Results

Scientific Explanation Patterns with Drawings

The pattern-based analysis of the students’ explanations found that they used the drawing and vocal
narration functions of the Tablet computers in five main explanation patterns, including portraying
life experience of scientific questions, reciting alternative conceptions, summarizing referential facts,
and depicting comparative and analytical processes. Table 1 displays the model and feature of each
explanation pattern followed by detailed descriptions and examples of these identified patterns.

Portraying Life Experience of Scientific Questions

These students used the drawing or vocal narration functions to provide their life experience
descriptions of the scientific question. Two students demonstrated such a pattern. Figure 3 shows
one of the two students’ explanations. As can be seen in his drawings, the drawing and vocal
narration functions of the Tablet computers enabled the students to link the scientific question to
their life experience. However, it is apparent that the students thought that a factual description of
the climate of the four seasons could be viewed as a scientific explanation. Consequently, they did
not provide any ideas to explain the cause of the change of seasons.

Reciting Alternative Conceptions

Two students used the Tablet computers to narrate some ideas based on alternative conceptions
regarding the question. With such an explanation pattern, the students drew some ideas and
narrated the meanings of their ideas. However, they were unjustified ideas. Two students
demonstrated such a pattern, an example of which is shown in Fig. 4. In this example, the student
thought that the change in wind direction leads to the change of the four seasons. However, with
the support of the narration function of the Tablet computers, the students could reveal their
self-constructed theories and the teachers could also detect such alternative conceptions.

Summarizing Referential Facts

The students used the Tablet computers to summarize some referential facts that they found in the
simulation with drawings, vocal narrations, or text to generate their explanations. In all, 14 students
demonstrated such an explanation pattern. Figure 5 illustrates an example of how one student used
drawings and text on the Tablet computer to construct a scientific explanation. As can be seen, to
begin with, this student drew the revolution of the earth with text explanation on the first page.
Next, the rest of the pages displayed the direction of the sunlight of the four seasons that they were
shown in the animated simulation. The Tablet computers provided the students with a means to
summarize the facts they found. It is obvious that the student only displayed the sunlight directions
of the four seasons, but may have been unable to further articulate the relationship between the
sunlight directions and the cause of the four seasons.

Depicting a Comparative Process

The students used the drawing and narration functions of the Tablet computers to divide the
questions into significantly different situations and compared these situations to explain the cause of
the four seasons. A total of 10 students demonstrated such an explanation pattern. Figure 6 displays
an example of how one student applied the comparative explanation pattern to construct his
scientific explanation. Firstly, the student drew a picture of the revolution of the earth in a
counter-clockwise direction. He expressed that because of the revolution, the earth will move on to
different locations. The different locations will result in the change of the four seasons. Next, the
student drew an illustration of the area of direct sunlight of the four seasons on the second page to
support his previous statement. Based on the students’ scientific explanation, it is observed that he
compared the significantly different situations of the scientific question to interpret the relationship
between the ideas he observed and the scientific question. The drawing functions of the Tablet
computers enabled the students to freely generate drawings to apply a comparative strategy and
narrate the comparison process.

Depicting an Analytical Process

The Tablet computers enabled the students to dynamically generate a sequence of drawings to
provide analytical reasoning links between different ideas to explain the scientific question. In other
words, the students started their explanation with an idea from which they derived another idea. A
sequence of ideas was presented in the drawings and linked to explain the scientific question. A total
of 13 students demonstrated such a pattern. Figure 7 exhibits how one student used the analytical
explanation pattern to construct his scientific explanation. This student, firstly, made a clear
assertion of the relationship between the heat received by a unit area and the angle of the sunlight
on the first and second pages. The rest of the pages were illustrated to analyze the fact that the area
of direct sunlight of the four seasons shines on different positions of the earth. With his drawings
and vocal narrations, the student described a core principle in advance and then analyzed the angle
of sunlight on the earth in the four seasons. Therefore, the Tablet computers enabled the students
not only to portray their understanding of the core principle but also to articulate how it relates to
the scientific question.

Figure 8 displays the number of students who applied each explanation pattern with the Tablet
computers to construct their scientific explanations. It is shown that a large portion of students
could not apply sophisticated explanation patterns. There were 18 students who applied only
superficial strategies including portraying life experience, reciting alternative conceptions and
summarizing referential facts to explain the question, and two students who explained the
phenomenon with alternative conceptions. The result shows that the patterns with which the
students applied Tablet computers to construct drawingbased scientific explanations were diverse.
To examine how the explanation patterns may play a role in science learning, this study further
analyzed the interplay between the students’ explanation patterns and their understanding of the
scientific question.

The Interplay Between Scientific Explanation Patterns and Scientific Understanding

This study compared the achievement in the post-test of the students who adopted high- and
low-level explanation patterns. More specifically, the comparative and analytical patterns (23
students) were considered as high-level explanations, while portraying life experience, summarizing
referential facts, and reciting alternative conceptions were low-level explanations (18 students), as
the former two patterns consist of comparison and deduction for linking different ideas.

Table 2 shows the learning achievement of the group with low- and high-level explanation patterns.
The results indicate that the students who demonstrated high-level explanation patterns obtained
significantly higher scores in the post-test than those who applied only low-level patterns (t = -2.92,
p\.05). Such a result may suggest that the students who adopted high-level explanation patterns
may have obtained a deep understanding of the scientific question. This finding confirms that there
is a profound relationship between the scientific explanation patterns and students’ understanding
of a scientific question.

