P1: GVG/GDP

Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2002 (°

C 2002)

Research into Practice

Current Trends in Educational Technology Research:

The Study of Learning Environments
William Winn1,2

Educational technology research has passed through a number of stages, fo-

cusing, in turn, on the content to be learned, the format of instructional mes-
sages, and the interaction between computers and students. The field is now
concerned with the study of learning in complete, complex, and interactive
learning environments. These environments allow both the simulation of ex-
periences that students might have in the real world and also the creation of
compelling experiences that cannot normally be experienced directly. Learn-
ing environments also often allow students to communicate their own ideas
with the use of a variety of symbol systems. These environments are also fre-
quently inhabited by more than one person, making learning within them a
social activity where learning is distributed among both people and artifacts.
Finally, these learning environments are complex. Studying how they con-
tribute to learning therefore requires research methods other than controlled
experiments. This paper reviews research on learning environments to give
both an historical perspective on educational technology research and a se-
lective view of the current state of the discipline. It concludes by identifying
implications for both practice and future research.
KEY WORDS: educational technology; learning research; learning environments; virtual
reality; computer-based learning.

INTRODUCTION

Technology is having more impact on education today than it has ever

had. The cost of powerful desktop computers has come down to the point
1 Collegeof Education, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
2 Correspondence should be addressed to William Winn, 412 Miller, Box 353600, College
of Education, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195; e-mail: billwinn@
u.washington.edu.

331

1040-726X/02/0900-0331/0 °
C 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

332 Winn

where most schools can afford them. The Internet has pervaded many activi-
ties and most places, including schools and colleges. Computers and com-
munication technologies are found in more homes every year; children are
growing up with technology. And research into the educational effectiveness
of technology is finally showing that, under the right circumstances, it can
benefit students of all ages, studying all manner of subjects.
The purpose of this paper is to look at a selection of this research in order
to get a sense of what work is being done. However, to set today’s research
in context, it begins with a review of what research in educational technol-
ogy has already accomplished. The body of the article focuses on current
research and the results it is producing. It concludes with some implications
for practice and with suggestions for where research should go next.

WHAT HAS RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHED SO FAR?

I find it useful to think of the discipline of educational technology,

and the work researchers have done within the discipline, as having moved
through three “ages,” each building on the previous one, and each charac-
terized by fairly unique assumptions and activities. We are now at the start
of a fourth age, towards which I direct my attention later in the paper.

The Age of Instructional Design: A Focus on Content

The educational technology field found its feet when researchers and
practitioners discovered that instruction was something that could be
planned, designed, evaluated, and revised before it was ever used with stu-
dents. Moreover, researchers found that instruction designed in this way
brought two major benefits. First, it was usually effective at helping students
learn. Second, within limits, it enabled students to study on their own, at
their own pace, even away from school or on the job. The seminal work of
Gagné et al. (1988) is typical of this age. Gangé et al. assumed that different
types of learning, such as learning facts or concepts or procedures, required
different instructional strategies, which were primarily distinguished by how
content was organized and presented to students. Task analysis, whether be-
havioral or cognitive (Greeno, 1980; Resnick, 1976), became the preeminent
tool for determining content organization. The products of task analysis, for
example learning hierarchies or sequences, led directly to the specification of
instructional objectives, thus prescribing the backbone of instruction. Gagné
et al.’s “events of instruction” (Gangé et al., 1988) completed the picture.
They pointed to which instructional strategies to use, in order for learning to
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 333

occur most efficiently and most effectively, once content had been organized,
the type of learning identified, and objectives written.
The main goal of educational technology at this time was relatively mod-
est, namely to make stand-alone instruction as good as instruction delivered
by a teacher. Much of the early instructional computer software attempted
to teach what teachers teach and, in many cases, to teach it in the same way.
Gagné et al.’s events of instruction, after all, describe what a good teacher
should always do. So the standard for comparison in much of the research
on computer-assisted instruction, examined, for example, in Kulik’s meta-
analyses from the eighties, was teacher-led instruction (Kulik, 1983, 1985).
If studies showed that technology-based instruction had done as well as a
good teacher, researchers concluded that technology had done its job.

The Age of Message Design: A Focus on Format

If instructional design is one of the disciplines on which educational

technology is built, a second, of equal importance, is mediated instruction.
From its very beginning, educational technology has been concerned with
educational applications of communications media. Early research on mes-
sages, such as Levie’s work on persuasion and attitude change, revolved
around the effects of the mass media, particularly television (Levie, 1978).
However, two circumstances changed all that. The first, purely technical,
circumstance was the development of computer hardware that could show
graphics and produce sounds, thus increasing the control designers and stu-
dents had over the material. The second was the body of research that
showed that students with different skills and abilities learned differently
from different instructional treatments. Cronbach and Snow (1977) summa-
rized much of this research. Although Cronbach and Snow were somewhat
pessimistic about the quality and usefulness of research on the interaction of
aptitude and treatment (“ATI”), where the treatment variable was presenta-
tion format, educational technology researches continued (and continue to
this day) to study how the format in which content is presented to students
interacts with student characteristics to produce learning of varying quality
and permanence.
Message design continues to be an important part of the work edu-
cational technologists do, and, in some form or other, remains a resilient
piece of the educational technology curriculum. One reason is the continu-
ing importance, in research and development, of determining how to cater to
individual differences among students, whether in aptitude or on some other
trait. Another reason is the flexible evolution of what is meant by the term
“message design.” A comparison of the first and second editions of Fleming
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

334 Winn

and Levie’s important book (Fleming and Levie, 1978, 1993) shows that, not
only has our ability to deliver instruction in different formats changed dra-
matically, but also that the underpinning theory of message design has kept
up with (is indeed well grounded in) developments in more basic research
on learning and instruction.

