Ms. Lane maneuvered around her class of third graders. They were in the middle of a project-based science unit focused on the driving question, How can we help the birds in our community survive and thrive? Students had observed birds around their school, read print and digital texts about birds, viewed photographs and videos of birds, and interacted with digital simulations of bird migration patterns. On this day, students were busily working together on laptops, gathering information about a bird they wanted to protect in their community. In addition to preparing to communicate their learning with others, they worked together to make recommendations about design solutions (e.g., bird feeders) and conservation efforts that could help their birds thrive. To accomplish this, students had access to a variety of digital resources that illustrated concepts through multiple media. Guiding prompts embedded in the technology tools supported students to navigate and manage information and resources, as well as to communicate their ideas. The texts students used supported vocabulary, through hyperlinked definitions, and reading, through text-to-speech functionality. This afternoon, some students were viewing videos and creating labeled drawings and animations to explain how their bird’s traits support survival in their habitat (e.g., talons for grabbing prey), while others were using digital field guides to gather information about their bird’s food sources and behaviors. Ms. Lane conferred with students about their collaboration and progress, supported them to successfully navigate the technology tools and curriculum materials, and kept them focused on their learning objectives.

In classrooms like this one, digital tools and the design of learning environments that leverage the affordances of those tools have the potential to increase students’ access to learning opportunities. In this article, we describe and provide salient examples of how the design of digital technologies and the instructional contexts in which they are embedded can increase students’ access to meaningful learning opportunities in elementary-grade classrooms during project-based learning (PBL). Specifically, we describe digital tools designed to promote learners’ access to disciplinary learning opportunities in project-based science instruction, which requires students to leverage literacy tools of reading, writing, and representation to make sense of complex science ideas as they address driving questions.

We begin by identifying common design features of PBL learning environments that are consistent with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018). We then provide a brief overview of how – over the last three decades – researchers have theorized, designed, and examined the affordances and obstacles of integrating digital technologies into project-based learning (PBL) (e.g., Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Krajcik et al., 2000). Finally, we describe the design and integration of digital tools in the context of a recent project-based science curriculum design-based research project for elementary-grade students, Multiple Literacies In Project-based Learning (ML-PBL) (Krajcik et al., 2023). This curriculum and associated digital tools were designed with specific attention to enhancing access to learning opportunities for learners in elementary-grade classrooms. We use the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018) to characterize the potential of these digital technologies for supporting access to learning opportunities for diverse learners.

Universal Design for Learning and Project-Based Learning

Inspired by the concept of universal design in architecture, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for instruction based on decades of research focused on understanding differences among students and how learning environments can be designed to promote access to learning opportunities for all students (Meyer et al., 2014). Thus, curriculum, instruction, and instructional tools (such as digital technologies) can be designed to address the three principles of UDL. Each of these principles addresses potential individual differences among learners and specific types of flexibility that can be addressed through curriculum and instruction by: (a) providing multiple means of engagement; (b) providing multiple means of representation; and (c) providing multiple means of action and expression (Meyer et al., 2014).

Project-based science learning environments – as one approach to PBL – are characterized by: (a) use of a “driving question” that is meaningful to students and anchored in read-world problems; (b) student participation in hands-on investigations and creation of artifacts in pursuit of the driving question; (c) collaboration among students, teachers, and others in the community; and (d) use of cognitive tools, such as digital technologies, to scaffold learning, inquiry, and collaboration (e.g., Marx et al., 1994). The design features that characterize PBL learning environments are well-aligned to UDL principles and guidelines, which makes PBL a particularly promising approach for enhancing all learners’ access to meaningful opportunities to learn.

Designing and Integrating Technology to Support Access in PBL

PBL has gained momentum in K-12 classrooms as a student-centered approach that emphasizes deeper, interdisciplinary learning that engages students in solving real world problems that are meaningful to them (Miller & Krajcik, 2019). Many attributes of PBL are consistent with calls for educational reforms to redress gaps in students’ opportunities to learn, namely, promoting cognitive engagement, providing meaningful contexts for learning, accommodating student interest, and building on prior knowledge (Condliffe et al., 2017).

