Running Head: EARTH SYSTEMS SCIENCE

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY

MONTEREY BAY
Earth Systems Science for California Fifth Grade
CAPSTONE Report
Submitted in partial satisfaction of requirements of the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE in

Instructional Science and Technology

C. Graham Wilcox

December 6, 2015

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Capstone Approvals: (At least one advisor and capstone instructor should approve)

_________________________ ___________________________ _____________

Advisor Name

Signature

Date

_________________________ ___________________________ _____________

Capstone Instructor Name

Signature

Date

Table of Contents
Category:

Page:

Executive Summary
Introduction and Background .
Solution Description ...
Methods and Procedure ..
Evaluation and Testing Report ...
Conclusion ..
Resources
Appendices .

3
4
5
9
11
12
14
15

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Executive Summary
The goal of this project was twofold: to create science curriculum for fifth grade students, which
may be accessed online from any computer with an internet connection, and to integrate grade-level
social studies curriculum along with the science standards implemented.
Fifth grade students are required to complete a comprehensive exam upon conclusion of the fifth
grade. Students must show grade level proficiency in science subject material taught in California
classrooms beginning in third grade through fifth. However, there is no statewide mandated time
requirement to teach science curriculum during the regular classroom instructional day. Therefore the
importance of this project was to allow extra time for the student to learn about science by participating in
a student-led interactive and online curriculum, regardless of location, either in a classroom with
computers or at home on a home computer.
The expected outcome of this project was for students to obtain a basic understanding of the
geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, from the perspective of Native American Regional
culture (Eastern Woodlands, Great Plains, Southwest Desert, and Pacific Northwest. (Appendix A).
Students were to demonstrate basic understanding primarily of the four spheres as they are laid out in the
NGSS standards for fifth grade. After the project was implemented, it was determined that the scope of
the project should be reduced, extraneous information should be reduced, and the project as it stands in
four parts should be reduced to two parts with more concentration on the relationship between science
and the perspective on nature from a Native American cultural standpoint.

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The project was implemented to a group of 10 fifth grade students at Dana Gray Elementary
School, in Fort Bragg, California, during the week of November 30th - December 4th, 2015. The
students who participated were representative of the fifth grade class for the area (see appendix B). The
project was first administered to students on laptop computers connected to Wi-Fi in the classroom.
Network security for the school district made it impossible for students to access the majority of the
content of the project. Subsequently, the students were assigned the project as homework. Students took
a pretest to determine their prior subject knowledge, completed the project (heretofore listed as
Capstone), and took a post test to determine effectiveness of the learning module. Upon completion of
the post test, students were required to complete a usability test. The results of the effectiveness tests and
usability tests are discussed in greater detail in this report.
Based on the results of these tests, it must be concluded that further refinement of the learning
modules within the Capstone must be completed in order for students to receive the maximum benefit
from the information being taught. Ultimately the future of the project lies in the potential for using the
curriculum and format in order to create an interactive game, in which the learner would participate as a
game participant. This consideration will be touched on in the conclusion section.

Introduction and Background

The idea for this Capstone project originally came up after a brainstorming session in which the
idea of finding other resources for science curriculum was discussed in grade level meetings at Dana Gray
Elementary School in Fort Bragg, California. The author of this Capstone project was one of the
participants, as were four other fifth grade teachers. This project has been in development in different
versions and forms since the commencement of the MIST program. Ultimately when it was decided that
the Capstone would be an implementation of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and social
studies standards, it was determined that teaching science, namely science based upon the four spheres
would hold the learners interest if it was taught from the perspective of Native American Regional
cultures. This decision was made in August of 2015, approved of by faculty at CSU Monterey Bay,
School of Computing and Design, and commenced on Labor Day weekend of the same year.
The problem that this Capstone has attempted to resolve has to do with creating science
curriculum that students would be able to access from home. The content had to be learner led; meaning
that all of the information had to be presented to the student as well as assessment and feedback, without
the need for an instructor to be present. Since most of the school day in fifth grade is spent teaching