The Age of Simulation: A Focus on Interaction

I have already hinted, in the preceding comments on instructional design

and message design, that technology-based instruction can bring to students
information in formats that teachers cannot. Yet Clark (1983) stated that
instructional methods make the difference in how well students learn, not
the format of the message or the delivery technology. This is indeed true. For
example, well-designed instructional strategies, intended to bring about mas-
tery, can result in significant improvements in student performance without
using media or technology (Bloom, 1984; Lysakowski and Walberg, 1982).
However, as Kozma (1991) implied in his reply to Clark, significant advances
in media technology, which occurred between the appearance of Clark’s pa-
per and Kozma’s own, provided affordances that could support instructional
strategies that would not be possible without the technology. A number of
these advances have to do with what can now be done with graphics (Winn,
1994) and sound (Hereford and Winn, 1994). But the most important is
the ability of students to take control of the material, from which they are
learning, in simulations.
The ability of computers to simulate phenomena, whether natural or
imagined, has two advantages. The first is the full implementation of learner
control. Studies from the eighties (Carrier et al., 1985; Dwyer, 1985) showed
that allowing students a measure of control, with guidance (Johansen and
Tennyson, 1983), over how they studied could bring about significant learn-
ing gains. The second advantage of simulation is the ability of students to do
things that they could never do in the real world. In the sciences, this could
mean conducting experiments that would be impossible otherwise, such as
changing the earth’s climate to see what would happen if greenhouse gases
were reduced (Jackson et al., 1999). In social studies, this could mean making
decisions about what to do in order to survive the trek west in nineteenth
century America (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, 1995).
The critical feature of simulations, for learning, is the student’s ability to
act on the environment experimentally, not simply to observe it. The key the-
oretical assumption of learning from simulations is that students construct
understanding for themselves by interacting with information and materi-
als, an orientation to learning that has acquired the name “Constructivism”
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 335

(Duffy and Jonassen, 1992). Applied with care, and with special attention
to “scaffolding” students’ learning as they interact with simulations (Linn,
1995), constructivist approaches to teaching and learning can be motivating
and effective (see relevant sections of Brown et al., 1999).

THE “NEW AGE” OF RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL

TECHNOLOGY: A FOCUS ON LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The ideas of carefully designing instruction, varying the formats in which

information is presented to students, and building interactive simulations
lead naturally to the idea of constructing entire “learning environments,”
in which the student has unprecedented freedom to act. Increasingly today,
researchers in educational technology study students working in complete
learning environments. Learning environments can either be entirely natu-
ral, or they can be artificial, existing only through the agency of technology.
Of course, learning always takes place in an environment. In the eigh-
teenth century, Rousseau (1762/1933) argued that the most effective and so-
cially appropriate education arose from a student’s interaction with Nature—
the natural environment. More recently, educators have proposed that a
modified natural environment can serve to meet more specific learning ob-
jectives, through cognitive (Brown et al., 1989) or professional and vocational
(Lave and Wenger, 1991) apprenticeships. Apprentices work in a natural en-
vironment that has either been modified for pedagogical purposes, or within
which the apprentice’s freedom to act is limited, so that, in accordance with
good instructional design, apprentices’ learning can be guided to bring about
knowledge construction. Schools are also learning environments. However,
they are recent on the scale of human history and quite artificial (Winn and
Windschitl, 2001). More often than not, all that students learn in them is how
to be students (Brown, 1997).
Many technology-supported learning environments simulate some as-
pect of the natural environment. This allows learning to be “authentic,”
engaging students in projects that have some meaningful connection with
problems that exist in the real, nonsimulated world. Because most authen-
tic real-world activities involve more than one person, it follows that most
technology-supported learning environments include people in addition
to the student, confirming that learning occurs socially. Current theories
of learning and instruction acknowledge the social natural of learning
(Vygotsky, 1978). Many current educational research projects study social
interaction as a promoter of learning, often through the agency of learn-
ing communities created with the Internet (Gordin et al., 1996: Malarney,
2000).
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

336 Winn

In this section, I examine current research on learning in technology-

supported learning environments and related phenomena. Unavoidably, my
account is selective. However, the topics and research projects described
below capture critical and typical characteristics of current research in edu-
cational technology.

Research on Artificial Learning Environments

Why would anyone want to learn in an artificial environment when

there is plenty to learn in the natural world? There are two reasons. First,
it may not be possible to learn in the natural environment because it is too
dangerous. Flight simulators, other industrial simulators, and even surgery
simulators allow students to practice procedures and gain understanding
without risk to themselves or to other people. Second, the concepts and
principles that govern the behavior of the natural world are often hidden
and counter-intuitive. A child who watches a ball roll across the floor and
slow down might conclude that the ball runs out of energy, not that the force
of friction acts on it. A demonstration of Newton’s laws of motion, which
did not induce this misconception that arises from observation alone, would
have to take place in a frictionless environment (perhaps in outer space) or
in a virtual learning environment where friction could be turned off. The
only practical strategy in this case is to build an artificial environment within
which a simulation can be run of phenomena that are impossible to observe
directly in the real world. Dede et al. (1997) have created such a virtual world
to teach Newton’s laws.
Here a distinction must be made between simulation and reification
(Winn, 1993a). The purpose of a simulation is to create as accurate a facsimile
of real objects or events as possible. Yet, as the example with the rolling ball
suggested, sometimes fidelity to the real world can result in misconceptions.
What is more, high realism in simulations and virtual environments can
militate against transfer (Caird, 1996) and generalization (Jackson et al.,
1999; Osberg et al., 1997). This is because the more precise and constrained
the representations and modes of interaction with simulations are, the more
precise and inflexible a student’s performance becomes, whether motor or
cognitive. Merrill (1992) made the same point in his case for direct instruction
of generalities and against situating all learning in well-defined contexts.
On the other hand, reification is the process whereby phenomena that
cannot be directly perceived and experienced in the real world are given the
qualities of concrete objects that can be perceived and interacted within a
virtual learning environment. This is necessary when the real phenomena
or objects are too small to see, like atoms (Byrne, 1996), or too large to
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 337