In addition to these attributes, over the last three decades, designers of PBL environments have theorized and examined important roles of digital technologies in PBL curriculum and instruction for enhancing students’ access to learning opportunities (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). This is especially true for designers of project-based science learning environments. More than thirty years ago, Blumenfeld et al. (1991) hypothesized that digital technologies may play a powerful role in supporting the learning and motivation of students as they participate in PBL. These authors specifically noted the potential of digital tools to enhance student interest in topics under study, provide access to information about disciplinary core ideas, expand the range of multimodal and multimedia representations available to students, enhance accessibility of complex science ideas, provide support to enhance students’ understanding, and produce artifacts to communicate their learning.

Although digital tools have the potential to enhance students’ access to information, multimodal and multimedia representations, and expand opportunities and outlets for communicating ideas and learning, a key issue for educators and educational researchers has been how to design and integrate these tools in instruction in ways that are accessible to all students and benefit their learning. Beginning in the early 1990s, this issue was examined by teams at the University of Michigan through the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education (HI-CE) and the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS). The research teams represented a variety of disciplines, including science education, educational psychology, literacy education, and educational technology.

The groups’ focus on integrating learning technologies in the context of project-based science instruction began with exploring the potential of generic tools, such as microcomputer-based laboratories, and graphing tools. Krajcik (1993) explained that such tools could be used to create science learning environments that support students to actively construct knowledge, access data, and use the tools of disciplinary experts to create artifacts. Additionally, because of the multimodal and multimedia affordances of digital tools, they had the potential to enhance the accessibility of information and to create opportunities for students to develop their own multimodal representations using diverse media (e.g., text, audio, video, graphics). However, the technological tools that were available for classroom use at that time did not necessarily contain features that supported students to access information, engage in the practices of disciplinary experts (e.g., developing scientific models or obtaining and evaluating information), or create artifacts in ways that were accessible to K-12 learners.

In response to these challenges, Soloway et al. (1994) introduced the idea of Learner-centered Design (LCD) to guide the development of software tailored specifically for student use by planning for how students would learn to use the tools, and how the tools would support the learning needs and motivation of diverse K-12 learners. Based on the principles of LCD, The Investigator’s Workshop – a suite of digital tools – was developed to support students’ engagement and learning in project-based science instruction. The Investigator’s Workshop tools included: Artemis, an online digital library; DataViz, a data visualization tool (Krajcik et al., 2000); Model-It, a tool for modeling dynamic systems (Jackson et al., 1996); Web-It, a tool for communicating investigation results (Krajcik et al., 2000); and eChem, a tool that supports students to build, visualize, and manipulate 3D representations of molecules (Wu et al., 2001).

Research on the tools included in The Investigators Workshop uncovered the tools’ affordances and limitations for promoting middle- and high-school students’ access to learning opportunities in project-based science instruction (e.g., Hug et al., 2005; Jackson et al., 2000; Quintana et al., 2005). For example, the online digital library, Artemis, was designed to support middle-grade students to locate, save, and organize documents relevant to their investigations (Krajcik et al., 2000). Research on Artemis revealed that the tool provided middle-school students with opportunities to ask meaningful questions connected to the PBL unit and to identify relevant science text that was accessible to middle-grade readers (Hug et al., 2005). Although Artemis enhanced students’ access to relevant science text, students often required additional support to make sense of the complex texts as they engaged in online inquiry (Hug et al., 2005; Quintana et al., 2005). This was particularly true for those students reading below grade level. Hug et al. (2005), therefore, emphasized the important role of the teacher in mediating students’ use of the technology. One takeaway from this research on designing and integrating digital tools in project-based science instruction was that although features of the digital tools investigated served to enhance students’ access to learning opportunities, the teacher also had an important role to play in mediating students’ interactions with technology and the curriculum.

Research on designing and integrating digital technologies in project-based science instruction have demonstrated the potential of these tools for enhancing students’ access to complex science information and for supporting students’ engagement in sophisticated disciplinary practices, such as obtaining and evaluating information and developing scientific models (e.g., Hug et al., 2005; Jackson et al., 2000; Krajcik et al., 2000). However, much of this research has been conducted in secondary classrooms, with students who have already developed foundational literacy skills. Much less attention has been focused on designing and integrating digital tools into PBL learning environments with the specific needs of young learners in mind. In the next section, we describe a suite of digital tools designed in the context of a project-based science curriculum developed for the elementary grades.

