The INSIGHTS platform
The INSIGHTS platform is designed to support participants from different areas of expertise in reflecting on their practice—in the form of "implementation stories" on school participation in citizen science (SPICES)—and associating these stories to research-based pedagogical design principles.
In collaboration with networks of school-academia partnerships, like the Taking Citizen Science to School (TCSS) center, we are exploring the use of AI-based agents to help participants shape their reflections into coherent stories. Our working assumption is that the process of generating and sharing the stories, and then collaboratively connecting them with design principles—and the active exploration of the resulting map of connections between SPICES implementation stories and pedagogical design principles—will offer valuable insights for individuals and serve the wider network to consolidate knowledge across diverse contexts and expertise.
Therefore we designed INSIGHTS with the following constructs:
Implementation Stories
Structured narratives that describe the process, challenges, adaptations, and outcomes involved in applying a specific idea, design, or policy in a real-world context, typically classrooms. They may also capture the perspectives of different stakeholders on these experiences.
Telling a story
The process involves teachers and other stakeholders creating implementation stories about their practices, often guided by a human interviewer and co-authored with AI chatbots. It concludes when the main storyteller feels that the narrative faithfully reflects their perspective and experience of what happened.
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Sharing and discussing stories
An activity conducted in collaborative workshops where participants reflect on their own experiences and compare and contrast them with others’ stories. They identify commonalities across different implementation contexts and may connect these insights to pedagogical design principles, sometimes leading to their refinement or even the suggestion of new principles.
Pedagogical Design Principles
Evidence-based guidelines that inform how learning experiences should be structured to support effective teaching and deep student understanding. They bridge educational theory and instructional practice by shaping decisions about content, activities, assessments, and learner engagement.
Connecting stories to principles
An activity conducted in collaborative workshops where participants, with the support of an AI chatbot, identify pedagogical design principles within implementation stories. They may further discuss how these principles are applied in the story, explore alternative ways to implement them, and optionally consider how the same principles could be applied in their own contexts.
Building a shared network of professional knowledge
An activity conducted in collaborative workshops where participants explore the network of pedagogical design principles and their connections to implementation stories. They identify and discuss the most prominent stories and typical implementation patterns, with the aim of deriving guidelines to inform future implementations.
What participants say
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