work with manageably, like the solar system (Barab et al., 2000). At other
times, the phenomena have no physical form. Typical are dynamic natural
processes, like evaporation or nitrogen fixation (Osberg, 1997). At yet other
times, the phenomena are simply inaccessible, like events that take place
beneath the surface of the ocean (Windschitl and Winn, 2000). Reification
therefore allows students to experience in computer-created virtual learning
environments what they cannot experience in the real world, which is the
most important contribution they make to learning.
Reification relies to a large extent on metaphor. If something to learn
about has no perceptible form, the designer has to create a metaphor for
it that can be rendered, visually or audibly, by the computer. A strength
of metaphors in this context arises from the way computers build virtual
learning environments. Everything that the computer creates is built from
data. Real objects, like chairs and kangaroos, are modeled by designers and
stored in a database, from which the computer draws when the time comes
for the virtual form of the object to appear. Similarly, reified objects, like the
sphere that represents a neutron (Byrne, 1996) or the arrows that represent
the speed and direction of ocean currents (Winn et al., 2001), are drawn by the
designer and stored in a database, and recalled when needed. The computer
cannot distinguish between virtual objects that stand for real objects, or
those that stand for reified abstractions. This means that both real and reified
objects have equal status in virtual environments, allowing students to view
and interact with reifications in exactly the same way that they do with
representations of real objects.
Recent research has shown that, overall, visiting artificial learning en-
vironments that have the characteristics just described, helps students un-
derstand concepts and processes that the environments represent. This is
true for astronomy (Barab et al., 2000), meteorology (Hay, 1999), physical
oceanography (Winn and Windschitl, 2001), maintenance of nuclear reactors
(Kashiwa et al., 1995), subatomic chemistry (Byrne, 1996), global warming
(Jackson, 2000), and other content areas. However, reifying phenomena with
metaphors is not without danger. Two examples follow. In Jackson’s simu-
lation of global warming (Jackson, 2000), students can vary the amount of
greenhouse gases coming from vehicles and from factories. They can also
manipulate the amount of green plant matter available to absorb carbon
dioxide. Jackson’s metaphor for this second manipulation is adding or remov-
ing trees from the environment. (His motivation for choosing this metaphor
was to connect global warming to the destruction of the rain forests.) As
students add trees to the environment, global warming becomes less of a
problem. As they remove trees, it gets worse. Several upper-elementary and
middle-school students concluded that global warming is not a problem after
all: If it gets bad, all we have to do is plant more trees! The tree metaphor
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

338 Winn

oversimplified the complex interactions that affect climate change and in-
duced a misconception.
The second example comes from our simulation of physical oceanog-
raphy (Windschitl and Winn, 2000). Current speed and direction are reified
using arrows whose length represents current speed and whose orientation
shows current direction. Because the arrows are longest when the current is
fastest, narrow passages look “clogged” when the current through them is
fast. This has led some students to conclude that water slows down when it
moves through narrow passages, instead of speeding up in accordance with
principles of fluid dynamics. We are now working with a particle advection
metaphor to get around this problem.

Research on Inscriptional Systems

The technologies that support learning environments continue the mes-

sage design tradition by presenting information in a variety of formats.
Learning environments use a variety of realistic and metaphorical repre-
sentations of data in graphic, auditory, and, increasingly, haptic modalities.
The advantages of seeing, hearing, and feeling representations that vary in
pedagogically appropriate ways has been frequently documented in the re-
search. However, representations are used in new ways today by researchers
and students, in addition to providing information and affording interaction.
The phrase “inscription” was suggested by Pea (1994), as an alternative
to “representation,” to refer to external representations, rather than internal
representations such as images and mental models. Inscriptions are created
by students, as well as by scientists and learning environment designers, to
externalize understanding and to serve as points of reference during discus-
sions (Gordin et al., 1996). Inscriptions can be made by students using paper
and pencil or complex animated 3D authoring tools.
The CoVIS project (Gordin et al., 1996) is one of the best known projects
that use inscriptions both to show information to students and to allow stu-
dents to express and discuss their own ideas on a topic. There are two basic
principles behind this project. The first is that the datasets and models used
by scientists to represent and study the world have enormous potential for
helping students understand natural phenomena by using the same tech-
nical and intellectual tools that scientists use. This allows students to do
“authentic” science, in this case meteorology. The second principle is that by
providing the tools to let students create their own visualizations, students
are required, first to master the content before committing it to being dis-
played, and then to use it as a point of reference during discussions with other
students, teachers, and scientists. It is in the course of such conversations that
a lot of learning takes place.
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 339

Of course, the actual tools scientists use, and the symbol systems they
use to represent their data, are sometimes difficult (and unnecessary) for
students to master. For this reason, the CoVIS team has developed a tool
for students to use, “Weather Watcher,” as they go through problem-solving
exercises, to help them understand global warming, for example. This tool
provides a simpler interface than meteorologists use, a less technical symbol
system, and a number of ways for students to complete their tasks. The stu-
dents are connected with an entire community of learners over the Internet
that includes professional meteorologists, who advise the students, when in-
vited, on their projects. Data from the project demonstrate the effectiveness
of Weather Watcher for learning.
Other research that combines the use of inscriptions for studying natu-
ral phenomena, as well as the creation of inscriptions by students as part of
the learning process, involves work with virtual environments. Barab et al.
(2000) have studied astronomy students’ construction of virtual worlds as
a means to building an understanding of aspects of the Solar System. Us-
ing commercially available software for creating and showing virtual worlds,
undergraduates have built computer-based animated visualizations that il-
lustrate, for example, how eclipses occur. Data from Barab’s research show
that the actions of designing and building their own materials, the discussion
involved in those actions, and the discussion when other students use these
materials to study eclipses, all contribute to helping students understand the
often counterintuitive mechanisms that cause eclipses.
Our own work has arrived at similar conclusions (Osberg, 1997; Winn
et al., 1999). Our study of students building their own inscriptions—virtual
worlds—has been less formal than Barab et al.’s research. Nonetheless, we
have found that the act of designing and creating environments that embody
concepts and principles governing phenomena as diverse as wetlands ecology
and medieval castles helps students master these topics with depth and clarity
(Winn et al., 1999). What is more, having students build their own virtual
worlds works best with students who tend not to do well in school. One
problem has been that world-building, for younger students who have not
yet learned to reason abstractly, tends to limit their ability to transfer what
they have learned to other domains. Students think of the content almost
exclusively in terms of how they chose to represent it in their virtual world.
However, knowing this, we can now use additional strategies deliberately
aimed at helping students achieve transfer.