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language arts and math, there is little time left over to provide meaningful instruction in any of the other
subjects. Therefore, the issue was determined to be an instructional technology issue. Students needed
access to the information in order to formulate hypotheses about the subject material, and that information
was provided in the form of different multimedia, accessed through a web page.
The participant learners in this Capstone were the reporters current fifth grade students.
Participants were chosen based upon their representation of the statistical demographic of the most recent
School Accountability Report Card (SARC). (See Appendix B).
The current performance level for each participant was basic to advanced in terms of overall
academic performance. Data for each students overall academic performance was obtained through
Illuminate Data, the proprietary academic data tracking software used by the district. The overall
academic performance data from prior year benchmark exams for both language arts and math was
observed and noted for each of the participants. The most recent scores were used.
It was the desired performance outcome that students would demonstrate, through pretests and
posttests, their learning of the material, by successfully completing one of the four quests in the Capstone
and by increasing their post test score by at least 10%. Given that the average score on the posttest
increased by 25%, preliminary results conclude that the students learned the material after successfully
completing the Capstone. A statistical analysis of the results is undertaken in the Evaluation and Testing
Report section of this report.
The NGSS were designed to bring science instruction current. Prior to the design and
implementation of the NGSS, the science standards were not in line with recent discoveries in modern
science. As a result, the new standards were created to take advantage of new knowledge in the field, as
well as to create a new approach to teaching science in public school systems. In addition, the NGSS are
intended to increase international benchmarking as it relates to international assessment.

Solution Description
The proposed solution to the issue of lack of time during regular school hours is fulfilled by
effectively creating online science/social studies curriculum, allowing the learner full access to the
curriculum any time of the day, provided the learner has access to a computer with internet capability.
Students may take any, or all of the quests developed for this Capstone and gain a basic understanding of
the science and social studies information. Since the learning material is self-contained, students do not

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need access to other resources in order to complete the learning modules, or quests, as they are referred to
in the Capstone.
Learning Objectives:
Upon conclusion of the activity, students will be able to build a model representing how the biosphere,
geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere interact.
NGSS Standard:
Students who demonstrate understanding can:
5-ESS2-1. Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere,
and/or atmosphere interact.
California Social Studies Standard:
H-SS 5.1.1. Describe how geography and climate influenced the way various nations lived and adjusted
to the natural environment, including locations of villages, the distinct structures that they built, and how
they obtained food, clothing, tools, and utensils.
Social Constructivism (Gredler, 2009) played a central role with this Capstone project in that part
of the desired learning outcome, students should have taken away a rudimentary understanding of how
ancient Native American cultures would have applied their own knowledge of the four spheres within
the context of their daily life in order to thrive. From there, the learner would construct an understanding
of how to bridge the knowledge of scientific intuition for survival and the academic scientific knowledge
taught in the classroom today. Taking the social constructivist view of the classroom as a
community...knowledge is distributed among the co-participants, (Gredler, 2009); the classroom for this
project was the four quests the students embarked on during this Capstone, and the social constructivist
knowledge was the process of understanding science from the perspective of ancient aboriginal cultures
in North America. The focus was to demonstrate the importance of both intuitive understanding and
scientific understanding of the subject material (Appendix D).

The instructional principle primarily used for this Capstone was Gagnes nine events of instruction:
1. Gain the learners attention. Each quest in this Capstone begins with a brief narrated introduction
to what the learner will be doing. This is followed by four traditional Native American creation
stories, designed to set the theme of the lesson.

