Goal Directed Inquiry via Exhibit Design: Engaging With History Through the Lens of Baseball.

The study of a culture's images, works of art, photographs, and stories can be a source of great instructional leverage, not only to convey principles associated with the artifacts themselves, but also as an anchor for exploring related facets of a society, including, for example, its political structures, social and economic dynamic, and popular culture. Such cultural artifacts can help establish a framework for historical and contemporary inquiry where students become active participants in seeking and applying new knowledge. This article introduces an explicit instructional framework, called Virtual Galleries that situates learning within an exhibit development context. A student in this learning environment assumes the role of a museum curator, engaging in exploration and synthesis through the process of defining an organizing theme for the exhibition and by providing commentary that elucidates the exhibit. The Abner project, a web-based application that allows end-users to create exhibitions using the co llections of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, is presented and it is built according to the principles of the Virtual Gallery model.

The study of a culture's artifacts, from works of art to domestic accessories, can be a source of great instructional leverage. While such objects are often compelling simply on the basis of surface features, they can also provide an immediate and interesting anchor for exploring larger societal and cultural issues. The Abner Project (Abner) is a World Wide Web-based learning environment that draws upon artifacts from the collections of the National Baseball Hall of Fame to spur the examination of issues of civil rights, gender equity, political power, popular culture, and foreign affairs. Abner is an instance of a Virtual Gallery, a framework that calls for such historical and contemporary inquiry by situating learning within an exhibit development context and allowing the student to adopt the role of curator. The Abner environment (or any Virtual Gallery application) is an arena for students to explore and analyze selected artifacts, develop findings, and synthesize these findings into a coherent, shareabl e, and interactive presentation. This presentation of Abner serves to illustrate the principles of the Virtual Gallery model, and subsequent discussions highlight the prospective benefits of this approach as well as issues that remain to be resolved.

PROBLEMS FACING INSTRUCTION

Primary motivation for this work comes from shortcomings in classroom instruction that arise when knowledge and concepts become separated from the contexts in which they naturally occur and present some utility. A secondary motivation is the conviction that technology (when appropriately designed and applied) can go a long way toward addressing these shortcomings. Objections to conventional notions of classroom instruction have been raised since the advent of contemporary classrooms, notably by Whitehead (1929), who, in his seminal work, The Aims of Education, identified what he considered to be the central problem of education--battling the transmission of "inert ideas," or "ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations" (p. 13). Despite his enthusiastic efforts to the contrary, research dated 60 years after Whitehead's initial expose shows that the inert knowledge problem has persisted in contemporary education. In 1989, Brown, Collins, an d Duguid observed, "it is common for students to acquire algorithms, routines, and decontextualized definitions that they cannot use and that, therefore, lie inert" (p. 33).

Empirical Evidence for the Inert Knowledge Problem

Brown, Collins, and Duguid based their observations in part on a study that compared how children are taught new vocabulary in the classroom with how they learn words in informal environments (Miller & Gildea, 1987, as cited in Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Miller and Gildea found that the process of learning vocabulary through ordinary conversations is much more efficient than learning new words by way of the traditional classroom method--through context-impoverished definitions and contrived examples.

Since Miller and Gildea's 1987 study, other researchers have investigated how and why students continue to accumulate inert knowledge throughout their pre-college formal education. These researchers have focused their inquiries on what is taught and learned in particular curricular school subjects, including mathematics instruction in elementary school (Porter, 1989), science education in high school (Gambro & Switzky, 1996), and history instruction in elementary school (McKeown & Beck, 1990). These studies are diverse not only in domain, but also methodology--the researchers worked from a variety of angles, from investigations of teaching strategies to analyses of testing results.

Porter (1989) studied teachers' instructional strategies in elementary school mathematics, and concluded that certain pedagogical methods contribute to the inert knowledge problem. The methods he implicated were two primary instructional practices--skills-focused teaching and "teaching for exposure" (p. 12). Rather than attempting to determine the causes of inert knowledge, Gambro and Switzky (1996) tried to uncover its immediate effects by analyzing the results of a nationwide panel study of mathematics and science attitudes and achievement. Focusing primarily on test results concerning environmental science knowledge, the authors discovered that although high school students could often recognize or recall basic facts in this domain, the students were not able to answer higher-order questions related to those facts. By analyzing the results of such large-scale assessments, Gambro and Switzky provided some evidence as to how prevalent inert ideas might be in the science knowledge of contemporary high school students, to the exclusion of more integrated knowledge structures. McKeown and Beck (1990) assessed fifth and sixth grade students' knowledge of history--in particular, of the events leading to the American Revolution--immediately before and one year after the students studied the topic in school. By constructing semantic nets based on students' responses to pertinent interview questions, and examining these graphical representations, the researchers were able to characterize students' propositional knowledge of the domain. McKeown and Beck found that students' knowledge both before and after instruction was rather shallow and fragile, "characterized by simple association and a lack of connected structures" (p. 687). The authors argued that the students seemed to have acquired bits and pieces of information in an unstructured fashion, and therefore were not equipped to weigh the value or relevance of any bit of information versus another, nor to integrate new bits with prior ones to develop a richer understanding.

Cognitive Explanations of Inert Knowledge

It is not sufficient to document the challenges we face in classroom education; we need to understand the causal factors so that suitable solutions can be explored. Renkl, Mandl, and Gruber (1996) identified three types of explanations for the persistence of the inert knowledge problem in education, in which relevant knowledge might be available to students but is not used to solve problems. The "metaprocess explanation" blames an access problem for students' failure to retrieve appropriate information. In other words, the knowledge is there, but the access processes are not. "Structure deficit explanations" point to a problem in the structure of the knowledge itself, rather than to a student's ability to retrieve it. "Situatedness explanations" assume that knowledge is essentially situated, and that it is therefore bound to the context in which it was acquired.