Research on Social Aspects of Learning

A characteristic of most learning environments is that they contain

other people. This means that learning environments created or supported
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

340 Winn

by technology, like other learning environments, are places where learning

takes place, in part, through social interaction. Researchers in educational
technology have long acknowledged the importance of the social aspect of
learning, being influenced in large part by the writing of Vygotsky (1978).
One advantage for researchers of looking at the social interactions that
take place as students learn is that the conversations among students are
themselves useful data sources. Thus, discourse analysis can shed light on
the processes and products of learning (Herrenkohl et al., 1999; Herrenkohl
and Guerra, 1998). A good example of this is the Knowledge Integration
Environment (KIE) project (Linn et al., 1998). KIE is a web-based environ-
ment that allows students to post evidence and arguments for competing
scientific theories. It consists of a number of tools that guide students to
information that can be construed as evidence, assembled, and made public.
Used with appropriate classroom activities, these tools can generate dis-
course that not only involves students in serious debate about the content
and nature of science, but also reveals a lot about how students’ concepts
and beliefs about science change. Bell (2002) shows how this approach can
be used effectively. His study had students find evidence for and against two
explanations about what happens to light—it goes on for ever versus it dies
out. Working in pairs, the students assembled their evidence for and against
each theory, using the tools. They then participated in a class debate with
their peers during which they shared their evidence and their accounts of
what happens to light. Interestingly, what some students considered to be
evidence for one theory was given as evidence against the same theory by
other students. The conversations that occurred during the debate about
why the students used their evidence the ways they did was a good way for
students to learn and for the research group to understand what the students
were thinking.
Bell has built on this work in the SCOPE (“Science controversies on-line
partnerships in education”) project (Bell and Slotta, 2001). Here, students,
teachers, and scientists can share information at a web site about issues on
which even scientists do not agree and which are also visibly in the forum of
public debate. So far, SCOPE has dealt with the debate about why amphi-
bians are disappearing from their natural habitats, whether DDT should be
used to combat malaria, and whether genetically modified foods are harmful
to people and the environment. Again, by engaging groups of people with
very different backgrounds and points of view in a learning community, the
public debate becomes both a way for students to learn and also a source of
data for researchers.
A final comment: I believe there is a danger if researchers focus on
discourse at the expense of other data sources. Guddemi (2000) made the
point that, although it is useful to study how people talk about things, it is
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 341

also important to continue to look at what they learn, using methods other
than discourse analysis. This comment is not a direct criticism of any of the
work I have just described. In all cases, this research does not fall into this
trap. However, the potential for problems remains.

Research on Distributed Cognition in Learning Communities

Once educational technologists acknowledge the social nature of learn-

ing and understand the ways in which technology can support interaction
among students, teachers, and experts, technologists can go to the additional
step and ask whether cognition, generally, is distributed over entire commu-
nities linked by technology. (Chapters in Salomon’s edited volume present
various points of view about this issue [Salomon, 1995].) Hutchins (1995)
suggests that it might be. The opening vignette in his book on distributed cog-
nition is a detailed account of how the crew of a Navy ship pilots it safely into
San Diego harbor. The account contains many examples of people working
with people, people working with devices (gyrocompass repeaters, radar),
even devices working with devices, to get the job done. Perhaps the most
important point, though, is that at any time no one person or device is in
possession of all of the information necessary to pilot the ship. The know-
ledge required to get the job done is in the truest sense distributed among a
community of people and devices.
The seeds of the idea of technology helping to distribute cognition,
sharing problem solving among people and devices, goes back more than
20 years. Pask (1975) suggested that learning to solve problems was like a
conversation, whose goal was to “arrive at an agreement over an understand-
ing.” Pask noted that the participants in the conversation could be people,
people and machines, or machines and other machines. For Pask, the nec-
essary condition for cognition was the organization of concepts within a
coherent system, not the possession of a human brain. Today, we take ev-
erything from pedagogical agents, computer-based learning programs, and
using calculators to solve math problems pretty much for granted.
The study of distributed learning mostly involves research on three
things, each of which is sometimes considered to be a research domain in its
own right. These are as follows: Learning communities comprised of people
with varying backgrounds and levels of expertise, a technology that sup-
ports communication and productive activity within the community (almost
always the worldwide web), and engagement in authentic activity. This last
feature is by no means required for distributed learning to occur. However,
in most projects, one group of participants in the learning community con-
sists of experts in the domain, one of whose roles is to connect the learning
experience to the world of practice.
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