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2. Inform the learner of the objective. The learner progresses from the stories to a map of the four
North American regions that are covered in the Capstone. The objectives are displayed on the
screen while narration continues.
3. Stimulate prior recall. Students are reminded of fourth grade science curriculum and shown how
this Capstone builds upon that knowledge.
4. Present distinctive stimulus features. The learner progresses through rich interactive activities
(quests) in which they click on images to learn more about them, watch videos embedded with
text over narration, as well as interactivity. The learners are immersed into the world of the quest.
5. Provide learning guidance. Students are provided with self-guided learning, but it is strictly
designed so students must progress in a linear fashion in order to complete all of the activities
prior to formative and summative assessment.
6. Elicit performance. Students demonstrate their understanding by completing brief sub merit
badges. Upon completion of one subset of a quest, students check their understanding by
responding to various hypothetical situations in which they must make the correct decision before
progressing.
7. Provide feedback. The learner is given opportunities to answer questions during formative
assessment. Incorrect answers are prompted with text and narrated clues as to the correct
decision. Students who struggle are provided with remedial help by being sent back to the slide
that would provide them with reinforcement before progressing forward.
8. Assessment of performance. Students are provided with the final merit badge quiz. This is a
series of comprehensive quiz questions in which the learners will participate in different
interactive scenarios. Successful navigation provides the learner with a merit badge, and
feedback as to their performance.
9. Enhance retention and transfer. Upon successful completion of one quest, students are directed to
the next quest. While some of the information changes by virtue of differences in Native
American culture and the biodiversity of one region to the next, much of the material related to
the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere is similar in all four quests. This
repetition provides rote practice for the learner, and ultimately the expectation is that the learner
transfers the knowledge to long term memory. (Gredler, 2009)

The major instructional strategy for this Capstone was self-directed, student led learning,
with the caveat that the tutorial required the learner to progress through in a linear fashion. In

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order for the learner to be successful, they must complete the entire quest from beginning to end.
All of the curriculum was designed so the learner would be able to complete it without an
instructor present. (Appendix C)
The tasks and content of the Capstone followed cognitive load theories (Pappas, N.D.) by
keeping each of the sub quests brief with frequent formative assessment. Also, learners were
provided with text, audio and video during the entire tutorial. Further, in order to facilitate
learning, the navigation controls were embedded onto each slide. Most of the navigation
controls appeared only when the learner had completed the necessary steps to be successful on
formative and summative assessments. Each quest in the Capstone was broken up into three
categories; the biosphere, geosphere and hydrosphere/atmosphere. The purpose of this was to
break up the content into smaller pieces to avoid overload of working memory on the part of the
learner.
The media components chosen for this Capstone was Articulate Storyline 2, a Power Pointbased software. Using this software, the Capstone used voice-over narration, video and text
graphics. Nearly all of the videos embedded into the Capstone were embedded with both
narration and brief animated text in order to facilitate the learning process, as well as to highlight
important information that the learner would need to be successful. The primary video editing
suite used for the Capstone was YouTube. However, the first two videos were created using
Edpuzzle. Edpuzzle is a newer video editing application which allows the instructional designer
to embed quiz questions and narration into different videos (Appendix E).
Initially, the biggest challenge of this Capstone was how to design it. During the literature
search, the challenge of finding similar curriculum that was both science as well as social science
for the fifth grade proved to be very challenging. The original idea came from the book Keepers
of the Earth, a book of Native American stories with environmental activities for elementary
school children. The book is comprised of various Native American creation stories with
environmental activities listed for each of the different stories. This researcher received
permission from Fulcrum Publishing to use some of the stories in the Capstone. Keepers of the
Earth was where the original idea stemmed from.

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The original design changed several times during the first month of work on the Capstone.
Deciding on whether to take a more science-based approach, social science-based approach, or
to keep it a balance between the two took a considerable amount of time. By the development
phase, the Capstone began to take shape and the final outcome was one of a more scientific
approach, with a smaller portion devoted to social science. The decision was made in order to
provide meaningful content without overloading the learner.
Originally the Capstone was developed as one stand-alone learning module. As it began to be
built out, it became apparent that the content was too large, and the decision was made to break it
up into four learning modules and host it on a website that learners could easily access. The final
breakthrough came when the decision was made to break it up. Using Weebly.com as a web
hosting site, facilitated the finalization process for the Capstone and turned it into a usable
product.

