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Gut Instinct: Creating Scientific Theories with Online Learners

Published: 02 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Learners worldwide collectively spend millions of hours per week testing their skills on assignments with known answers. Might some of this time fruitfully be spent posing and exploring novel questions? This paper investigates an approach for learners to contribute scientific ideas. The Gut Instinct system embodies this approach, hosting online learning materials and invites learners to collaboratively brainstorm potential influences on people's microbiome. A between-subjects experiment compared the performance of participants who engaged in just learning, just contributing, or a combination. Participants in the learning condition scored highest on a summative test. Participants in both the contribution and combined conditions generated novel, useful questions; there was not a significant difference between the two. Though participants in the combined condition both learned and contributed, this setting did not exhibit an additive benefit, such as better learning in the combined condition. These results highlight the promise and difficulty of double-bottom-line learning experiences.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2017
    7138 pages
    ISBN:9781450346559
    DOI:10.1145/3025453
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    Published: 02 May 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. citizen science
    2. crowdsourcing
    3. online learning
    4. social computing systems

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