342 Winn

Malarney’s research serves as a useful case study of distributed learning

(Malarney, 2000). Her project created a learning community that consisted of
teachers and students in a Grade 10 classroom and the crew and scientists on
board a NOAA ship working in the tropical Pacific. “Classroom at Sea” had
as its objective to help students understand ocean science by collaborating,
albeit vicariously, with the people who do it. The project used the Internet for
e-mail and provided a web site for collecting and displaying material about
ocean science and students’ research (http://classroom@sea.noaa.gov). Au-
dio and video communications, carried live by satellite, supported two-way
interaction between the students and the ship at sea.
The project was a mixed success. On the positive side, the crew helped
students carry out an experiment. Each student wrote a question on a sty-
rofoam cup. The cups were delivered to the ship prior to sailing. Once on
station, the scientists put the cups in a bag and attached them to a sam-
pling device that they lowered into the ocean. The students had been asked
to predict what would happen to the cups. (They are compressed to about
half their size by the pressure of the ocean at depth, but retain their shape
perfectly.) During the first live broadcast, the captain showed the students
what had happened to their cups and also answered the questions written on
them, still perfectly legible, although smaller. This activity tied the ship and
the classroom together. The experiment with the cups could only have been
done by distributing the activity between the students and the shipboard
scientists.
In spite of this and other successes, there were problems that prevented
the complete cohesion of the classroom and the ship. Inevitably, both the
crew and the students were busy with other work that distracted them from
the project. More interesting was a problem arising from a lack of under-
standing on the part of the scientists about how to communicate with non-
specialists. For example, one e-mail question from a student about the buoys
the ship uses to gather data elicited a lengthy and technical response from
the ship. The student was completely turned off and never asked a question
again.
Malarney’s study shows that technology alone is not sufficient to create
a successful learning community (Malarney, 2000). At least two more com-
ponents must be present. The first is a carefully structured set of protocols
and activities that set out what will happen and how communication about
these events should take place. The second component is not necessary but
desirable. This is at least one face-to-face meeting among the members of
the learning community. This did occur in a pilot project, where the students
were able to spend a day at sea on the ship. More generally, educators make
a lot of unfounded assumptions about how the web can support learning
without realizing that it was not designed to teach anything. It only provides
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 343

access to information. Other features of learning communities, where the

responsibility for helping students is widely distributed, must be developed
if learning is to occur.
Some of the work completed by Malarney’s students was authentic sci-
ence (Malarney, 2000). They collaborated with real scientists at sea as they
developed their projects. Such an approach has a number of advantages.
First, it is motivating. Students see that what they are learning is useful.
Second, it does not seriously oversimplify the world with which students
interact to make it easier so as to learn. (If the truth be known, content is
often simplified to make it easier to teach, rather than for the benefit of the
students.) Spiro et al. (1992) have decried this practice, dubbing it “reductive
bias” and arguing that oversimplification of processes that are naturally com-
plex and difficult to describe leads to misconceptions. Third, sometimes the
work students do as they learn science can make a valuable contribution to
a real scientific research project. This, too, enhances motivation and authen-
ticity. For example, Teasley et al. (2000) describe a project that has equipped
many schools in Nebraska with cosmic ray detectors so that students may
contribute to a national study of cosmic ray activity. By distributing the in-
struments over a wide geographical area, more accurate data are gathered.
And, the only way the entire network of instruments can be operated is by
having the students do the data gathering.

Research on Complete Systems of Variables in “Real-World” Contexts

One of the problems that the increasing emphasis on learning envi-

ronments brings is the complexity of the interactions that occur while the
students are learning. Traditional methods for observing, recording, and an-
alyzing learning are inadequate for dealing with learning that results from
interactions of several learners with complex learning environments. How-
ever, researchers should regard dealing with this not as a problem but as a
necessity. Salomon (1991) has made the case that educational researchers
should indeed study systems of variables, both in the student and in the en-
vironment, that bring about learning, not one or two variables in isolation.
Unfortunately, some researchers have taken this to mean that learning can
no longer be studied quantitatively, or even with the rigor required when
drawing conclusions from evidence. However, conceptual and methodolo-
gical frameworks exist that allow researchers to bring rigor to their work
with students learning in complete environments.
Much of the research I have cited was conducted through “design exper-
iments” (Brown, 1992). Unlike traditional experiments, where a technology
or strategy is used with groups of students, who are assessed in some way
at the end, design experiments are iterative. A learning tool is built in the
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

344 Winn

research laboratory. The research team then takes it into the field where it
is used with students. The data that come from the study of what and how
students learn using the tool serve two purposes. They serve, obviously, to
guide revisions to the tool itself. The data also serve to help researchers un-
derstand the learning process and how it is affected by the tool. In effect,
research and development occur simultaneously. This stands in contrast to
traditional instructional design and development, where the design and im-
plementation phases are kept separate on the assumption that the design
procedures are sufficiently reliable to allow the development of effective
instruction before that instruction is used in the classroom (Winn, 1993b).
It is clear that design experiments address the perpetual problem in ed-
ucational research of connecting research and theory to practice. Research
on the same question takes place both in the laboratory and in the field,
with the outcomes of one informing the activities of the other in a recipro-
cal manner. Design experiments also address the issue of the complexity of
learning in technology-based learning environments. In a traditional experi-
ment, designed to test the effectiveness of a learning tool, as many variables
as possible that are not of interest to the research are controlled. This gives
a distorted view of what might happen when the tool or strategy is used in
a setting, like a classroom, where these variables cannot be controlled. The
design experiment can get around this by examining, eventually, all factors
expected to affect learning. Data gathering is not the end of the matter,
rather the beginning of the next go-round, during which other factors can
be observed, measured, and evaluated. Experimental control is less, if at all,
necessary in the case of design experiments. Over time, the impact of a whole
host of factors on learning can be assessed.