Methods and Procedure

Using Weebly.com as the web hosting site, this Capstone was uploaded as four distinct,
but related learning modules; The Eastern Woodlands, Great Plains, Southwest Desert, and
Pacific Northwest. Each of these learning modules were called quests. In order for the learner
to be successful, they had to complete three sub quests, broken down by the biosphere,
geosphere, and hydrosphere/atmosphere. Originally there were to be four sub quests, with the
atmosphere and hydrosphere as two separate sub quests. However during the development phase
it was apparent that the two work in correlation to one another and it made more sense to keep
them as one learning module. Also, designing instruction for four different atmosphere
categories for each of the four regions would have created too much redundancy.
As the learner completed one of the sub quests, they took a brief formative quiz before
progressing to the final merit badge quiz (summative assessment). During the final merit badge
quest, students were given the option of different activities, such as drag and drop, hotspots on a
map, sequencing, and matching vocabulary words to the correct definition. The completion of

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one quest earned the learner a banner, represented by a flag of the specific Native American
nation from the region they completed. Learners were sent to the next quest after completion of
one. After the learner completed the final quest, they were directed to the feedback page where
they were encouraged to complete a usability survey.
The process for completing the project were based on the ADDIE model. Analysis
consisted of the literature review of present curriculum, standards and teacher needs, as well as
anecdotal information gleaned from this authors classroom teaching experiences in terms of
evaluating how the design of the Capstone would hold the learners interest long enough to
progress through the entire learning module. Design of the project was facilitated by the
storyboard, which broke down each slide for the entire learning module. The development
process exponentially expanded the storyboard by the creation of several layers within each
slide. The process of development took the longest amount of time, as well as trial and error.
Implementation of the Capstone was undertaken over one week with fifth grade students. At the
time of this writing, the alpha testing demonstrated some errors with the program on some of the
learning modules (quests), which the developer has subsequently fixed and is ready for beta
testing. The errors in the learning modules made it so effectiveness tests were limited to the
Eastern Woodlands quest, however since the other three quests are the same format, it was
determined that the results from the effectiveness test would be sufficient to determine overall
effectiveness. The evaluation process was conducted using pre and posttests, as well as a
usability survey. Statistical analysis of the effectiveness test are expounded upon in the
Evaluation and Testing Report section of this paper.

Timeline
September
Anticipated:

October

November

December

Completion of storyboard by

All major content developed

All major work completed

Beta testing completed

mid-September. Development

by the end of the month.

by the 17th. Alpha testing

by the 10th. Final

of Capstone in Storyline

Evaluation slides begun by

beginning on the 27th.

project uploaded with

begun.

the end of the month.

Completed project by the

all necessary

30th.

requirements
downloaded onto USB

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flash drive and mailed
to MIST by the 15th.

Actual:

Storyboard completed,

Much of the content for

Assessment slides begun

Beta testing not

development commenced

learning modules completed.

during second week of

completed as of the

Assessment slides not

November. Most of the

6th. Final project and

begun.

content completed in the

all major deliverables

first week. Alpha testing

expected to be

commenced on the 30th.

completed by the 8th.

Evaluation and Testing Report

The Usability test consisted of a series of questions as noted in the table. The scale used for the
survey was on a ten point scale. The average score is listed below in the table.
Time

Tutorial

Tutorial

Navigation

Tutorial was

Appearance

Navigation

Overall

required to

functioned

was

was easy:

aesthetically

was

buttons

rating:

complete:

properly:

enjoyable:

pleasing:

consistent:

functioned
properly:

30-60

5.9

7.2

6.3

8.8

7.3

8.8

7.5

minutes

Based upon the usability survey results, it was determined that there were some
functionality issues that needed to be addressed with the quests. The Eastern Woodlands quest
had the most functionality, and for the sake of time, the effectiveness test was based upon that
learning module, while the others were repaired.
Overall, the usability test demonstrated that the learners generally liked the tutorials,
found it relatively easy to navigate through and functionality issues were at a minimum, or
quickly solvable issues on the part of the developer.