Supporting Young Learners’ Access in Project-Based Science Instruction

ML-PBL is a project-based science curriculum that integrates science, literacy, and mathematics instruction in PBL in the upper-elementary grades. ML-PBL was designed to provide young students with meaningful opportunities and supports – including digital supports – to access, interpret, and produce a variety of texts and other forms of media (e.g., audio, video, images) as they work together to investigate and explain science phenomena to address Driving Questions (e.g., How can we help the birds in our community survive and thrive?) (Krajcik et al., 2023). Addressing Driving Questions in the context of project-based science instruction requires students to access, interpret, and communicate information through planning and conducting first-hand investigations and through accessing and producing a variety of texts (including digital texts). To do this work, young students must develop and use a variety of digital literacies.

Digital literacies include the ability to find, interpret, evaluate, share, and generate content for building and communicating knowledge with the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). While the integration of digital tools into curriculum and instruction holds promise for enhancing learners’ access to learning opportunities, meaningfully integrating and supporting the use of these tools in instruction is no small feat, as evidenced by research conducted in secondary-grades PBL learning environments (Hug et al., 2005; Jackson et al., 2000; Quintana et al., 2005). However, this may be particularly true in the elementary grades, when students are still acquiring foundational reading and writing skills (e.g., word reading and spelling, reading and writing with fluency). In addition, many students attending under-resourced schools in underserved communities are affected by a multidimensional digital divide, which includes: (a) access to ICT tools, (b) frequency and purpose of ICT use, and (c) students’ knowledge and skill related to using ICTs for personal empowerment (Rowsell et al., 2017). This means that curriculum designers and teachers have important roles to play in both providing access to the digital tools themselves and in designing and providing curriculum and instruction that integrates meaningful opportunities for students to leverage digital literacy skills in the service of disciplinary inquiry; this was one of the aims of the designers of the ML-PBL curriculum.

ML-PBL

ML-PBL is a design-based research project focused on the iterative design and investigation of a project-based science curriculum that integrates literacy and mathematics in grades three through five (Krajcik et al., 2023). ML-PBL was designed to address the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) and selected Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics (CCSSO, 2010). As part of the iterative curriculum design, the research team also engaged in the iterative design of a suite of digital tools that included WeRead (an online e-reader), Collabrify Writer (an online composing tool) and Collabrify Flipbook (an online drawing and animation tool). Similar to the tools designed and integrated in secondary-grade project-based science curricula in earlier research, the tools used in ML-PBL were designed with the aim of enhancing young students’ access to the science ideas and crosscutting concepts in the curriculum as well as to the scientific practices of obtaining and communicating information and developing scientific models. Further, the ML-PBL curriculum materials and digital tools were designed to be accessible in a variety of school contexts, including in under-resourced schools. For example, the curriculum materials are Open Educational Resources (OERs), meaning that they are freely available for educational use. In addition, the digital tools were designed as device agnostic applications, meaning that they are available to freely access, not only from devices at school, but also from any device (e.g., phone, tablet) students have access to outside of school.

WeRead

WeRead is an online digital library and e-reader application that houses images, video, and researcher-designed print text included in the ML-PBL curriculum (Fig. 1). The third-grade ML-PBL curriculum includes four units, each guided by a Driving Question (e.g., Why do we see so many squirrels but we can’t find any stegosauruses?). The student texts in WeRead are organized by unit and lesson in a sidebar on the homepage of the application. Similar to the tools described previously, WeRead was designed with the needs of learners in mind, in this case, the needs of young learners. While many third graders are still developing foundational reading skills, the NGSS (2013) calls for students to make sense of, and apply, complex science ideas to explain phenomena and solve problems. Each of the digital tools highlighted in this article were designed to offer specific affordances. In the section that follows, we describe and illustrate how WeRead was designed to well reflect two UDL guidelines: multiple means of engagement and multiple means of representation.

Fig. 1
figure 1

WeRead. Note. An example text from WeRead (What do squirrels eat? n.d.)

