Personal Inquiry: Designing for Evidence-based Inquiry Learning across Formal and Informal Settings

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Personal Inquiry Designing for Evidence-based
Inquiry Learning across Formal and Informal
Settings

• Stamatina AnastopoulouLearning Science Research
  Institute, University of Nottingham,
  stamatina.anastopoulou_at_nottingham.ac.uk
• M. Sharples, S. Ainsworth, C. Crook

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Introduction main objective of the Personal
Inquiry project

• The main objective is to design new educational
  methods of scripted inquiry learning, implemented
  across devices including personal mobile
  technologies and shared classroom displays, and
  to evaluate their effectiveness in helping young
  people aged 11-14 to understand themselves and
  their world through a process of active
  scientific inquiry across formal and informal
  settings.

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Timeframe

• Pilot 1 February 2008
• UoN Myself OU My Community
• Trial 1 November 2008
• UoN Myself OU My Community
• Trial 2 October 2009
• Switch themes
• UoN My Community OU Myself
• Trial 3 February May 2010
• Integrated system across both sites

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The PI System Overview

• Allow teachers to author lessons on scientific
  inquiry.
• From this authoring process a 'script' is
  generated.
• This allows the system to take the lesson design
  present students/ teachers with relevant
  resources to enable them to enact the lesson.
• Students have an ILT (Integrated Learning
  Toolkit) an ultra-mobile PC. For answering
  questions, predicting, collecting data from a
  sensor and reviewing the data collected.
• Review tools for students to present elements of
  the lessons, e.g. boxes questions for answers,
  graphs of live data from sensors or worksheets.
• Review tools for teachers incorporate the student
  review tools and have additional tools that help
  orchestrate and manage the lesson
• e.g. identifying students who are not
  participating or seem stuck or pushing additional
  tasks to students who have finished a task.

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Research Methodology

• Design-based research approach (Sandoval Bell,
  2004)
• technology and pedagogy are designed together
  through a cycle of systems development and
  learner trials in context, involving learners,
  teachers and other stakeholders as design
  informants
• Learners experiences are captured through
  interviews, participatory design workshops
  methods and classroom videos
• Teachers are involved at all phases of
  development by creating lessons plans, activities
  and views around pupils ability to engage

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Personal Inquiry framework

• Find my topic
• Decide my inquiry question or hypothesis
• Plan my methods equipment actions
• Collect my evidence
• Analyse and represent my evidence
• Respond to my question or hypothesis
• Share and discuss my inquiry
• Reflect on my progress

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Personal Inquiry framework
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Healthy Eating November 2008

• Theme myself
• with Hadden Park High School

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Brief description of context

• November 2008 9 lessons in 3 weeks
• 30 pupils, 14 years old
• science curriculum Inquiry around Healthy
  Eating
• What nutrients do I eat?
• Do I eat enough nutrients to be healthy?

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Objective of mobile

• Ultra-mobile PCs Asus running the PI toolkit
• Camera to keep a food diary

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Objective of the informal

• Technology taken home for the whole period
• Tasks at home
• Take photos of what they eat for a week
• Prepare presentations of what they did

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Objective of the formal

• Pupils to understand
• the inquiry process
• where they are
• The domain (nutrients role)

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Research Questions

• How does the PI toolkit scaffold and enable the
  PI learning approach?
• How does the PI experience challenge the teacher
  and the pupils?
• Do the children learn from the PI experience and
  do they change their attitudes towards science?

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Data Collected

• 70 sets of Questionnaires (pre-post)
• Log files from 28 students coming from their use
  of the PI toolkit in class and the home (e.g.
  summaries, graphs, presentations)
• Video capture of the 9 lessons with three cameras
  (2 groups and 1 overall),
• Interviews
• 11 interviews with Teacher, 7 with pupils
• during and post-intervention
• Researchers observation notes after each lesson

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Home-school link

• Aimed at continuity of learning experience
• Take photos of what they eat over a week
• Import data on Asus
• Generate RNI graphs
• Prepare presentations of inquiry
• Homework is an issue of the school
• Teacher sees it as possibilities for extension
  activities

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Taking technology _at_home

• Use of Ultra-mobile PCs
• Go online,
• facebook, bebo,
• games, msn,
• bbc on healthy eating,
• bbc sports
• Catch up with last lessons activities, finish
  what they start at school, read the summaries

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Research question re-visited
How does the PI experience challenge pupils?

• Being too personal?
• Seeing their own photos on the whiteboard
• Recording and sharing personal data
• Being aware of being recorded (in general or in
  PI?)

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Taking photos of what they eat

• Teenage attitudes of what they eat
• a bacon sandwich looks disgusting
• Yes, some foods dont look attractive.
• Sometimes it tastes better than it looks.
• When youre eating, yes, it does sound nice when
  youre eating, but then when you take a picture

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Seeing the photos on their whiteboard

• I dont know, but people in this school do your
  head in. If they dont like something theyre
  expecting you not to like it. And theyll just
  take the mick out of you if you say you like it.

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Doing Homework

• It took them several lessons to realise the need
  to do it
• If they didnt do it, they would let down
  themselves
• A parent was taking photos of their dinners
• theyd prefer to be given choices explicitly,
• check web sites on healthy eating,
• ask someone what they eat,
• take photos of their food.

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Thank you! any questions?

• Dr Stamatina Anastopoulou
• www.pi-project.ac.uk
• stamatina.anastopoulou_at_nottingham.ac.uk