niels

[netlogo investigations in electromagnetism]

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What is NIELS ?

NIELS is a curricular unit consisting of a sequence of simulations authored in the NetLogo modelling environment. Most students find electricity a particularly hard topic to learn, whereas, most of them find electrostatics is relatively much easier. Learning Scientists suggest that this is due to the fact that we do not have access to electrical phenomena at a microscopic level - i.e., at the level of atoms and electrons. NIELS is designed to address this issue. Models in NIELS depict phenomena aggregate-level phenomena such as current, voltage and resistance as emergent - i.e., they arise due to simple interactions between many individual-level "objects" such as atoms and electrons. Using these models, students as young as 5-th graders can actively explore and modify with the relevant phenomena by interacting with the models at various levels - e.g., running glass-box experiments by changing values of variables on the GUI and observing the resultant phenomena, and/or, by modifying and extending the underlying Netlogo program. No prior knowledge in electricity or programming in required.

We have succesfully tested NIELS in undergraduate, high school and middle school classrooms. NIELS is currently being implemented in elementary and middle schools in the US and Singapore.