IMPLICATIONS

Implications for Practice

In the past, educational technology research has often been discon-

nected from practice. On the one hand, the research has been conducted
in laboratories, isolated from the many factors that support or impede the
practical implementation of research findings. On the other hand, it has been
hard for practitioners to find and use information, materials, and programs of
activities that the research has created. Fortunately, these two impediments
to putting research findings and products into the hands of practitioners are
not as powerful as they once were.
There are two reasons for this. The first is that much of the current
research on learning environments is done in schools. The iterative nature
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 345

of design experiments, as we have seen, requires the frequent assessment

of learning tools in real settings, with real students and teachers, whereas
the research that leads to their development is underway. A significant
feature of this approach is that the users of the tool are involved in its
development from the very start and are partners in the research on its
effectiveness. Second, the materials that researchers have designed, stud-
ied, and found to be effective are, in many cases, available to practitioners.
Following the references to projects cited in this paper, or searching for
the projects on the web, the reader is likely to arrive at a web site that
has useable materials to download or offers free membership in a learning
community. For example, the CoVIS project, described earlier, has become
part of the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS).
Their web site, http://www.letus.org, contains an open invitation for educa-
tors to join the project, a large amount of downloadable curriculum mate-
rial and software that includes “World Watcher,” the newest version of the
“Weather Watcher” software, described above, for studying global warming.
The SCOPE site, http://scope.educ.washington.edu, also contains an invita-
tion to join the project and provides curriculum materials related to scientific
controversies.
That said, a lot of the research mentioned in this paper has not yet
produced useable materials and strategies. One reason for this is that the
more complex learning environments still require more powerful equipment
to run them than is commonly available in schools. This is certainly true, for
now, of most of the material produced in our laboratory (Jackson et al.,
1999; Osberg et al., 1997; Winn et al., 2001), as well as some of Barab et al.’s
material (Barab et al., 2000), although the latter has been used effectively
in university courses in astronomy at Indiana University. Dede’s materials
(Dede et al., 1997) were also originally confined to the laboratory. However,
with adaptation to less expensive hardware, some of his materials are now
being used in schools in Virginia. The point for the practitioner is that even
the more esoteric hardware and software are being used in classes, not just
in laboratories. As the technology that is available to schools becomes more
powerful, without increases in cost, any learning environment is useable in
a school.
The findings of the research I have described also have important and
practical suggestions for practitioners:
1. Learning environments that reify abstractions use metaphors to com-
municate ideas. Even the best intentioned designers cannot avoid a
measure of idiosyncrasy when they select metaphors. Teachers must
take care to anticipate metaphors that are likely to be difficult for
their students to understand and be prepared to clarify them.
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

346 Winn

2. Computer-supported learning environments that are built around

simulations work best with a problem-solving or constructivist ap-
proach to learning. Teachers must allow students to experiment in
them and above all to learn from making mistakes. It is not a good
idea to use a virtual world to learn basic facts.
3. Technology may sometimes be a necessary condition for the creation
of learning communities, but it is never a sufficient condition. Simply
creating a web site and assigning people to use it does not create a
learning community. The community needs a purpose, activities to
pursue off-line, and possibly even other modes of communication,
like face-to-face meetings, in order to be successful.
4. Similarly, simply creating an interactive learning environment is not
sufficient to bring about learning. Students using any kind of simu-
lation, whether a self-contained learning environment or one that is
a part of some broader activity, must understand clearly what they
are supposed to accomplish. Students require careful, although not
intrusive, scaffolding to help them achieve their goal.
5. By default, technology tends to isolate students from one another.
This means that practitioners must create a social context for learning
in a technology-based learning environment. What is more, teachers
need to give students credit for collaboration and put to rest the
traditional view that sharing work is cheating.
6. Effective learning communities often include experts from outside
education. Involving experts from the local community, or from a
wider community via the Internet, is a good idea. Provided time com-
mitments are not too onerous, many experts are more than willing
to work with students.
7. Students should be encouraged, when appropriate, to create or mod-
ify the learning environments they work in. Inscription is a successful
learning strategy that not only helps students by externalizing and
sharing their thoughts, but provides a source of information to teach-
ers about what students understand.
8. Practitioners and students make significant contributions to the re-
search that leads to innovative software, hardware, and learning ac-
tivities. Partnerships among students, teachers, and researchers must
be encouraged.

Implications for Research

Instructional developers, in both the public and private sectors, are

using technology to create more complete and more complex learning
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 347

environments. Educational researchers should, therefore, study which char-

acteristics of these environments help or hinder learning. The environments
themselves present information in many ways and often allow students to
add their own inscriptions. Researchers should study how sharing informa-
tion in these ways encourages useful discourse about the environment that,
in turn, supports learning. Now that educators have acknowledged the social
nature of learning, researchers should study how technology can be used to
support interaction among students and teachers, and how the responsibil-
ity for learning can be fairly and meaningfully distributed within learning
communities. Finally, research methodologies should adjust to the demands
of studying increasingly more complex interactions between students and
their environments. Design experiments are a good start.
Looking ahead, I am tempted just to say that researchers should do more
of the same. However, there are activities on, or just over the horizon that
do not yet qualify as trends in educational technology research, but which
nonetheless require attention. First is the increasing viability of studying
learning from the perspective of the neurosciences. Educational Technology
researchers have been content to build conceptual frameworks within which
to conduct research from the metaphors of psychology rather than from
the mechanisms of neurobiology. However, neuroscientists may be close to
understanding learning in terms of neural activity (see sections of Dennett,
1995; Pinker, 1997; also Bruer, 1999). Should such an approach to the study
of learning prove viable and useful, it can provide a fundamentally different
view of how students learn. Only time will tell where this view leads research
on learning and educational practice.
Another thing to watch for is the fundamental transformation, or even
possible demise, of schooling as we know it. Such a concern is based on
current forces that are both pushing and pulling schools to change. On the
“push” side is the concern that our schools are not doing as well as they could
and so must be reformed. On the “pull” side is the demonstrated effective-
ness of other ways to educate people, ranging from home schooling to on-line
classes and programs. In the early days of educational technology, people
(e.g., Heinich, 1970) predicted that technology would radically alter what
happens in schools, would, in fact, replace a lot of what teachers do in their
classrooms. These predictions have not yet turned out to be correct, prob-
ably because educational technologists have an exaggerated expectation of
the power of technology pull. However, technology will inevitably play a
role in the reform of public education, however radical that turns out to be.
Educational technology researchers therefore have as much responsibility
in studying the means and ends of school reform as anyone else.
Finally, there is a trend in the training community towards supplant-
ing traditional training with just-in-time training, or of replacing training
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