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UDL and WeRead

Multiple Means of Engagement

WeRead was designed to include affordances that reflect the guidelines of UDL to enhance students’ access to opportunities to learn through reading and viewing to support young students' ability to successfully engage in obtaining information from text. One affordance of WeRead is that it provides multiple means of engaging with content through its options for enhancing student interest and sustaining effort and persistence. For example, one of the third-grade units is guided by the driving question, Why do we see so many squirrels but we can’t find any stegosauruses? A variety of researcher-designed texts are included in WeRead. Some of the texts are designed to be used as interactive read-alouds, where the teacher reads the text aloud to students and pauses throughout reading to engage students in discussing the information; whereas other texts are designed to be read independently by students. In conjunction with the curriculum resources (i.e., texts), WeRead serves as a vehicle for recruiting student interest by providing opportunities for students to make choices about the text(s) they read. For example, when learning about how squirrels survive in their environment, students select the informational text that most interests them related to the topic of squirrel survival: (a) how squirrels change as they grow; (b) what squirrels eat; or (c) how squirrels survive in winter.

Not only do these texts vary in topic, but they also vary in complexity, so that students have the option of selecting a text that is most accessible to them, based on their reading performance. The teacher also plays a role in guiding their choice of text. Providing access to texts that are written at an appropriate reading level for students with varying reading skills is one way that WeRead supports students to persist as they work to complete challenging tasks. WeRead also supports student effort and persistence through embedding prompts and questions within texts to encourage students to focus on their purpose for reading. To illustrate, “pause-and-ponder” questions are embedded throughout texts that prompt students to reflect on what they read as it relates to the learning goal of the lesson and the unit’s Driving Question. For example, in a text that describes how squirrels survive during different seasons of the year, one of the embedded questions asks, How do squirrels survive during cold winter months? This prompts students to stay focused on building knowledge about squirrel survival and how the information in their particular text connects to the broader unit Driving Question.

Multiple Means of Representation

In addition to providing multiple means of engagement, WeRead is designed to provide multiple means of representation through providing options for perception (how learners access and process information) and language. For example, WeRead includes built-in text-to-speech software, which enables students who may have difficulty decoding print text the option to listen to the text read aloud by their device. Students may choose to have the whole text read aloud or select individual words or sections of the text to be read aloud.

Research

Based on analysis of observational field notes, videos of classroom instruction, class- and student-created artifacts, and teacher interviews, Easley et al. (2021) constructed a case study examining the integration of technology in one third-grade classroom using ML-PBL. Easley et al. (2021) found that WeRead, in hand with the curriculum and the teacher’s instruction, supported student engagement and differentiation. Easley et al. (2021) identified the following affordances of WeRead in the project-based science curriculum: the tool provided (a) access to high-quality texts that incorporated multiple representational forms (i.e., print text, images, video) and (b) opportunities for students to make choices about their reading. The third-grade teacher, Ms. Lawson, whose instruction was featured in the case study, reported evidence of students’ increased engagement in learning activities while using WeRead when interviewed about the technology integration. At the time of the study, Ms. Lawson was an experienced elementary-grad teacher at a K-5 school in a rural district in the midwest, in which 65% of students were identified as economically disadvantaged. Ms. Lawson shared that the multiple modes of representation within WeRead both enhanced student interest in the material and deepened students’ understanding of targeted science ideas. Ms. Lawson also identified the text-to-speech technology as a key tool for differentiation, which enhanced access for students in her class with diverse reading skills, providing necessary word reading support for students who were not yet reading at grade level.

Although WeRead played important roles in facilitating students’ access to learning opportunities, Easley et al. (2021) also found that the tool could not replace research-informed instructional practices implemented by the teacher for supporting students’ reading and learning from text. WeRead enhanced access to learning opportunities by providing multiple means of engagement and representation, but the teacher supported students to comprehend science text through planning and facilitating whole-class discussion about science ideas and vocabulary, and through providing individualized support, responsive to observed student needs as they used WeRead.

Collabrify Writer

Collabrify Writer is a multimodal writing tool that students use to compose text and create drawings, photographs, and videos (Fig. 2). One of the affordances of Collabrify Writer is that students can easily combine text, images, and videos in a single file, based on their purposes and preferences for communicating their ideas. Another affordance is signified in the name of the tool, the “Collabrify” in Collabrify Writer; the tool is designed to enable students to engage in synchronous collaboration using their own devices, as they work side by side in the classroom. These design features are meant to promote the dual affordances of synchronous digital collaboration and simultaneous peer- or small-group discussion. Collabrify Writer is integrated into the ML-PBL units as a tool for promoting students’ engagement in the fundamental science practice of communicating science information (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Science texts frequently incorporate multiple forms of representation to communicate information about phenomena, such as print text, graphs, and diagrams. As such, Collabrify Writer was designed and integrated with the ML-PBL curriculum to enhance young students’ access to opportunities to communicate science information using multiple representational forms as they investigated phenomena and pursued driving questions. While many third graders are still developing foundational writing skills, the NGSS (2013) calls for students to communicate scientific information orally; through tables, diagrams, and charts; and through writing and multimedia. In the next section, we describe and illustrate how Collabrify Writer was designed to reflect the UDL guidelines of providing multiple means of engagement and expression.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Collabrify Writer. Note. An example Collabrify Writer File, showing student options to add multiple types and modes of information (Soloway & Norris, n.d.)