As possible solutions to the inert knowledge problem, Renkl et. al. (1996) suggested three related instructional models: cognitive apprenticeship, anchored instruction, and random-access instruction. The researchers contended that although these three models are different in surface features, the essential principles they share should help students to overcome knowledge inertia. One principle is that the learning process be driven by a compelling problem-to-be-solved. Students learning within the framework of these models acquire knowledge on demand in a concrete, immediate way so that they may work towards the solution to a pressing problem. A second principle shared by these models is that the problem, which students are attempting to solve be authentic. There is typically no neat, linear solution for students to identify; instead, problems presented through these models are as complex and ill-defined as their real world counterparts tend to be. A fourth instructional model, the Goal-Based Scenario (Schank , Fano, Bell, & Jona, 1993/4), is not mentioned in Renkl et al. but does share these properties as well (that is, goal-driven inquiry in pursuit of authentic, complex and ill-defined problems).

Overcoming Inert Knowledge

The Virtual Gallery framework introduced here, and the Abner application that directly instantiated this framework, addresses head-on, the conditions giving rise to the inert knowledge problem. By introducing concepts in an environment where the utility and scope of those concepts is readily discernable by the learner, Abner makes it far more likely that students will be able to appropriately schematize and index the knowledge they are acquiring (the inability of which exposes the learner to "structure deficits"). By providing a rich task context and multiple sources of information, Abner encourages learners to relate concepts with one another and to develop more comprehensive retrieval cues, thus helping address "metaprocess" deficiencies. In an interesting question, but one that is not commented on further in this article, is whether users of Abner are more or less susceptible to the "Situatedness" problem mentioned in Renkl, et al. as compared with nonusers.

THE VIRTUAL GALLERY MODEL OF INSTRUCTION

The Virtual Gallery model (Bell, Dimaraki, & Brown, 1997; Bell & Zirkel, 1997) is designed to help students and teachers overcome the inert knowledge problem in education. By acting as curators in a simulated museum environment, students get the chance to work with primary and secondary source material to create a shareable exhibit that demonstrates their understanding of a particular domain. Instead of being relegated to the role of passive recipient of already-processed information, students engaged in the Virtual Gallery framework are challenged to do their own research--actively selecting, interpreting, and organizing factual information into a coherent, persuasive presentation. This emphasis on learning-by-doing continues a rich tradition among educational theorists (Dewey, 1938) and draws heavily upon contemporary discourse about constructivism (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992; Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy, & Perry, 1992) and constructionism (Harel & Papert, 1991). More specifically, the Virtual Gallery framework promotes two general principles of learning; first, goals play a central role in learning (Ng & Bereiter, 1991; Schank, 1994), and second, the learning of new knowledge is facilitated when the knowledge can be applied in an authentic context (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Whitehead, 1929). Through pursuing the goal of creating an original Virtual Gallery exhibit, students not only develop a deeper understanding of a particular domain, but also are given the chance to apply research skills that will serve them in a variety of subjects.

A CASE STUDY IN VIRTUAL GALLERIES: THE ABNER PROJECT

The Abner project seeks to instantiate the Virtual Gallery framework in an instructional application for teaching middle- and high-school students about contemporary U.S. history through the lens of professional baseball. Students using Abner become museum curators, telling their own stories through National Baseball Hall of Fame artifacts. Three components--the object library, the simulated gallery space, and the curatorial task--provide the fertile environment from which individual discovery and generative activity can spring. While interacting with the software, students-as-curators engage in the continuous process of building and reshaping understanding as a consequence of experience. Instead of passively receiving discrete, disconnected, and predigested facts from a static source like a textbook, students using Abner actively select, interpret, and arrange factual information from a dynamic database, building an exhibit reflecting their understanding of a part of a larger historical and cultural domain.

Exhibit Design as Learning Activity

As an instance of a Virtual Gallery, Abner immediately invites a user to become an active participant by assigning him/her the realistic and engaging role of museum curator. Of course, simply calling a student a curator does not ensure that learning will take place. The type of careful structuring of the task environment and its corresponding learning objectives that is needed is captured by the Goal-Based Scenario (GBS) model (Schank, Fano, Bell & Jona 1993/4). The GBS model situates learning within a context (scenario) that allows the student to apply newly encountered knowledge to a meaningful task in the pursuit of a specific goal. A Virtual Gallery (and hence Abner) is therefore a kind of GBS, in which the goal is to design a coherent, thematic exhibit and in which the authentic context is the curator's workspace--the galleries, archives, and offices of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

In pursuit of the exhibit-designing goal, the student-as-curator is "doing" history, that is, learning about a particular facet of an era by actively interpreting primary sources of historical information. One component task in this goal-directed inquiry as provided by Abner is the comparison of reports, broadcasts, documents, and images for similarities and differences and the subsequent synthesis of the connections that result (Spiro & Jehgn 1990). Another task for the curator is to seek further information about the objects and eras by analyzing related documents and summarizing their findings.

Finally, the curator must also arrange the selected objects in a simulated gallery space in a "visual essay," placing objects and composing object labels and wall texts.

It is important to note that Abner does not aim to train students to become curators, but to allow them to think like curatorial scholars (Bell, Dimaraki & Brown, 1997). Although the tasks leading up to and including selecting and arranging artifacts in an exhibition is a part of professional curatorial work, Abner's main purpose is to use such activities as a way to help students develop understanding and apply their knowledge of a culture's history and practices (Pierce 1994).