Scientific Understanding, COLS and ALS

Dependent t test analysis was applied to confirm the students’ COLS and ALS before and after the
drawing-based explanation activity. Table 3 displays the students’ pre- and postquestionnaire
results. Significant differences were shown between the pre- and post-COLS questionnaires in the
dimensions of memorizing (t = 2.83, p\.01) and testing (t = 4.83, p\.01). This result may indicate that
the students perceived a lower extent of using memorizing and the test-to-learn concept to learn
science in the drawing-based scientific explanation activity than they did in their prior experience.
Such a result supports that the scientific explanation activity may be helpful in terms of transforming
students’ COLS by reducing the level of perceiving using memorizing and the test-to-learn concept to
learn sciences.

Table 4 reveals the results of the students’ ALS before and after the drawing-based explanation
activity. The students held a significantly higher level of deep motivation (t = -4.78, p\.01) and
applied deeper strategies (t = -3.17, p\.01) during the drawing-based explanation activity than they
did before the activity. Such a result suggests that the drawing-based explanation activity may be a
potential approach to promoting deep motivation and deep strategies for learning sciences.

Discussion

The patterns identified in this study show that the new affordances of Tablet computers facilitate
science learning by enabling students to portray their understanding of scientific questions based on
their life experiences or to construct scientific reasoning based on comparative and analytical
strategies. Previous studies have indicated that generating multiple representations by using
drawings may help students enhance their understanding of complex scientific concepts (Schnotz
and Bannert 2003; Prain and Tytler 2012). This is because generating personal representations by
using drawings can not only deepen students’ understanding of the specific concepts, but can also
help them obtain new understandings by integrating new and existing knowledge (Ainsworth, et al.
2011). Likewise, Prain and Tytler (2012) also asserted that semiotic tools, such as pictures, drawings,
and texts, could provide students with particular affordances to learn scientific conceptions. The
Tablet computers facilitated such a science learning practice with multiple representations.

The use of Tablet computers in the explanation activity not only displayed the students’ level of
understanding including life experience, alternative conceptions, and referential facts, but also
exhibited their strategies of learning such as comparative and analytical reasoning strategies. Such
findings support that drawing can serve as an alternative assessment tool to evaluate students’
learning processes (Chang 2012; Ko¨se 2008). It was found that the explanation patterns identified
by this study played a prominent role in the students’ understanding during the technology-assisted
explanation activity. The students were more likely to achieve deep understanding when they
adopted a higher level explanation pattern, for instance, depicting a comparative and analytical
process, to use Tablet computers. Therefore, the drawing and vocal narrations afforded by Tablet
computers may help teachers to discover different levels of scientific understandings. The
explanation patterns found in this study may serve as a reference analysis, which will help
researchers and educators better understand how students use the drawing and vocal narration
functions of Tablet computers to construct their scientific explanations.

However, further analysis found that about one third of the students had a tendency to apply
low-level explanation patterns (i.e., depicting life experience, reciting alternative conceptions, and
summarizing referential facts), while the other students applied high-level explanation patterns (i.e.,
depicting comparative and analytical processes) to construct scientific explanations with Tablet
computers. This finding may reflect that some students still have difficulties proposing logical
reasoning in their explanations. It was found that the students who adopted lower-level explanation
patterns obtained lower scores in the learning test than those who adopted higher-level explanation
patterns. These results are consistent with the findings of a previous study (McNeill et al. 2006)
which indicated that there was a significant correlation between learning achievement and scientific
explanations. The results of this study also echo the findings of a previous study by Jee et al. (2014)
which indicated that those students with higher level domain knowledge may have applied more
relational symbols in their sketches and were more likely to construct their sketches in a sequence
consistent with the order of causal events. Although such results are not surprising, it could be
confirmed that such patterns identified by this study are reliable and can be used as explicit
assessment references for probing the level of students’ understanding. Furthermore, the patterns
exhibit important strategies that students used to construct their scientific explanations. Such
patterns provide teachers with prescriptive information to guide students. The results of this study
suggest that reasoning strategies such as comparative and analytical approaches are necessary to
enhance the effect of technology-assisted explanation activities. Educators may need to help
students apply these strategies in their scientific explanations.

Conclusion and Future Work

The research questions of this study mainly focused on how students construct their scientific
explanations with Tablet computers that can support free drawing and vocal narrations. The new
functions afforded by Tablet computers support multiple representations including texts, drawings,
and vocal narrations that may help students generate scientific explanations in a multimedia format.
This study identified five noteworthy explanation patterns of how students used the technology to
explain the four seasons’ question, i.e., portraying life experience, reciting alternative conceptions,
summarizing referential facts, and depicting comparative and analytical processes. These patterns
show various effects of the technology-assisted explanation activity on facilitating science learning
and assessment. Moreover, such a drawing-based explanation activity assisted by technology not
only improved the students’ conceptions of learning science, but also enhanced their deep
motivation and strategies for learning science.

The study identified, on one hand, important affordances of Tablet computers in supporting
scientific explanation activities, and on the other hand, the challenges that the students
encountered. A notable portion of students, when using the Tablet computers, only proposed
superficial explanations without using any reasoning strategies. Further studies are needed to
explore how different types of scaffoldings, such as collaborative learning or computerbased
prompts, can be integrated into the drawing and vocal narration functions to help students construct
scientific explanations. Furthermore, it was not the purpose of this study to compare the effect of
the drawing-based explanation activity with that of conventional settings. Future studies that adopt
an experimental research method would be worthwhile to confirm whether the approach proposed
in this study has a superior impact on scientific explanation than conventional settings.

Acknowledgments​ This research was partially funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology
under 101-2511-S-008-005-MY3, 103-2511-S-008-014-MY3 and 104-2811-S-008-001.