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UDL and Collabrify Writer

Multiple Means of Engagement and Expression

Similar to WeRead, Collabrify Writer was designed to include affordances that address the guidelines of UDL to promote students’ access to learning opportunities, including communicating about science phenomena through writing and representing. One of the affordances of Collabrify Writer is that it provides multiple means of engagement and expression. Collabrify Writer was designed to enhance student interest and provide options for communicating learning by: (a) optimizing students’ autonomy in making choices about the tools they use to communicate their ideas and (b) enhancing relevance and authenticity through thoughtfully pairing the tool with meaningful learning tasks. For example, one of the third-grade ML-PBL units is guided by the driving question, How can we help the birds in our community survive and thrive? As students investigate the traits and behaviors of birds in their community, pairs of students select a local bird about which they want to learn more (e.g., Red-tailed Hawk, Eastern Screech-Owl, American Robin). Using a variety of print and digital resources, as well as first-hand investigations, partners classify their bird based on beak, wing, and foot type, as well as the bird’s migratory pattern to explain how its traits support survival in particular habitats. Based on these findings, students then design bird feeders to help their chosen bird thrive in their community. Finally, to communicate their findings and share their designs, students use Collabrify Writer to create digital, multimodal presentations to share with their classmates. These multimodal presentations include print text, online photographs, student drawings, and online and student-created videos. In this example, Collabrify Writer optimizes student choice by providing an array of options in the tools available for communicating information. In addition, the tool enhances authenticity through the pairing of the tool with activities that call for students to solve relevant problems and communicate their findings (i.e., How can we help birds in our community survive and thrive?).

In addition to promoting student interest, Collabrify Writer’s design provides access to multiple means of engagement by thoughtfully fostering student collaboration. Through synchronous manipulation of digital Collabrify Writer files and peer-led discussion, students navigate the features of the tool, and associated learning tasks, side-by-side in the classroom. Having the opportunity to talk with their peers as they collaborate in a digital space is particularly important for young students who are still learning to navigate and use the features of digital tools (e.g., word processing, generating search terms to identify relevant images and/or videos) and building foundational literacy skills (e.g., spelling, writing mechanics).

Designed with the needs of young learners in mind, Collabrify Writer was also designed to support students to express their learning through embedding task-specific prompts into Collabrify Writer files. The Collabrify Writer files, in which students create their multimodal presentations, provide a base structure to guide and support students to maintain a focus on communicating their ideas related to the targeted core science ideas and particular lesson objectives. For example, one purpose of the multimodal presentation is for students to explain how their birds’ traits affect their survival in particular environments. To support this purpose, a series of prompts guide students to focus on relevant traits (e.g., Describe your bird’s beak. How does your bird’s beak help it survive?). In addition to prompts that focus on the content of students’ multimodal presentations, embedded prompts also remind students to consider multiple forms of representation to express their ideas. For example, prompts remind students to take their own photos or video recordings, to search online for relevant photos or videos, or to create and embed drawings.

Research

In a case study designed to examine how a third-grade teacher’s enactment of the curriculum provided opportunities for students to learn and use social-emotional skills and literacy to support disciplinary learning, Fitzgerald (2020) found that, while Collabrify Writer enhanced access to students’ opportunities to learn through providing multiple means of engagement and expression, the teacher played an integral role in supporting students’ use of the technology.