Baseball and Contemporary U.S. History

As a traditionally American institution, baseball can be considered a reflection of the country's history and culture at large. Therefore, a careful analysis of the artifacts of baseball as collected by the National Baseball Hall of Fame can provide clues as to what was occurring in the atmosphere that engendered them. For instance, consider the shin guard. According to some baseball historians, the invention of shin guards may be credited to black second basemen, who in the late nineteenth century developed the equipment for protection against intentional spiking by white players' feet-first slide (Tygiel, 1997). From this seemingly innocuous object alone, one can see that the study of baseball artifacts and supporting documents can provoke inquiry beyond the playing field, into broader national issues like racism and civil rights.

It is important to note that the relevance of baseball is not limited only to the study of civil rights or other historical or cultural topics. In fact, educators have used baseball as an accessible and effective springboard to the study of mathematics, physics, geography, economics, and composition (Keane, 1995; Ubrenholt, 1998). Future versions of Abner may take advantage of this flexibility, providing a gateway to students and teachers of many knowledge domains.

THE ABNER LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Since the learner is placed in the role of curator, which of a curator's regular activities may offer some measure of instructional utility must also be asked. Curators developing a special exhibit are in a sense composing a visual essay (Bell, Dimaraki, & Brown, 1997). They identify within a broad, open topic of interest, such as "baseball," a dimension that they can address with an exhibit. They actively look through the collections of their home museum (and other museums) for objects that are instances of the chosen dimension. They research primary texts for passages that shed light on this dimension and enhance the meaning of specific objects. They develop a structure for the exhibit which in a sense corresponds to establishing and elaborating on a "thesis" derived from available evidence of the past and reflective of their expert judgment. Finally, they select and organize the objects in the gallery space to convey the point of the exhibit in a coherent and engaging way.

The student using Abner assumed an analogous set of tasks. In particular, the learner as curator creates an online exhibit using artifacts available as digital media in a database. In carrying out this task, the learner/curator reviews objects from the Hall of Fame's permanent collections, decides on a theme, or story, around which the exhibition will be constructed, and selects objects that bear some relationship to the identified theme. The learner/curator places the selected objects within a gallery space and creates labels and wall texts that address the contribution of each object to the overall message of the exhibition. When the learner/curator reaches his/her goal of exhibit creation, a completed gallery is made available for visits from her peers and teachers. The materials that comprise Abner's learning environment can be broadly characterized as belonging to one of three principal components: the Virtual Hall, the interface, and the databases.

The Virtual Hall

To help student curators better understand the goal they are pursing, virtual tour of a section of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (Figure 1) is included. This richly visual, 3D interface is constructed using QuicktimeVR and allows users the chance to "walk through" the Hall of Fame Gallery, which is the room containing plaques honoring each inductee.

In the virtual version, students can navigate by moving the cursor in a desired direction, zoom in to examine a particular alcove, and browse individual players' plaques (Figure 2). When the cursor rolls over a player's plaque, additional biographic information appears at the bottom of the screen; clicking on a player links to a number of artifacts associated with that player's life, and the themes which those artifacts engender. In this way, besides serving as an exemplar, the Virtual Hall also functions as a front-end to the artifact database.

The Interface

From the learner's perspective, Abner simulates an exhibit design exercise; from the programmer's perspective, it is a collection of databases (see following section). It is therefore up to the interface to reconcile these two views, linking the learner to the databases with metaphors and visual cues that mask the databases and accentuate the curatorial context. The opening screen of the Abner interface begins this masking by welcoming the user and asking whether he/she is creating a new exhibit or continuing one in-progress. The user then logs in accordingly.

After logging in, the user becomes a "curator" and the top frame becomes a navigational toolbar with buttons that allow the user to access the three main areas of Abner: (a) the permanent collection (Search), (b) the curator's office (Office), (c) and the temporary gallery (Curate). The toolbar also contains a button for the curator to work with the general notes, as well as help and exit buttons. The navigational toolbar remains in the top frame throughout the duration of the program, enabling the curator to access any major area or function at any time. In this way, the curator can interact with Abner in a nonlinear fashion, remaining true to the curatorial task in which the goal of creating an exhibit is not often reached in a direct, step-by-step manner.

The interface is designed to support the creation of a personal exhibit through four main processes: (a) theme selection, (b) data gathering, (c) formulation, and (d) presentation. The theme, which helps organize the exhibit design process, may be assigned by the instructor based on curricular objectives invented by the student according to research goals, or selected from a set supplied by Abner supplementary materials (see "future development" section). In the data-gathering stage, the curator searches through the museum's collection for artifacts that may relate to the theme, analyzes supporting documents, and records the findings in a notebook. During formulation, the curator reflects on the gathered data, and further examines the artifacts' relationship to each other, as well as to the theme. He/she begins to summarize the findings in artifact labels and wall text. In the presentation stage, the curator develops the exhibit's structure, placing artifacts and accompanying text in the gallery in a spatial arrangement that coherently and engagingly represents the flow of the argument. The processes of data gathering, formulation, and presentation are not often conducted sequentially, for instance, the formulation phase might reveal an unanticipated aspect of the theme that spurs the curator to return to data-gathering and vice-versa.

Once the student/curator establishes a specific theme, the gathering of data from the BBHOF catalog begins. The catalog stores digital representations of artifacts from the National Baseball Hall of Fame's permanent collection, including photographs, drawings, memorabilia, audio clips, and video segments, and offers background information on each entry. The curator browses the catalog through a search interface that is designed to be consistent with the exhibit design metaphor. By entering thematic keywords into appropriate fields in the search area, the curator can find items that fit the criteria (Figure 3).

By clicking on the thumbnail image associated with each entry, the curator can view the artifact's full catalog page (Figure 4), containing a larger, high-resolution version of the image or a link which plays the audio or video clip, descriptive information about the artifact, and links to supporting documents.

