Maximizing Learning Through Inquiry and Discovery

1. Eastern Mediterranean University ITEC106 Lecture VII

2. Using the Internet for Inquiry and Discovery

3. Inquiry Learning • Inquiry-based learning challenges and motivates students to investigate and learn, using real-world or relevant questions and focusing attention on creating solutions. • For inquiry to work, investigative questions must be based on something that students really care about or that stimulates their curiosity or interest so that they become engaged in the learning process. • The teacher should not only propose topics for investigation and ensure that time and resources are used productively, but also should be involved as a coinquirer with the students.

4. Inquiry Learning... • Inquiry-based learning experiences must be open-ended and flexible enough to allow for alternative paths of investigation. • The advantage of inquiry learning is that it permits students to investigate engaging and authentic topics and generate new knowledge and understandings. • It moves students toward deeper understanding of a topic by allowing them to organize, analyze, synthesize, and assimilate information using higher order thinking skills.

5. Discovery Learning • Discovery learning is an inquiry-based learning method that encourages students to discover for themselves the rules, relations, or concepts about something. • The premise is that students are more likely to remember concepts they discover on their own. • Although discovery is one of the oldest and most common methods of learning, it is not widely used in classrooms today.

6. Discovery Learning... • With conventional classroom resources discovery learning is not efficient or productive. • When it is used in the classroom, teachers are more successful if students have prerequisite knowledge accompanied by structured learning experiences.

7. USING THE WEB FOR INQUIRY • Using Internet technologies to promote inquiry-based learning encourages the development of independent learners capable of processing and developing solutions to problems in an information-centered society. • A Web-enhanced inquiry approach maximizes information seeking, evaluating, and applying. • Jakes, Pennington, and Knodle (2003) suggest an eight-step process for inquiry-based learning using the World Wide Web: (figure in next slide)

8. An Inquiry-based Learning Process

9. CASE-BASED LEARNING • Cases are narratives, situations, data samplings, or statements that present unresolved and provocative issues or questions in a form that is intended to educate. • Cases can be brief for classroom discussions or comprehensive for extended projects. • To be effective, they must relate to curriculum objectives.

10. CASE-BASED LEARNING... • Cases can be worked independently but are typically worked in teams so that students can brainstorm solutions and share the workload. • Case-based learning is widely used in medical, law, and business schools, where entire courses often use a case-study format.

11. CASE-BASED LEARNING... • Case-based and problem-based learning are similar learning methods. • With problem based learning, students are presented with an unstructured problem that mirrors a real world problem. • With case-based learning, students analyze a problem in the form of a case study, share views and perspectives with their peers, propose problem solutions, and develop a plan of action for case resolution.

12. CASE-BASED LEARNING... • Cases are designed to confront students with a specific problem that does not have a simple solution. • They provide a context to focus discussion and help students learn to define and recognize appropriate criteria for solving problems. • Cases are openended, requiring students to analyze data as well as choose appropriate analytic techniques in order to reach a conclusion. • The case method is characterized by real-world situations, actual or imagined.

13. Types of Case Studies • Case studies can be of several varieties. • Finished cases indicate a solution(s) and are presented for analysis to help students develop appropriate inquiry skills. • No one type of case study is best for all situations. • Role play • Background • Diagnose the problem

14. Types of Case Studies... • Jigsaw • Live • Pause the action • Create a case

15. Instructional Strategies • Case studies are usually designed for small groups to promote discussion, which should be structured by the teacher. • Case studies can be supported in the classroom with several commonly used teaching and learning strategies. • Case-based learning is a powerful educational approach that permits students to apply higher order learning processes.

16. DEVELOPING SCENARIOS • Scenarios are the most important aspect of the case study; they set the stage for student learning by making connections between the classroom subject and the real world. • Scenarios should describe a real-world problem, which may be open-ended, complex, and unstructured and may have multiple solutions. • The problem can be actual or imagined, but it must be realistic and believable.

17. DEVELOPING SCENARIOS... • The following suggestions will help you create effective case study scenarios: • Connection to the curriculum • Use of narrative • Elicit student response • Appropriate in length • Supporting data, documents, and resources • Designing case study questions

18. USING ONLINE SIMULATIONS TO EXPLORE REAL-LIFE PROBLEMS • An attempt to model a real-life problem or situation in an educational context is called a simulation. • Simulationsare based on the premise that certain interesting aspects of the real world can be copied or duplicated and virtually experienced on computers. • Thus, a simulation is a computer program that is based on an underlying computational model that recreates a somewhat simplified version of a complex henomenon, environment, or experience.