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The working hypothesis for this Capstone determined that learning took place after
completion of at least one of the tutorials. Identical pre and post tests were given to the learners
and a statistical analysis of the results follows. The analysis conducted was a t-test paired two
sample for means. This test was done at the 95% confidence level. The research hypothesis for
this test was to determine that participants scores had improved on a posttest taken after
completing the learning activity (H1.>H0). The null hypothesis in the analysis would determine
that there is not statistical proof that the participants had gained an improved score on the
posttest (H1=H0).

The t-statistic for the 95% confidence level yielded an absolute value of 7.35, with a
critical value of 1.86. Since the t-statistic at the 95% confidence level is greater than the critical
value, and given that the probability that the research hypothesis is true is greater than the
probability of the 95% confidence level, the alternative hypothesis cannot be rejected. At the
95% confidence level, the data shows that there was a correlation between participating in the
Eastern Woodlands quest and performing better on the posttest (appendix F).

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Conclusion
This Capstone project was an evolution of content, theme and aesthetics. Striking the
right balance of focus between adding content and ensuring that the content is relevant proved to
be the greatest challenge. In keeping with the learning theories, principles of instruction,
delivery method, and modality principles, what may be concluded upon completion is the
importance of how the time spent in the design phase of any project is critical. Without the clear
road map of design and design principles, developing a workable and meaningful learning
module cannot take place.
Overall, the effectiveness tests statistically proved that the learning modules do what they
were designed to do, which is to teach the learner. Yet the question remains as to the overall
relevance of the content and the degree to which the balance between science and social science
was met. In hindsight, the time limitations for this Capstone project prevented a deeper level of
development. Based upon the time spent in development of this project, it would require several
more months to fine tune and add more content that would help make connections between the
science and social science.
With the completion of the MIST program, it is the intention of the developer to take this
Capstone project and create an online simulation or game in which the learner must complete
their quests by building virtual models as demonstration of their learning. The time limitations
for this project prevented such a venture. However with the completion of the Capstone, there is
now the opportunity to pursue such ventures. At the time of this writing, the designer/developer
has begun the process of developing this project using MinecraftEdu, an educational version of
the popular online game Minecraft. In this virtual world, students will use their understanding of
the hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and geosphere to create culturally relevant and
historically accurate models of Native American regional villages.

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Resources
Caduto, M., & Bruchac, J. (1988). Keepers of the earth: Native American stories and
environmental activities for children. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum.
Gredler, M. (1986). Learning and instruction: Theory into practice. New York: Macmillan ;.
Horton, W. (2006). E-learning by design. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Pappas, C. (ND). Cognitive load theory and instructional design. Website:
http://elearningindustry.com/cognitive-load-theory-and-instructional-design

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Appendices
A: NGSS and California Social Studies Standards:

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5.1 Students describe the major pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff
dwellers and pueblo people of the desert southwest, the American Indians of the
Pacific Northwest, the nomadic nations of the Great Plains, and the woodland
peoples east of the Mississippi River.
1. Describe how geography and climate influenced the way various nations
lived and adjusted to the natural environment, including locations of villages, the
distinct structures that they built, and how they obtained food, clothing, tools, and
utensils.

B: SARC Report for Dana Gray Elementary:

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C: Capstone Project Website Link and Screenshot:

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http://danagrayearthscience.weebly.com/

D: Link to Wade Davis Ted Talk on Indigenous People

https://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures?language=en

E: YouTube and Edpuzzle:

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F: Mean Scores from Pre and Post Effectiveness Test:

100.00%
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%

Pretest

50.00%

Post Test

40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
1

10