The curator's next task is to select which artifacts to include in the exhibition by way of the "send to office" checkbox at the bottom of the catalog page. Then, the curator may choose to continue searching through the catalog and selecting artifacts by either the examining the remaining artifacts in the index list (still in left frame), or starting a new search of the catalog with different criteria. There is no limit to the number of artifacts the curator may select. At any time during the search and selection process, the curator may visit the office to work with the artifacts selected by pressing "Office" in the navigational toolbar.

Visiting the curator's office begins the formulation process. Here the curator develops text descriptions of each object selected for display. In contrast to standard descriptive labeling, these brief accounts are meant as explanations of how each object fits into the theme of the exhibition: what story it tells and how it relates to other objects in the exhibit or to the curator's own personal experience. The curator also provides a narrative describing the overall exhibition (wall text) and creates an exhibit title. This online exhibit thus becomes the visual story and product of the curator's travels through a virtual gallery. The text annotations augment the objects to provide contexts for analysis and reflection for the visitor just as real museums do. These acts of creation by deconstruction and reconstruction lie at the heart of experience and learning (Dewey, 1954).

Finally, the curator develops a presentation of the exhibition. Items selected for the exhibit are mounted, one by one, into an in-progress gallery space (Figure 5). Labels, wall text, and titles created in the formulation phase appear for review or revision though clickable counterparts. Once the curator is satisfied with the exhibit, the application to "compile" the work into a gallery that is viewable through a web browser by clicking the "Preview" button can be commanded. Creating a nontrivial product that others are likely to see promotes a sense of ownership and voice in the learning process, a factor that strengthens the authenticity of the task (Honebein, 1996).

The Databases

Three relationally linked databases form the core of Abner. One contains records of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's permanent collection, storing digital images (one high resolution and one thumbnail), basic identification (including date, title, and artifact type), and reference links (hyperlinks to supporting texts) for each artifact. Another database maintains information about each curator, including login fields (name, password), and exhibit data (artifacts chosen, general notes, exhibit title, wall text). The third database acts as a bridge between the permanent collection and the curator information, supplying a workspace for each artifact the student selects. Each record in this database brings together basic information about the artifact (from the permanent collection database) with the unique identity of the curator who selected it (from the curator identification database), and also supplies space for the curator's notes and/or labeling information pertaining to that artifact only.

To an Abner end user, the three databases are invisible; that is, the databases form a back-end to the Web interface described in the previous section. The databases store the information necessary for program functioning and work very much "behind the scenes." It is important to note how domain-independent each database essentially is. The power of this flexibility is discussed with regards to the Virtual Gallery Maker authoring tool described in the Future Work section of this paper.

Example Interaction

An abbreviated representative session will illustrate some of the ways that a user might interact with Abner in constructing an exhibition. Let us assume the user is a student in an eighth-grade social studies classroom in which students are engaged in project work. Our student has decided to create a Virtual Gallery exhibition exploring racial equity in contemporary US culture using Abner and its baseball collection. There are five ways to search (topic, decade, type of object, subject, and keyword) and the student begins with a keyword search for "racism" that yields three records, one of which he/she selects for examination (Figure 6).

This newspaper article is of interest to him/her because it offers a contrast between Jackie Robinson's role as one who broke color barriers in major league sports while maintaining a political profile for the Republican Party, so he/she sends this item to the office. The next search specifies the topic "The Jackie Robinson Story" and the keyword "politics," which yields five records, one of which is a letter from Jackie Robinson to an industry executive calling for greater representation for blacks within the executive ranks (Figure 7).

Finally, the student specifies the type of object wanted ("photos" and "video") and sends three pictures and one video to the office. The next task is to construct labels for each object in order to begin weaving together a coherent story, by entering text into a pop-up dialog (Figure 8).

The curator's office indicates which objects have been labeled and which have been mounted (Figure 9).

Selecting "Curate" brings the student to the display case, where he can define an exhibit title and can drag and drop the selected items into display areas (Figure 10).

Finally, he/she can preview the exhibition to see how it will look to visitors (Figure 11). Clicking on a displayed item in this mode enlarges the selected item and display's the student-curator's narrative description of that item.

CURRICULAR DEVELOPMENT

While Abner itself consists of the web-based interface and the underlying databases, successful use of the technology must be supplemented with materials to support the classroom teacher. As part of this project, teacher support materials (background information, guides to using Abner, and specific lesson plans) that are included as part of the web site were developed. Two lesson plans are included. The first lesson is a discussion guided by the teacher that explores how the decision to integrate baseball affected the Civil Rights Movement, and vice versa. The purpose of this activity was to help students to draw relationships between events in baseball and those in the broader culture and to begin thinking of specific themes or stories they may wish to address with their own exhibitions. The second lesson engages students in the exhibit design task itself. The lesson plans are included in Appendix A.

PILOT EVALUATION

Although Abner (and the underlying Virtual Gallery model) have a sound theoretical basis, an important issue to be explored was whether the application was suitable for addressing the instructional objectives (learning about contemporary U.S. history). A formative evaluation of Abner was designed to provide qualitative measures of the application's usability. In parallel with this study, an observational data template and survey instruments for both teachers and students were developed (Appendix B), though these instruments were not completed in time to apply to this pilot study.

To conduct this study the collaboration of a school in a nearby suburban district was secured and pilot studies with two of the eighth grade classrooms were conducted. The host district, Kinnelon, is a small K-12 public school district in Morris County, New Jersey. The township is predominantly white and affluent. Two classes of students, 54 students in all, participated in the pilot over a four-day period. The class was heterogeneously grouped with students of various abilities working independently and in pairs. Each class lasted 40 minutes. Students worked in a multi-media computer lab with Pentium-level computers and T-1 connectivity.