348 Winn

altogether with personal support systems. As our technologies become more

able to bring information, learning materials, even learning environments to
wherever people happen to be, the argument can be made that we no longer
need to remember what we need to know; we can simply call it up and display
it when it is needed. Whether this trend spills over into the world of educa-
tion to any great extent is unclear. If it does, then the impact on traditional
curricula will be tremendous. Teachers, parents, and politicians will expect
students to master skills in information science and interpretation, maybe
even at the expense of science or math or social studies. As a result, research
will switch its current focus on learning with technology to a new focus on
how students interpret and use what technology presents to them in real time.
These last points may seem a bit “far-out.” However, it is only by antic-
ipating change that we can prepare to deal with what it brings. Technology
is now firmly entrenched in all manner of educational organizations and
supports a wide range of learning activities. And technology is extremely
volatile and unpredictable. Trying to keep up with how it changes and how
it will change education is difficult. But it is necessary for those of us who
study how technology can be used effectively to try.

Send research into practice manuscripts or ideas to Research into Practice

Editor, Daniel Robinson, at Department of Educational Psychology, S2B
504, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712-1296, e-mail: dan.robinson@
mail.utexas.edu.

REFERENCES

Barab, S. A., Hay, K. E., Squire, K., Barnett, M., Schmidt, R., Karrigan, K., Yamagata-Lynch,
L., and Johnson, C. (2000). The virtual solar system: Learning through a technology-rich,
inquiry-based, participatory learning environment. J. Sci. Educ. Technol. 9(1): 7–25.
Bell, P. (2002). Using argument maps to make thinking visible for individuals and groups.
In Koschmann, T., Hall, R., and Miyake, N. (eds.), Computer Supported Collaborative
Learning II: Carrying Forward the Conversation, Erlbaum, Mawah, NJ.
Bell, P., and Slotta, J. J. (2001). Technology as controversy teaching partner: Genetically mod-
ified foods. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, San Francisco, February 2001.
Bloom, B. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective
as one-to-one tutoring. Educ. Res. 13(6): 4–16.
Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creat-
ing complex interventions in classroom settings. J. Learn. Sci. 2(2): 141–178.
Brown, A. L. (1997). Transforming schools into communities of thinking and learning about
serious matters. Am. Psychol. 52(4): 399–413.
Brown, A., Bransford, J., and Cocking, R. (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind Experience
and School, National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 349

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., and Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning.
Educ. Res. 18(1): 32–43.
Bruer, J. T. (1999). Neural connections: Some you use, some you lose. Phi Delta Kappan 81(4):
264–277.
Byrne, C. (1996). Water on Tap: The Use of Virtual Reality as an Educational Tool, Ph.D.
Dissertation, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle,
WA.
Caird, J. K. (1996). Persistent issues in the application of virtual environment systems to training.
IEEE Comp. Soc. Hum. Interact. Complex Syst. 3: 124–132.
Carrier, C., Williams, M., and Davidson, G. (1985). Selection of instructional options in a
computer-based coordinate concept lesson. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.
Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media. Rev. Educ. Res. 53: 445–
460.
Cronbach, L., and Snow, R. (1977). Aptitude and Instructional Methods, Irvington, New York.
Dede, C., Salzman, M., Loftin, R. B., and Ash, K. (1997). Using virtual reality technology
to convey abstract concepts. In Jacobson, M., and Kozma, R. (eds.), Learning Sciences
for the 21st Century: Research, Design and Implementing Advanced Technology Learning
Environments, Erlbaum, Mawah, NJ.
Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Duffy, T. M., and Jonassen, D. H. (1992). Constructivism: New implications for educational
technology. In Duffy, T., and Jonassen, D. (eds.), Constructivism and the Technology of
Instruction: A Conversation, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Dwyer, F. M. (1985). Varied Self-Paced Micro-Computer Based Instructional Programs for
addressing individual differences when acquiring different levels of instructional objectives.
Presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Educational Communication
and Technology, Anaheim, CA, January 1985.
Fleming, M. L., and Levie, W. H. (1978). Instructional Message Design. Principles From the
Behavioral Sciences, Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Fleming, M. L., and Levie, W. H. (1993). Instructional Message Design: Principles From the Be-
havioral and Cognitive Sciences, Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs,
NJ.
Gagné, R. M., Briggs, L., and Wager, W. (1988). Principles of Instructional Design, Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, New York.
Gordin, D. N., Edelson, D. C., and Pea, R. (1996). Supporting students’ science inquiry through
scientific visualization activities. Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the American
Educational Research Association, New York, April 1996.
Greeno, J. (1980). Some examples of cognitive task analysis with instructional implications. In
Snow, R. E., Federico, P.-A., and Montague, W. E. (eds.), Aptitude, Learning and Instruction,
Vol. 2, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Guddemi, P. (2000). Autopoeisis, semeiosis and co-coupling: A relational language for describ-
ing communication and adaptation. Cybern. Hum. Know. 7: 127–145.
Hay, K. (1999). The digital weather station: A study of learning with 5-D visualization. Presented
at the Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada, May
1999.
Heinich, R. (1970). Technology and the Management of Instruction, Association for Educational
Communication and Technology, Washington, DC.
Hereford, J., and Winn, W. D. (1994). Non-speech sound in the human–computer interface: A
review and design guidelines. J. Educ. Comput. Res. 11: 209–231.
Herrenkohl, L., and Guerra, M. (1998). Participant structures, scientific discourse, and student
engagement in fourth grade. Cognit. Instr. 16: 431–473.
Herrenkohl, L., Palincsar, A., DeWater, L., and Kawasaki, K. (1999). Developing
scientific communities in classrooms: A socio-cognitive approach. J. Learn. Sci. 8: 451–
493.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

350 Winn

Jackson, R. (2000). Collaboration and Learning Within Tele-Immersive Virtual Environments,

