Promoting On-line Learners' Conceptual Change of Their Understanding of Communication Technology via Multiple Analogies

摘要

For the past twenty years, a growing amount of research has shown that the use of analogies in science teaching and learning promotes meaningful understanding of complex scientific concepts. This article presents a study in which multiple analogies were on-line used as scaffolding to link students' prior understanding of daily life events to knowledge of the technology domain. The study was designed to investigate how multiple analogies influence student learning of a complex technology concept: the communication system. We used several analogies in a set of learning materials to present the concepts of wired and wireless communication, mobile communication, and computer networking communication. Forty participants were randomly assigned to four groups. The four groups were named non-analogy for controlling, single analogy, similar analogies, and complementary analogies, according to the materials they used in this study. The results demonstrated that using analogies promoted profound understanding of complex technology concepts. In particular, we found that the analogy setting help students clear the big picture of communication technology and further fitting to the communication concept model.