The project was team-taught by the district's assistant superintendent and the eighth grade social studies teacher. Each group began the project with a discussion of the nature of learning. Students spoke freely about their beliefs regarding how people learn and what it means to "truly understand" a concept. Following this discussion, students identified museum exhibits that they were familiar with and that they considered representative of optimal conditions for learning. Students then applied these exemplars to generate ideas for effective exhibit design, which included using historical artifacts; connecting to pop culture; incorporating music, sounds and interesting lighting effects. Other students stated that the best museum exhibits required the viewers to "do something." One student explained, "You know, if the person looking at the exhibit has to answer a question, or move an object, or think about how to do something."

The instructors then explained that the class would participate in a pilot program to create its own virtual museum exhibits using artifacts from The Baseball Hall of Fame to teach topics in contemporary U.S. history. Before students selected a theme from which to create their exhibit, they learned how to navigate within the program. Students were quickly able to learn how to select artifacts, to write narrative, and to complete their museum exhibits.

Technical difficulties arose from browser incompatibilities and connectivity problems. At times, students became frustrated and lost track of their goals. However, during periods with reliable network service, students were able to access Abner's entire database, which in this prototype version includes primarily artifacts concerning racial inequities in baseball (Jackie Robinson figures prominently, not surprisingly). Students generated numerous themes and approaches for using the "museum curator" instructional format, at times developing ideas beyond the scope of the database (in which case a student would not able to implement that idea as an exhibit).

During the final session, students were asked to suggest tools and approaches that would make Abner a better learning environment. The most common suggestion was to include more artifacts from which students could select. Students also wanted to be able to access text, pictures, video clips, and audio files from the Internet to import into their exhibits.

Even though students' participation in the pilot study was limited by the scope of the database and by technical problems, the findings suggest that Abner provides an engaging learning environment and that students are able to understand their role as exhibit designers. Subsequent work on Abner though must address these preliminary formative results.

RELATED RESEARCH

Instructional Models Based on Situated Learning Theory

Situated learning is a theory claiming that knowledge, context, and action are essentially intertwined. According to situated learning theory, students best develop their understanding of a domain by actively using knowledge in an environment that allows them to apply what they have learned in multiple ways. Through situated learning, knowledge becomes similar to a set of tools, and students learn the different conditions under which they can use these tools. Knowledge transfer is enhanced by practice in varied contexts; through its application in different settings and situations, knowledge becomes abstract enough that students can detach it from the context in which it was originally acquired and learn to apply it to new problems.

The cognitive apprenticeship model of instruction (Brown et al., 1989) is founded upon four key aspects of traditional craft apprenticeship--modeling, coaching, scaffolding, and fading. Like a traditional apprenticeship, the model begins with experts modeling the tasks involved and the strategies employed in an authentic activity. Students then attempt to accomplish the tasks themselves with experts coaching as needed. This coaching includes scaffolding students by reviewing steps and offering assistance. As students become more skilled, less scaffolding is required, and the coach fades to provide fewer hints and more detailed appraisals, so students may refine their process. As happens following the traditional apprenticeship system, students collaborate with their peers, and they all begin to communicate in the language of the domain, establishing benchmarks, developing strategies and making generalizations that eventually enable them to engage in collaborative problem solving.

Unlike a traditional apprenticeship, however, Brown, Collins, Duguid, and Newman emphasized the cognitive aspects of their model, arguing that modeling, coaching, scaffolding; fading in the classroom could help students develop both conceptual knowledge and problem-solving strategies in the classroom. As an example of the model's effectiveness, they pointed the "Reciprocal Teaching" method for teaching reading comprehension (Palinscar & Brown, 1984, as cited in Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989), which allows teachers and students to take turns modeling and coaching four strategic reading skills. The results of several studies indicated that Reciprocal Teaching proved to be extremely effective in raising students' scores on tests of reading comprehension, both in the short- and longer-term.

The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV, 1990) developed "anchored instruction," another method of teaching based on situated learning theory, as a practical way to take advantage of the strengths of apprenticeship training by incorporating the use of computers. The researchers developed The Jasper Series of anchored instruction (Jasper), in which they used a videodisc to provide the essential ingredients of a cognitive apprenticeship experience, a realistic problem-solving environment entered via an engaging story. This story followed an "embedded data design," functioning as a motivating, complex problem space in which the researchers inserted all the information students needed to generate and solve essential problems. The videodisc format provided nonlinear access to all of the narrative scenes contained on the disc, so users could review segments on demand from different points of entry.

Because the video-based environment of Jasper enabled such authenticity and flexibility, CTGV contended that the anchored instruction method might provide a more valuable and varied learning experience than traditional modes of instruction. Studies indicated that students instructed using Jasper scored significantly higher on related transfer problems than did students taught similar concepts through word problems (CTGV, 1997), and that Jasper students performed significantly better on planning and subgoal generation problems. These findings seemed to prove the researchers' hypothesis that "the best way to learn to deal with complexity is, in fact, to deal with complexity" (CTGV, 1997, P. 51).

Like CTGV, Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, and Coulson (1991) developed a computer-based instructional framework to combat inert knowledge by emphasizing the context of learning. Spiro et al., based their teaching model, "random-access instruction," on their "cognitive flexibility theory," which is reminiscent of situated learning theory and aims to support advanced knowledge acquisition in ill-structured domains like medicine, literary interpretation, and history. Cognitive flexibility theory claims that in order for learners to understand complex material and prepare for knowledge transfer, they must revisit the same material in rearranged contexts for different purposes and from various conceptual angles.