Ph.D. Dissertation, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle.
Jackson, R., Taylor, W., and Winn, W. D. (1999). Peer collaboration in virtual environments:
An investigation of multi-participant virtual reality applied in primary science education.
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
Montreal, Canada, April 1999.
Johansen, K., and Tennyson, R. (1983). Effect of adaptive advisement on perception in learner-
controlled, computer-based instruction using a rule-learning task. Educ. Commun. Technol.
J. 31: 226–236.
Kashiwa, K. I., Mitani, T., Tezuka, T., and Yoshikawa, H. (1995). Development of machine
maintenance training system in virtual environment. In Proceedings of the 4th IEEE In-
ternational Workshop on Robot and Human Communication, ROMAN’95, Tokyo, Japan,
pp. 295–300. IEEE, New York, 1995.
Kozma, R. (1991). Learning with media. Rev. Educ. Res. 61: 179–211.
Kulik, J. A. (1983). Effects of computer-based teaching on secondary school students. J. Educ.
Psychol. 75(1): 19–26.
Kulik, J. A. (1985). Effectiveness of computer-based education in elementary schools. Comput.
Hum. Behav. 1(1): 59–74.
Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Levie, W. H. (1978). Principles for attitude change. In Fleming, M. L., and Levie, W. H. (eds.),
Instructional Message Design. Principles From the Behavioral Sciences, Educational Tech-
nology Publications, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Linn, M. (1995). Designing computer learning environments for engineering and computer
science: The scaffolded knowledge integration framework. J. Sci. Educ. Technol. 4(2):
103–126.
Linn, M., Bell, P., and Hsi, S. (1998). Using the Internet to enhance student understand-
ing of science: The knowledge integration environment. Interact. Learn. Environ. 6:
4–38.
Lysakowski, R. S., and Walberg, H. J. (1982). Instructional effects of cues, participation and
corrective feedback: A quantitative synthesis. Am. Educ. Res. J. 19: 559–578.
Malarney, M. (2000). Learning Communities and On-Line Technologies: The Classroom at Sea
Experience, Ph.D. Dissertation, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle.
Merrill, M. D. (1992). Constructivism and instructional design. In Duffy, T., and Jonassen,
D. (eds.), Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction: A Conversation, Erlbaum,
Hillsdale, NJ.
Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (1995). Oregon Trail II (CD ROM), Minnesota
Educational Computing Consortium, Minneapolis.
Osberg, K. M. (1997). Constructivism in Practice: The Case for Meaning-Making in the Virtual
World, Ph.D. Dissertation, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle.
Osberg, K. M., Winn, W., Rose, H., Hollander, A., and Hoffman, H. (1997). The effect of having
grade seven students construct virtual environments on their comprehension of science.
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
Chicago, May 1997.
Pask, G. (1975). Conversation, Cognition and Learning, Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Pea, R. D. (1994). Seeing what we build together: Distributed multimedia learning environments
for transformative communications. J. Learn. Sci. 3(3): 285–299.
Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works, Norton, New York.
Resnick, L. (1976). Task analysis in instructional design: Some cases from mathematics. In
Klahr, D. (ed.), Cognition and Instruction, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Rousseau, J.-J. (1762/1933). Emile, [Translated by B. Foxley], E. P. Dutton, New York.
Salomon, G. (1991). Transcending the qualitative–quantitative debate: The analytic and sys-
temic approaches to educational research. Educ. Res. 20(6): 10–18.
Salomon, G. (ed.) (1995). Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considera-
tions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.
P1: GVG/GDP
Educational Psychology Review [jepr] pp504-edpr-374336 June 13, 2002 8:28 Style file version June 4th, 2002

Educational Technology Research 351

Spiro, R., Feltovitch, P. J., Jacobson, M. J., and Coulson, R. L. (1992). Cognitive flexibility,
constructivism and hypertext: Random access instruction for advanced knowledge acqui-
sition in ill-structured domains. In Duffy, T., and Jonassen, D. (eds.), Constructivism and
the Technology of Instruction: A Conversation, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Teasley, S. D., Finholt, T. A., Potter, C. S., Carragher, B., Carroll, L., Grosser, B., Hanlon, J.,
Kisseberth, N., Robinson, S., Weber, D., Snow, G., Claes, D. R., and Myers, J. D. (2000).
Participatory science via the Internet. In Fishman, B., and O’Connor-Divelbiss, S. (eds.),
Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the Learning Societies, Erlbaum,
Mahwah, NJ, pp. 376–383.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Windschitl, M., and Winn, W. D. (2000). A virtual environment designed to help students
understand science. In Fishman, B., and O’Connor-Divelbiss, S. (eds.), Proceedings of the
Fourth International Conference of the Learning Societies, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, 290–296.
Winn, W. D. (1993a). A conceptual basis for educational applications of virtual reality.
(HITL Technical Report R-93-9), Human Interface Technology Laboratory, University
of Washington, Seattle.
Winn, W. D. (1993b). A constructivist critique of the assumptions of instructional design. In
Duffy, T., Lowyck, J., and Jonassen, D. (eds.), Designing Environments for Constructive
Learning. Springer, New York, pp. 189–212.
Winn, W. D. (1994). Contributions of perceptual and cognitive processes to the comprehension
of graphics. In Schnotz, W., and Kulhavy, R. (eds.), Comprehension of Graphics, Elsevier,
Amsterdam, 3–27.
Winn, W. D., Hoffman, H., Hollander, A., Osberg, K., Rose, H., and Char, P. (1999). Student-
built virtual environments. Presence, 8(3): 283–292.
Winn, W. D., and Windschitl, M. (2001). Towards an explanatory framework for learning in
artificial environments. Cybern. Hum. Know. 8(4): 5–23.
Winn, W. D., Windschitl, M., Fruland, R., Hedley, N., and Postner, L. (2001). Learning Science
in an Immersive Virtual Environment. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA, April 2001.