Data sources for this study included the PBL curriculum materials, field notes from classroom observations, videos of instruction, and student created artifacts. Ms. Lane, the teacher, was an experienced third-grade teacher in a K-5 school that served students with a wide range of academic achievement profiles and where the majority of students were identified as economically disadvantaged. Fitzgerald (2020) found that, whereas Collabrify Writer provided an accessible, learner-friendly platform for expressing ideas and collaborating in a digital space, Ms. Lane, the teacher, supported students to fully access the affordances of the tool through: (a) sharing examples of clear communication, (b) giving students feedback about how to express ideas using multiple representations, (c) establishing routines to support collaboration, and (d) creating and maintaining a respectful classroom learning environment for students to share their ideas with one another.

There is also evidence that the use of Collabrify Writer supported students to express their ideas using multiple forms of representation. For example, Fitzgerald et al. (2018) – in another study conducted in Ms. Lane’s classroom – examined students’ digital artifacts using rubrics and found that students used a variety of representational forms to communicate learning. These findings suggest that thoughtfully pairing digital tools that are designed to reflect UDL principles and meaningful disciplinary learning tasks can support young learners to communicate disciplinary knowledge using multiple forms of representation.

Collabrify Flipbook

Collabrify Flipbook is a drawing and animation tool in which students can create and animate their own drawings, as well as search for and embed online images on a digital canvas (Fig. 3). In essence, Collabrify Flipbook is a digital flipbook that students can use to create static drawings and to animate those drawings by copying a frame and then making small adjustments on subsequent frames. Collabrify Flipbook allows students to easily combine drawing, text, and images into a single file and enables students to engage in synchronous digital collaboration. Providing access to both Collabrify Writer and Collabrify Flipbook in the ML-PBL curriculum is, in itself, another way in which the integration of these tools provided multiple means of expression. Both tools are designed to promote students’ engagement in the scientific practice of communicating information (NGSS Lead States, 2013), but foreground different modes of expression.

As integrated in the ML-PBL curriculum, Collabrify Flipbook is often used as a tool for developing scientific models, which are representations that can be used to explain or predict a phenomenon or systems under study (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Student models can progress from concrete drawings or storyboards in the early grades to more abstract representations, such as diagrams, in the later grades (NRC Framework, 2012). The design of Collabrify Flipbook took this into account by optimizing tools for creating static and animated drawings or storyboard-like artifacts. In science, models are used to communicate about phenomena, and are revised based on new data or information. For example, in a unit where students design, test, and refine moving toys, students investigate how different surfaces (e.g., tile floor, carpeted floor) affect a toy car’s motion and develop scientific models using Collabrify Flipbook to explain this phenomenon. As students continue to investigate how forces affect different toys’ motion throughout the unit, they revise their models as they collect new data about a variety of forces (e.g., friction, gravity), and give and receive feedback on others’ models. Thus, additional affordances of Collabrify Flipbook for developing scientific models include both the ease of revision in the digital canvas over time, as students build knowledge across a unit of instruction, and opportunities for reflection. In the following section, we describe and illustrate how Collabrify Flipbook was designed to reflect the UDL guidelines of providing multiple means of engagement and expression.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Collabrify Flipbook. Note. An example Collabrify Flipbook file, showing student options to add multiple modes of information, including text, drawings, images, and videos (Soloway & Norris n.d.)

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UDL and Collabrify Flipbook

Multiple Means of Engagement and Expression

Similar to the other tools described, affordances of Collabrify Flipbook are that it provides multiple means of engagement and expression. Collabrify Flipbook was designed and integrated into ML-PBL to enhance student interest and provide options for students to communicate their learning by (a) optimizing students’ autonomy in making choices about the tools they use to communicate their ideas and (b) enhancing relevance and authenticity through thoughtfully pairing the tool with meaningful learning tasks. One of the third-grade ML-PBL units is guided by the Driving Question, How can we design fun, moving toys that other kids can build? In this unit, students investigate how a variety of forces affect the motion of objects (e.g., friction, gravity) and apply science ideas related to force and motion to iteratively design, test, and revise simple moving toys (i.e., toy cars, toy boats, and toy water bottle rocket launchers) for other children. As students build knowledge about science ideas related to force, motion, and engineering design across the unit through reading text, viewing videos, and investigating first hand, they use Collabrify Flipbook to collaboratively develop scientific models that illustrate how different forces affect the motion of a variety of toys. For example, to communicate how their toys start moving (i.e., a push or a pull) and the effect of friction and gravity on their toys’ motion, students use Flipbook to draw and animate the phenomenon under study. In this example, Collabrify Flipbook optimizes authenticity by pairing use of the digital tool with learning activities that engage students in solving and communicating about relevant problems (i.e., How can we design [and optimize] fun, moving toys that other kids can build?).