19. Implications for Teaching and Learning • Because a simulation is interactive and is usually grounded in some objective reality, it can provide students with a new level of understanding and can be highly motivating, providing a learning experience unavailable in real life. • Simulations are rich in feedback and can be used in the classroom in several ways: • To demonstrate or explain a concept(s) • To practice a skill(s) • To help students visualize models or theories • To assess or examine student understanding or skills

20. Using the Internet for Online Collaborations

21. UNDERSTANDING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING • When students work in groups, they can encourage each other, ask questions of one another, require each other to justify opinions and reasoning, and reflect on the group’s collective knowledge. • When students work in groups, they bring different abilities and expertise to bear on the task. • Research in education has demonstrated that collaborative and cooperative learning can promote academic achievement.

22. UNDERSTANDING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING... • Learning as a Social Process • Collaborative learning encompasses a variety of educational approaches that involve shared intellectual effort by two or more peers or by peers and experts. • Such activities can range from classroom discussions that might include short lectures to participation on research teams and can involve subject matter at varying levels. • Forming Effective Groups • Creating Communities of Learning • A learning community is a group of people who share a common interest in a topic or a subject and who employ a shared set of practices to build their collective knowledge.

23. SUPPORTING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING WITH THE INTERNET • Using Online Projects • Online collaborative projects can utilize the publishing features of the Internet as well as the communication features. • A collaborative Web publishing tool similar to a Web log is a Wiki, which actually permits editing of original posts. Wikis can be used for collaborative publication of Web projects. • Planning an Online Project

24. Multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) • Multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) are two- or three-dimensional text-based or graphic environments that allow people to meet and communicate in a virtual space. • MUVEs refer to a whole genre of interactive, synchronous communication services on the Internet, which provide a great deal of flexibility and creativity in expression and interaction that is not available with other forms of Internet communication.

25. MUVE... • MUVEs are immersive online environments that permit multiple participants to log in simultaneously to a central database through a computer connected to the Internet. • The design of most MUVEs is based on a room metaphor; rooms are places within the virtual space depicting physical locations. • Participants issue simple commands through the client application on their computer (often a Web browser) to navigate through the rooms and to interact with other characters and objects in the space.

26. MUVE... • MUVEs offer relatively simple and inexpensive ways to support both synchronous and asynchronous forms of interaction among geographically distributed participants accessing shared resources. • Virtual environments can trace their roots to the game Dungeons and Dragons, in which players pose as different characters and perform various tasks.

27. MUDs • Today, a MUD is a text-based chat based on a virtual world, or defined environment, in which users, or chatters, interact with one another. • A MUD is no longer considered simply a game, and the MUD acronym is now used to mean multiuser dimension or domain. • All subsequent implementations of the game on the Internet were called MUDs, for multiuser dungeons.

28. MUDs... • MUDs have multiple locations, much like an adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability for characters to build more structure onto the database, which represents the existing world. • Users can typically define their personal two- or three-dimensional graphic representations, called avatars, through which users interact and communicate with each other. • Each user takes control of a virtual persona, or avatar, and explores the virtual world, chats with other characters, explores dangerous monster-infested areas, solves puzzles, and even creates personal rooms, descriptions, and items.

29. MOOs • In 1989 a student at Carnegie Mellon University, James Aspnes, modified the MUD program by removing all the game aspects. • He called the program TinyMUD because this new version consisted mainly of clearing out the unwanted functions of the original program. • The result of his efforts was a publicly available, compact program that could be modified to serve many purposes.

30. MOOs... • In the mid-1990s graphic MUDs came to be known as MOOs—that is, MUDs object oriented. • AMOO has become a popular learning environment, providing a richer communication environment than a chat room and a culture populated by teachers and learners. • Some examples of educational MOOs include schMOOze University, Diversity University, and MOOse Crossing.

31. MUVES IN EDUCATION Benefits for Teachers and Students • MUVEs can form the basis for sophisticated and sustainable communities of learning on the Internet. • In a MUVE, teachers from many different schools and classrooms can share experiences and tools and resources. • Currently, there are educational MUVEs organized around many themes—for example, teacher collaboration, foreign language, ESL, science, English, and college courses.

32. MUVES IN EDUCATION Benefits for Teachers and Students... • Although asynchronous communication tools, such as electronic mail and bulletin boards, permit teachers some degree of interactivity with their professional communities and access to a variety of online information sources, those tools do not support the rich, real-time conversations available through MUVEs.

33. MUVES IN EDUCATION Benefits for Teachers and Students... • MUVEs can also be used by teachers to support classroom instruction. • Teachers can easily organize a meeting in the MUVE to discuss a topic or issue, and MUVEs can provide students with relevant study materials and links.