Cognitive strategies in dynamic modeling: case studies of opportunities taken and missed

New technologies offer new opportunities for engaging students in performances of higher-level thinking [Perkins 1985; Salomon, Perkins & Globerson 1991]. The increasing presence of sophisticated computers in classrooms, their expanding computational power, and advances in software interface design [Jackson, Stratford, Krajcik, & Soloway in press] bring opportunities closer to every student, and make it possible for them to engage in more sophisticated and technology-intensive activities such as dynamic modeling. Computer-based dynamic modeling has long been recognized as a scientific activity that promotes deep system analysis, careful cause-and-effect reasoning, and synthesis, along with articulating explanations about phenomena and testing and debugging. With the development of dynamic modeling environments for learners, we're investigating the extent to which students who construct dynamic models take advantage of those opportunities for cognitive engagement. Technology can play a supportive role in helping learners accomplish unfamiliar or cognitively difficult tasks [Guzdial 1995; Jackson et al. in press]. In this paper we present two case studies of pairs of students who, while creating models of their own design, engaged in a range of cognitive activities. The cases we present represent students in the middle range of abilities and performance: they did not struggle as they created their model, nor was what they produced exemplary.