Identifying effective design features of technology-infused inquiry learning modules: A two-year study of students' inquiry abilities
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction Scientific inquiry has become the focus of reforms in science education over the past decades. The use of computers in science has opened ample opportunities for inquiry. Computers offer tools that support collecting or analyzing data, provide simulations that make an extremely large/small-scale phenomenon available for investigation, and allow learners to test and describe their ideas through a modeling tool (de Jong, 2010; van Joolingen, de Jong, & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007). Relevant research has also shown that students' science could benefit from their engagement in computer-based inquiry environments (de Jong, 2006a; Fretz et al., 2002; Quintana et al., 2004; van Joolingen, 1998). Despite the many merits that computers can offer, researchers emphasized that is the tasks, activities and underpinning pedagogical strategies supported or facilitated by the technology rather than the technology itself that have an impact on learning (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010, pp. 17-18). Diverse instructional designs that involve the use of computers were proposed for supporting students' of scientific inquiry. For example, some researchers suggested designing the interface of the computer-based environment in a way that can help reduce the complexity of the inquiry tasks (Reiser, 2004). Others recommended incorporating interactive simulations into tasks, by which learners can be guided to test their ideas by manipulating simulated or real data. It is expected that interactive simulations would help learners make sense of the data and build arguments based on evidence (Hsu, 2008; McNeill, 2011). These various instructional designs in compute-supported environments provide affordance to support learners' inquiry learning; however, previous research has indicated that there is a gap between what curriculum designers intended to offer and what learners actually perceived and used (Wu, Wu, Kuo, & Hsu, 2015). The curriculum designers or teachers assume that the design features are explicit but learners might not notice and appreciate the features intended to present thus could not complete the task in a desirable way. In other words, it is not clear how these various instructional designs actually influence learners' development of different inquiry abilities, and in what circumstances the design features can be best applied (van Joolingen et al., 2007). Therefore, the study was intended to explore how instructional designs impacted on students' of different scientific inquiry abilities. We developed three computer-based inquiry modules that provided tools to support students' of several specific inquiry abilities. By means of a scientific inquiry test, we examined how these modules helped the development of different inquiry abilities. Then, through the lens of students' outcomes, we identified design features of the inquiry tasks that might contribute to students' progress of the inquiry abilities. The design features identified in the study provide useful guidance for future instructional designs in computer-based inquiry environments. Design of computer-based inquiry modules The study developed three inquiry modules on the topics of Seasons, Environmental issues, and Air Pollution. With reference to previous literature and considering the topics selected in the study, we adopted three overarching aspects to design the activities. The three overarching aspects are decomposing open-ended problems, providing prompts, and using interactive visualization tools. Decomposing open-ended problems One significant purpose of scientific inquiry is to make science meaningful for learners. To meet the purpose, educational researchers argue that learners need to be engaged in the practice of science in order to learn how scientists work in the discipline of science (Flick & Lederman, 2006). …
Source: Educational Technology & Society
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2576958132