To enable random-access instruction, Spiro et al. designed "cognitive flexibility hypertexts," starting with an application called "KANE" (1991, p. 25). Similar to Jasper, KANE took advantage of the nonlinear information environments of computers partnered with videodiscs. KANE also featured embedded data taken a step farther than Jasper; data was cross-linked extensively within the narrative to connect example cases that are different expressions of the same concept or theme. Due to its extensive network of hyperlinks between thematically related cases, the instructional content of a cognitive flexibility hypertext like KANE could be re-edited upon the demand of a learner. KANE also featured context-sensitive help through integrated passages of expert commentary, which functioned like a simulated coach from the cognitive apprenticeship model. Spiro et al. hypothesized that random access instruction could support learners in situation-specific knowledge construction by helping learners not only acquire speci fic knowledge but also the skills to restructure this knowledge according to the demands of a particular case.

The most recently developed of the instructional design frameworks founded upon situated learning theories is the Goal-Based Scenario (GBS)(Schank, Fano, Bell, & Jona, 1993/4). Like its predecessors, the GBS model emphasized context and authenticity, but it also added motivation as a primary design factor in its learning environment. As the name implies, the cornerstone of the GBS framework is a goal, and the supporting structure is an engaging mission and involving role that would help motivate students to work together towards achieving the goal. Students could select the goal they would like to pursue through a GBS, therefore initiating self-directed learning. Researchers argued that since GBS's empowered students to work independently, the traditional teacher-student relationship would be reversed. Students would actively seek instruction from teachers or experts on an as-needed basis as they discovered that they must understand a certain case or perform a necessary skill to reach their goal. Besides rev ersing the teacher-student relationship, GBS's also shifted emphasis away from content learning towards skill development, supporting the practice of performable tasks rather than the memorization of facts.

One of the first examples of the GBS instructional model was Sickle Cell Counselor (SCC), software developed for use as an interactive video exhibit in a science museum. SCC cast the museum visitor in the role of a genetic counselor charged with advising couples about the risks of transmitting Sickle Cell disease. SCC allowed users to practice skills related to this advisory role, like calculating genetic probabilities, and provided expert guidance through a procedural program guide and context-sensitive expert Q&A. The advice-giving component was strongly scaffolded, constraining users to selecting one of three counseling choices. Schank et al. (1993/1994) designed SCC so that users could pursue tasks in any order, capitalizing on the nonlinearity of the computer environment. The researchers who developed SCC argued that through their interaction with the GBS, museum visitors could develop an understanding of the nature and implications of the Sickle Cell disease. Their investigations proved that museum vis itors spent more time using SCC than a typical exhibit, preferred working with SCC's procedural rather than factual features, and performed better on related role playing and paper-based assessments than a control group (Bell, Bareiss, & Beckwith, 1993/1994). The researchers concluded that SCC in particular, and the GBS framework in general, could help learners overcome inert knowledge by enhancing learning not only of basic concepts, but also of their applicability to different situations.

Learning History in Museum Context

Cognitive apprenticeship, anchored instruction, random access instruction, and GBS are all instructional models arising from situated learning theory, which seek to help students overcome inert knowledge. Although the models differ in details relevant to instructional design (e.g., how central the user's role is) and implementation (e.g., whether computers are required), they all emphasize practicing skills to solve problems in a realistic context. Therefore, to discover which of these four models, if any, would be most effective in helping prevent inert knowledge in history and social studies, one must identify what realistic practice and authentic context means for this domain. According to researchers, the true work of the historian entails skills beyond memorizing facts. Historians specialize in the practices of both research and reporting--determining interesting topics, generating essential questions, analyzing primary sources, considering multiple perspectives, drawing reasonable conclusions, and pres enting persuasive findings (Kobrin, Abbot, Ellinwood, & Horton, 1993; Torney-Purta, 1994; Wineburg, 1991). One context that has been offered for developing such skills is the newsroom; researchers at ILS developed the Broadcast News GBS (Schank et al., 1993/4) as a learning environment for "doing history" by selecting, editing, and sequencing video clips of real news footage, and researching, writing, and delivering stories to accompany their selections.

Besides a news studio, another authentic and compelling context to situate historical learning is a museum. Museums are institutions engaged in the collection, conservation, interpretation, and display of objects, as well as education about objects. Scholars, including Whitehead (1929) have long argued that students can develop skills crucial to expert practice in history by studying the types of objects found in museums. Using objects as a tool, students can learn to analyze primary sources, contemplate alternate perspectives, and construct reasonable hypotheses. Since museums are loci of expertise surrounding objects, it makes sense that they would provide an authentic context for learning history.

Museums can be considered learning environments not only because of the objects they contain, but also because of the way they present such objects. According to Screven (1986), museums are informal settings for learning because they display information in a nonlinear manner that visitors can voluntarily explore at their own pace. Several researchers have developed multimedia computer hypertext systems that reflect the non-linear, exploratory, and self-directed learning environment features of the museum (e.g., Hitzeman, Mellish, & Oberlander, 1997; McKenzie, 1997). When served on the Web, these systems enable users to engage with collections and exhibits without ever walking through the museum's doors. These systems are similar to the cognitive flexibility hypertexts found in random-access instruction because they allow users to enter the data at any point, view information on demand, and follow links to related cases.

Although both real-world museums and Web-based "virtual" museums provide the authentic context, rich content, and nonlinear access necessary for situated learning, they are not necessarily structured to help visitors develop the analytical skills used in history and other domains. In other words, without specially designed features or programs, real or virtual museums in themselves are not instructional models, but instead environments for informal, "free-choice" learning (Dierking & Falk, 1998). Visitors may not have access to an expert guide to provide the support necessary for skill development as required by all four situated-learning based models. In addition, the visitor experience may not be driven by a particular problem to solve (anchored instruction), mission, or goal (GBS). Therefore, unless they are otherwise inclined to do so, visitors may not pursue the active role necessary for knowledge construction and skill development while visiting a museum.