Similar to Collabrify Writer, Collabrify Flipbook was designed to promote multiple means of engagement through providing an accessible platform to facilitate student collaboration. Pairs of students synchronously develop their models in Collabrify Flipbook while simultaneously engaging in peer discussion to navigate the use of the tool, negotiate their understanding of the phenomenon under investigation, and clearly represent the phenomenon as they develop and revise their models. This is where multiple means of expression come into play; as students collaborate to develop and revise models using Collabrify Flipbook, they must come to a consensus about how to represent the phenomenon they are investigating. For example: Will they draw or insert pictures? What symbols will they use to represent invisible forces (i.e., gravity, friction)? How could they modify color and/or shapes to represent different features or roles of a system under investigation?

Research

In Easley et al.’s (2021) case study, researchers found that Collabrify Flipbook, when paired with the curriculum and the teacher’s instruction, supported students’ engagement in the scientific practice of developing scientific models and differentiation. Recall that data sources included observational field notes, videos of classroom instruction, class- and student-created artifacts, and teacher interviews. The affordances of Collabrify Flipbook in the project-based science curriculum that Easley et al. (2021) identified included that the tool (a) supported synchronous collaboration, (b) provided multiple options for communication by allowing students to integrate text, drawing, and animation, and (c) eased the demands of revision when students needed to make adjustments or needed to clarify their understanding of science phenomena. Ms. Lawson, the third-grade teacher in this case study, shared that Collabrify Flipbook played an important role in providing all students with access to opportunities to learn in ML-PBL because of the options it provided for expressing their ideas. For example, Ms. Lawson noticed that some of her students, who typically struggled with traditional reading and writing skills, were able to more successfully communicate their ideas through Collabrify Flipbook when compared with other tools for communicating information.

Conclusion

There are undeniable disparities in students’ access to educational opportunity in K-12 classrooms. Schools that most need to increase student achievement often respond by narrowing the curriculum and emphasizing rote instruction in reading and mathematics and excluding opportunities for deep disciplinary or integrated learning, like those opportunities reflected in the ML-PBL curriculum (NASEM, 2019). Even when teachers have access to high-quality curriculum materials and digital tools, meaningfully integrating digital technologies into curriculum and instruction, especially in the elementary grades, is no small feat. Teachers need examples of what it looks like to support students to use these digital tools in ways that enhance their access to meaningful learning. The examples provided in this manuscript illustrate what is possible when students have access to digital tools designed with attention to the specific needs of learners, meaningful purposes for using digital tools, and instruction that supports students’ engagement in tasks that enlist literacy tools of reading, writing, and representing in the service of disciplinary learning.

Importantly, digital technologies cannot do everything on their own. These tools are only as good as the curriculum and instruction in which they are integrated. Teachers need access to both high-quality curriculum materials and digital tools to create and facilitate students’ engagement in learning environments that are designed to reflect UDL guidelines for enhancing student access to learning. Teachers must examine curriculum materials and digital tools to understand the ways in which they do or do not provide multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression. After identifying affordances and limitations, teachers can plan how to mediate students’ use of the tools during instruction. As illustrated through the research on project-based science instruction across grade levels, teachers cannot just sit back while the curriculum and digital tools “work their magic.” Instead, teachers must play an active – and even proactive – role in mediating students’ uses of the technologies. This idea reflects Castek and Beach’s (2013) argument that the affordances are not simply in the technological tools themselves. Rather, students’ use of affordances depends largely on the ways in which teachers leverage and maximize affordances to meet learning objectives.

There is also a need for future research, including design-based studies that involve the iterative design and testing of curriculum and integrated digital technologies to understand affordances of and obstacles to their use during implementation. For decades, researchers have argued that digital technologies have the potential to enhance the effectiveness of PBL in K-12 classrooms (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). We need to know more about how digital tools can be optimally integrated and leveraged in elementary-grade classrooms to promote student learning and to uncover their potential to promote diverse students’ access to meaningful opportunities to learn as they participate in projects. This includes uncovering what features of digital technologies effectively promote access to learning opportunities, what instructional practices serve to maximize the affordances of particular tools, and what support students need to successfully use digital tools to promote learning.