THE INFINISCOPE INITIATIVE: TRANSFORMING ESS EDUCATION THROUGH ADVANCES IN DIGITAL LEARNING DESIGN

The Earth and space science (ESS) community has an unprecedented opportunity to transform ESS teaching and learning as a consequence of widespread adoption of new K12 curricula inspired by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In many states, including California, NGSS is stimulating a novel integration of ESS into core science curricula (biology, chemistry, physics). This development creates a need for high quality classroom resources that can help disciplinary educators demonstrate the connections to ESS concepts and challenges while helping learners develop key skills.

The NASA-funded Infiniscope initiative (https://infiniscope.org), led by Arizona State University, is working with educators in a community of practice to develop advanced ESS digital learning experiences that address this need. In these experiences, learners develop and apply authentic scientific reasoning skills to explore, test, and discover the ESS concepts by applying basic concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics. These experiences embed state-of-the-art, authentic data and 3D visualization within purpose-built interactive simulations and virtual field trips. These assets are, in turn, embedded in standards-aligned, compellingly designed learning experiences developed using an intelligent tutoring platform. The platform enables interactive feedback and adaptive learning pathways, and provides rich analytics about learner interaction from large-scale deployments that can guide rapid improvement cycles.

The immediate aim of Infiniscope is to use new digital tools to facilitate trans-disciplinary ESS teaching and learning in high schools. The long term aim is to create a coordinated ESS learning pipeline from K12 through higher education and into the workforce. This presentation will outline the Infiniscope team’s emerging approach, technologies, and examples of digital teaching and learning tools.