To enable visitors to become active learners who take advantage of their surroundings, almost all real-world museums have developed educational programming like guided tours and gallery talks, that provide access to experts who model interpretive skills and answer participants' questions. Some museums like the Museum of Fine Arts, in Houston, Texas, have created programs that further approximate instructional models like GBS. The Museum of Fine Arts invited visitors to adopt the role of "guest curator" and set them on a mission to select, interpret, and organize artworks for an exhibit (Schneider, 1998). Whereas the goal of the Museum of Fine Arts project was to extend its reach to underserved groups in the community, other museum staffs and classroom teachers have developed collaborative exhibit-building projects to provide more explicit skill-building opportunities for students (e.g. Diffily, 1996; Koetsch, Daniels, Goldman, & Leahy, 1994; Waters & Bostwick, 1989). Although these exhibit-building projects have ranged from kindergartners presenting rock collections to preteens displaying dramatic dioramas, they all share important components of the situated learning instructional models--learning-in-context, social collaboration, expert intervention, authentic tasks, engaging roles, and motivating goals. Students act as curators who, like historians, select interesting topics to drive their research, study primary sources to investigate these topics, and grapple with others' interpretations of relevant issues. Like historians, curators must be able to persuasively defend their conclusions, although historians tend to present their results in writing and curators express theirs primarily through an exhibit (albeit supplemented by written catalogues, orientation materials, and object labels). Just as historians arrange paragraphs and passages to illustrate their theses, curators select and place objects in a layout that reflects the stories they wish to tell. By participating in collaborative exhibit-building pro jects, students acting as curators practice skills related to history and other interpretive fields.

Despite their high learning potential, collaborative exhibit-building projects are rarely offered by museums or schools. Researchers at the University of Brighton, UK, began developing software called the Virtual Curator in 1992 that increased the chances for students to participate in exhibit-building by acting as curators for a virtual gallery (Beardon & Worden, 1995; Worden, 1997). Although the digital delivery of Virtual Curator made the exhibit-building experience more widely accessible, the program focused primarily on the spatial, artistic or architectural aspects of exhibit design, not the research or interpretation facets of curatorial work. Virtual Curator enabled users to select and arrange artifacts in simulated exhibits, giving special emphasis to flexible layout and design functions. The software also incorporated a hypertext-like feature, allowing users to create symbolic "links" (digitally drawn straight lines) between the artifacts and supporting texts. After studying college-level students' interaction with the Virtual Curator program, Worden (1997) found that students created highly personalized exhibits, were inspired to discuss aesthetic issues, and acquired skills in digital image creation and manipulation. Based on the original intent of the software designers and their results of their study, it seems as if a more fitting title for the Virtual Curator might have been "Virtual Exhibit Designer" or "Virtual Computer Graphic Designer." Software that would truly satisfy the implications of the title Virtual Curator would enable students to practice the skills more traditionally ascribed to curators like research and interpretation of artifacts. [2]

Just as Virtual Curator took advantage of the authentic museum setting and curator's role to enable students to learn about exhibit design and computer graphics, Abner uses a similar context to situate learning about a particular era in recent history. Rather than supporting students in their exploration of design principles or development of technical skills, Abner is intended to help students overcome the problem of inert knowledge in the domains of history and social studies. By enabling students to adopt the role of the curator in a simulated National Baseball Hall of Fame, and by challenging them to create a thematically coherent exhibit, Abner assists users in getting beyond the study of isolated facts in history and social studies. Instead of just memorizing a canned set of facts, students using Abner have the opportunity to closely examine primary and secondary sources to extract essential information and develop a broader argument about twentieth century United States history. Beyond engendering sub ject matter mastery, the development and effective use of Abner serves as an example of the Virtual Gallery model's potential as a tool to help students develop skills that will serve them in a variety of subject areas.

FUTURE WORK

Although Abner is a functional and pedagogically rich learning environment, refinements are required that will extend its utility as a learning tool. Areas where Abner can be improved (derived both from the formative evaluation results and from the authors own intuitions) can be categorized as either application development or instructional support.

In the area of application development, it is hoped to enhance both the back-end functionality and the interface features of the Abner application. On the back-end, a broader content scope can be offered by expanding the databases. The preliminary version of Abner used only a small fraction of the wealth of materials and artifacts owned by the Baseball Hall of Fame. By increasing the database's offering of objects and artifacts, users will have access to a wider array of objects to analyze and exhibit themes to pursue. When faced with such a range of choices, users will be more likely to recognize the need for their investigations to be focussed on a specific topic in greater depth. For instance, a user may treat the evolution of the baseball bat design as it exemplifies advances in material science, physics, and technology. Complementary to this expansion of the artifact database is adding the capability for curators to import any Web materials into their exhibitions (more of a copyright issue than a techni cal one). Being able to use digital assets from any online source in their exhibits will enable users to develop more unique and personal projects, and may provide the opportunity to refine Web search and digital transfer techniques. Finally, it is hoped to see Abner used simultaneously by large numbers of users, and to upgrade the database system to one that is more stable and robust so that the server load issues uncovered during the Kinnelon pilot test may be avoided.

Additional interface features that might be developed to extend and enrich the user's experience include an "exhibit design studio" module and a "marketing/education module." Through the exhibit design studio, users can explore the aesthetic aspects of exhibit development by manipulating gallery dimensions such as size, shape, lighting, wall construction, and so on. In the marketing/education module, users might create supplementary materials for the exhibit, such as brochures, gallery guides, and narrated tours. Such interface features can facilitate the use of Abner as a collaborative tool, encouraging cooperation among teams of users.

The most challenging task, currently underway, is to provide a question-guided inquiry for directing students' data-gathering and formulation processes. By associating specific questions with objects in the collection that answer them, the software will model the process of generating thematic relationships among objects in the database.

