STOCHASMOS is a web-based learning platform for supporting students' scientific reasoning through scientifically authentic investigations with an embedded authoring tool. Teachers and other instructional designers can use this system to design their own web-based investigations with reflective supports. The STOCHASMOS platform is available in English, Greek, Arabic, Dutch, German, Hebrew, and Swedish. The platform was the main product of the STOCHASMOS project which investigated the role of new technologies in supporting middle-school students’ reflective inquiry practices in science and, in specific, the role of technology-based supports in scaffolding students’ reasoning with scientific data. The research part of the project examined the interactions of the students with the web-based environment following a mixed-methods approach. We investigated the extent to which the reflective scaffolding supports the construction of students' scientific explanations using quantitative as well as qualitative methods.
The research and development program "Collaborative Inquiry Learning Environments" (project SYNERGASIA) was the second developmental phase of the platform. This project is funded by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation. A space for peer review between group of students located in the same or different classes, a chat tool and a forum were created in order to support synchronous and asynchronous communication between groups of students who are in the same classroom or classrooms in different locations. The "Meles-meles" learning environment was developed for the purposes of this research program.
Costas Constantinou from UCY gave a talk on the topic: "Enhancing the authenticity of student experience with web based scaffolds for scientific inquiry: examples from the validation of learning environments on the STOCHASMOS platform" at the Innovative Education Forum 2010, a conference organized by Microsoft Cyprus, on June 24th 2010 in Nicosia, Cyprus.
You can talk us during the ICLS 2010 conference (International Conference of the Learning Sciences) were we will have a poster presentation.
STOCHASMOS manual: Here you can find the the STOCHASMOS platform manual.
Lympouridou, C. & Sevastidou, A. (2007). Information Technology support for Elementary School Science. Pedagogical Institute of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus. (in Greek), Chapter 5: Web-based Learning Environments