"She faced some tough competition but wrote an excellent piece on how high school students understand rates of change and accumulation in a computer-based simulation tool that was ultimately selected as the top submission," says Victor Lee, assistant professor at Utah State University and a member of the selection committee.
Wilkerson-Jerde's paper was entitled "Qualitative Calculus of Systems: Exploring Students' Understanding of Rate of Change and Accumulation in Multiagent Systems." Her advisor, professor Uri Wilensky, served as second author.
"Our everyday world is characterized by quantitative change — from fluctuating global temperatures and shifting medical insurance costs to the changes in pressure inside a car tire from winter to spring. Often, such change is not the result of a single entity or action, but by many different interactions and behaviors," writes Wilkerson-Jerde. The paper investigates "how students interpret patterns of change in the world in terms of the multiple events and individuals that cause that change. Specifically, we are finding out how students can use agent-based modeling to connect individual actions and experiences with the large-scale trends (like unemployment rates or population change) typically used to describe and study the world."
"This paper focused on how students already make sense of large-scale patterns of change, how we can leverage that existing knowledge to help them better understand these patterns mathematically, and what difficulties they might have in doing that. Our findings are helping us to design new agent-based modeling and analysis tools that we hope can provide them with more opportunities to make those connections," she explains.
In connection with this investigation, Wilkerson-Jerde built a model in NetLogo, a multi-agent programmable modeling environment developed by Wilensky that is flexible enough to be used from elementary through graduate school. Wilensky's students use this type of computer modeling in innovative ways to investigate diverse phenomena — from the spread of forest fires to the prognosis for diseases.
Wilkerson-Jerde's paper "was a nice mix of both theoretical and empirical work, had a great deal of significance to current research issues that are important in math, science, and technology education, and it was rated highly for clarity," explains Lee, who also notes that "it was a very tough decision this year with several excellent papers. The decision was reached by a committee of five experts in the learning sciences. ... This is the only award given by the special interest groups each year and is intended to recognize excellence in student scholarship." The International Society of the Learning Sciences sponsored the award.
Learning Sciences doctoral student Monica Ko received an honorable mention for the same award.
Photo caption:
Michelle Wilkerson-Jerde discusses a project with her advisor, professor Uri Wilensky.