In the area of instructional support, the single most important task is to create an authoring environment so teachers and curriculum developers can create Abner-like applications that suit their own instructional needs. To do this, previous work with the Virtual Gallery-Maker authoring tool is expanded (Bell & Zirkel, 1997) to create a tool that allows authors to fill the collections database with materials from any domain, supply thematic questions, and provide expert guidance without computer programming expertise. Thus, teachers can employ the Virtual Gallery experience as a learning tool that enables students to construct rich knowledge structures in subjects across the curriculum. A secondary task is to develop appropriate assessment rubrics for the modules supplied, and create a rubric authoring tool for those creating their own Abner-like applications.

CONCLUSION

Abner is a rich web-based learning environment that engages students in the study of contemporary U.S. history through the lens of baseball. Students, acting as exhibit curators, develop exhibitions that focus on a theme or that tell a story, which, although not necessarily about baseball, draws on historical baseball-related documents and artifacts that stand in some relationship to contemporary themes. In order to create exhibits, students are challenged to conduct research, interpret objects, and synthesize their selections into a meaningful "visual essay." Despite the limited scope of the prototype, a preliminary formative evaluation offered encouraging findings that students are engaged by and can learn from this approach to examining history.

Abner is based on the Virtual Gallery model, a constructivist, goal-based learning framework that calls for a rich context, realistic role, specific goals, and authentic tasks. By guiding a student through his/her interactions with an extensive database, applications that adhere to this model support the acquisition of new knowledge and its integration into an organized understanding of a domain. Through situating interrelated activities in a realistic environment, Abner enables students to efficiently schematize and index their knowledge, and facilitates later retrieval. Virtual Gallery applications offer additional motivation by enabling the student to produce a unique presentation, which demonstrates her learning to a public audience of peers.

It is important to define where the Virtual Gallery model stands in relation to other instructional frameworks. The space of all such frameworks is large, and by proposing Virtual Galleries as a method of instruction, a major portion of this space is not being staked out. Rather, a need for instructional models that occupy a specific niche and that offer specific tools to authors whose needs fit into that niche is not being staked out (Bell, 1998). It is expected that the Virtual Gallery approach is sufficiently general to have the potential for broad impact. Abner is a good illustration of the end-result of this approach, but not of the process. To have a critical mass of Abner-like applications, broadenening the circle of applications developers to include teachers and curriculum designers as opposed to researchers and graduate students is needed. The Virtual Gallery Maker (and other such authoring tools) will turn out to be of much greater importance in the near-term than specific exemplars like Abner.

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by a grant from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The authors would like to thank Jeff Idelson and staff members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame for their valuable assistance with this project. We also gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Jung-Eun Chu, Theron Feist, Karen Hasher, Tamar Major, and David VanEsselstyn.

Notes

(1.) The work reported here was conducted by the author while affiliated with Teachers College.

(2.) Eventually the Virtual Curator software was transformed into a tool for stage design called the "Visual Assistant," which provided a simulated three-dimensional theater space for the sketching of stage sets and other dramatic environments.

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LESSON PLANS INCLUDED IN ABNER PROTOTYPE

Lesson Plan: 1: How did the decision to integrate baseball affect the Civil Rights Movement, and vice versa?

Grade Level/Subject: 9-12 / US History

Purpose

Students should gain an understanding of what decisions and changes led to the integration of baseball and how the integration of baseball subsequently affected the progress of the Civil Rights Movement.

Objectives

Students will be able to:

* Identify key events leading to baseball's integration, both in baseball and in the broader context of society (legislation, for example).

* Describe the social & political climate of the Civil Rights struggle during the 1940's.

* Assess what key elements of baseball integration affected the struggle for civil rights.

* Explain advances in civil rights that occurred in the aftermath of integration.

Resources/Materials

Abner web site and databases

Activities

* Watch section of Ken Burns documentary discussing integration of baseball.

* Talk about the world of baseball before integration

* Major League Baseball 

* Negro Leagues 

* Discuss Branch Rickey's choice to sign Jackie Robinson and draw parallels to students' situations, e.g., allowing girls to play on boys' sports teams or electing a class officer.

* Discuss Jackie Robinson - who he was, his history and especially his role in promoting civil rights. Have students compare excerpts from his autobiography with articles written about him in Sporting News or Look.

* Discuss race relations and events up to and including WWII 

* Changing face of urban America, integration of combat units

* Legislation

* Public opinion

Lesson Plan 2 - Creating an Exhibition

Grade level: 9-12, US History

Purpose

This lesson will introduce students to the process of preparing an exhibition by giving them instructions and examples and allowing them to discuss their ideas of what an exhibit should be. Students will have a clear idea of how an exhibit is constructed and will be prepared to create their own exhibits in the Baseball Hall of Fame project.

Objectives

For students to become more familiar with exhibits and how they are created, including the preparation process for making an online exhibition:

* Establish topic or story you would like to tell

* Gather information and artifacts/objects.

* Create an outline, answering the theme questions

* Turn gathered information into more formal text panels / Write "caption" information

* Link information together in story-friendly format

Resources

* Abner web site and databases

* Other Virtual Exhibition Internet sites:

Museum of the Jewish Diaspora http://www.bh.org.il/V-Exh/index.htm

National Museum of American Art http://nmaa-ryder.si.edu/collections/online-index.html

B&O Railroad Museum http://www.borail.org/

Brooklyn Museum of Art http://www.brooklynart.org/

The Louvre http://mistral.culture.fr/louvre/louvrea.htm

Activities

* Discuss the purpose of exhibitions in general--what is an exhibit? what is a museum? what are differences and similarities between art museums and historical museums?

* Discuss role of curator

* Discuss differences between real and online exhibits, including advantage and disadvantages of each (use examples given and/ or other on Internet or from books)