Using Computational Essays to Redistribute Epistemic Agency in Undergraduate Science

TL;DR

This study explores how computational essays can enhance students' control over their learning in STEM education by combining executable code with narrative, across diverse university settings.

Contribution

It demonstrates that computational essays can effectively redistribute epistemic agency to students, highlighting their adaptability and disciplinary relevance in higher education.

Findings

Computational essays increase students' epistemic agency in STEM learning.

Educational context and scaffolding influence how students engage with epistemic agency.

Students' backgrounds affect their ability to take up epistemic agency through computational essays.

Abstract

This article reports on a study investigating how computational essays can be used to redistribute epistemic agency--cognitive control and responsibility over one's own learning--to students in higher education STEM. Computational essays are a genre of scientific writing that combine live, executable computer code with narrative text to present a computational model or analysis. The study took place across two contrasting university contexts: an interdisciplinary data science and modeling course at Michigan State University, USA, and a third-semester physics course at the University of Oslo, Norway. Over the course of a semester, computational essays were simultaneously and independently used in both courses, and comparable datasets of student artifacts and retrospective interviews were collected from both student populations. These data were analyzed using a framework which operationalized the construct of epistemic agency across the dimensions of programming, inquiry, data analysis and modeling, and communication. Based on this analysis, we argue that computational essays can be a useful tool in redistributing epistemic agency to students within higher education science due to their combination of adaptability and disciplinary authenticity. However, we also argue that educational contexts, scaffolding, expectations, and student backgrounds can constrain and influence the ways in which students choose to take up epistemic agency.