem set. Moreover, students with a lower prior programming proficiency were more likely than better prepared students both to take the final problem set early and to fail it. This study revealed the disconcerting phenomenon that many students dropped out of a MOOC because, apparently, their confidence was crushed even before they learned any course content. The study suggests that future MOOC practices and policies should offer informative and constructive syllabi to accommodate students’ need for previewing the endgame.
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    The impact of student misconceptions on student persistence in a MOOC
    (Wiley, 2019-12-18) Chen, Chen; Sonnert, Gerhard; Sadler, Philip; Sasselov, Dimitar; Fredericks, Colin
    Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) provide opportunities to learn a vast range of subjects. Because MOOCs are open to anyone with computer access and rarely have prerequisite requirements, the range of student backgrounds can be far more varied than in conventional classroom-based courses. Prior studies have shown that misconceptions have a huge impact on students' learning performance; however, no study has empirically examined the relationship between misconceptions and learning persistence. This study of 12,913 MOOC-takers examines how students' misconceptions about the upcoming course material affect course completion. Using a survival analysis approach, we found that, controlling for the score in a pre-course test, students holding more misconceptions had a higher dropout rate at the start of the course, an effect that diminished over time. Other student variables were found to have a positive impact on survival that persisted throughout the entire course: U.S. location, higher age, an intention to complete, better English skills, prior familiarity with the subject, motivation to earn a certificate, and score and time spent on the previous problem set (homework). By contrast, student gender, education level, number of previous MOOCs completed, and motivation to participate in online discussion forums did not affect survival.