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

• Dr Stamatina Anastopoulou
• Learning Science Research Institute

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Introduction main objective

• 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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Subsidiary objectives

• Support teachers by enabling them to author and
  adapt scripts
• Support C21st Science curriculum
• Develop methods for co-design and evaluation of
  pedagogy technology
• Build capacity share, engage train

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Partnerships

• Open University, MK
• Oakgrove School
• University of Nottingham
• Hadden Park High School
• Nottingham City Museums Galleries
• (Georges Green Mill)

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Timeframe

• Pilot 1 February 2008
• UoN Myself OU My Community
• Trial 1 October 2008
• UoN Myself OU My Community
• Trial 2 October 2009
• Switch site locations
• 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. E.g. the January trials were five
  lessons and covered one aspect of this process in
  each lesson e.g. data collection and analysis.
• 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) a ultra-mobile PC. For example
  answering questions, predicting, collecting data
  from a sensor and reviewing the data collected.
• Review tools for students 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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Key research questions

• How can scripted inquiry learning support
  effective learning across transitions between
  formal and informal settings?
• How to enable teachers to author, orchestrate
  monitor successful learning activities?
• How do students and teachers adopt the
  technologies as learning tools?
• How does scripted inquiry assist change
  learning activities?
• How do scripted inquiry activities develop
  childrens learning?

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Heart rate Fitness February 2008

• Theme myself
• with Hadden Park High School

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Aims of February trials

• Pilot study
• Develop research methods evaluation instruments,
  consent forms, ethics
• Set up communication channels with school
• Provide hands-on experience to teacher
• Implement a constrained investigation (e.g.
  excluding home)
• Research question What opportunities are there
  for technological mediation?
• Using a combination of off-the-shelf and rapidly
  developed technology

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Scientific Inquiry method
Observe
Predict
Analyse

• Set up a research question

Conclude
Present
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February 2008 heart rate fitness

• 5 lessons in 2 weeksscience curriculum
• 30 pupils, 14 years old
• Equipment given 2 lessons in class gym
• Inquiry Question
• Is there a relationship between heart rate and
  fitness?

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Research Question re-visited

• Opportunities for technological mediation
• display live visualisations of student and
  teacher data on a shared screen to facilitate
  motivation and personal relevance,
• provide context-specific guidance on the
  sequence, reasons and aims of learning
  activities,
• explicitly support appropriation of data within
  inquiry and show the relation between specific
  activities and the general inquiry process.
• offer opportunities to micro-sites for reflection
  and learning in the field,

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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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Nov 2008 Inquiry process
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Overall lessons objective

• Pupils to understand where they are in the
  inquiry process?

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November 2008 Healthy Eating

• 9 lessons in 3 weeksscience curriculum
• 30 pupils, 14 years old
• Equipment taken home for the whole period
• Inquiry Questions
• What nutrients do I eat?
• Do I eat enough nutrients to be healthy?
• Tasks at home
• Take photos of what they eat in a week
• Prepare presentations of what they did

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Nov 2008 Healthy Eating

• 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 they change their attitudes towards
  science?

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Nov 2008 Design of learning activities

• Support multiple phases of inquiry
• Enable iteration of inquiry activities in the
  light of upcoming activities
• Multiple methods of data collection,
• e.g. diary and interview
• Delegate responsibility to students for
• collecting data
• choosing what to analyse
• Support the home / school link
• e.g. by allowing data collection outside the
  class

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Nov 2008 Technology

• Asus running the PI toolkit
• Camera to keep a food diary

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Nov 2008 Inquiry process
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Data collection

• To be able to reflect on data collected by their
  group on food observations
• To be able to consider the answers from the
  expert and ask any further appropriate questions

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My Analysis, My conclusions

• Compare their nutrients intake with the RNI, in a
  bar chart
• To make valid comments about the data collected
  personally and for the group
• To recognise a healthy and less healthy diet from
  nutritional information in bar chart
• To use a model for their own conclusions

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Nov 2008 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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First remarks ()

• Students were excited by the technology and tasks
  in the beginning
• They were able to carry out the tasks
• They helped each other out
• When they were in groups, they worked well
• Students were able to create presentations with
  an understanding of the various inquiry activities

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First remarks (-)

• Difficulties in classroom management
• Students did not find it easy to come up with the
  inquiry questions
• Students did not take enough photos of their food
  (not had a full days record)
• They didnt want to share their data with the
  class
• They were in diverse inquiry phases after lesson
  2. e.g. some students were still on data input
  when others were drawing their conclusions

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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

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Taking technology _at_home

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

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Taking technology _at_ home

• Camera
• Would like to keep the camera
• didnt want to take photos of their food,
• it wasnt used in the class anyway.

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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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Research Questions re-visited

• How does the PI toolkit scaffold and enable the
  PI learning approach?
• Breakthroughs
• Breakdowns
• Routines

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Critical Incidents Analysis

• explore the effects of introducing a combination
  of new learning activities and new technology,
• identify specific learning breakthroughs and
  breakdowns (Sharples, 1993).
• Breakthroughs are observable critical incidents
  which appear to be initiating productive new
  forms of learning or important conceptual change.
  
• Breakdowns are observable critical incidents
  where a learner is struggling with the
  technology, is asking for help, or appears to be
  labouring under a clear misunderstanding.

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Breakdowns

• Navigation
• Using the software (usability vs. attention?)
• Being able to see the IWB on a sunny afternoon
• Using the diary
• Categorisation of food unspoken
  misunderstandings
• Filling in the comment box of each graph

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Breakthroughs

• Seeing RNI graphs e.g. for crispscola
• Feeling the consequences of not having collected
  their own data
• Presenting their own investigation

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Routine issues

• Disruption due to technology
• Switching attention between teacher and Asus
• Cameras pointed at the teacher
• Pupils worked in different paces
• Long intervention
• Pupils felt the equipment dragged

movie
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Research questions re-visited
How does the PI experience challenge the teacher
and the pupils?

• Pupils challenges

• Teachers

• Misunderstanding the toolkits role in class
• Confidence towards phases of inquiry

• 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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Research Questions re-visited
Do the children learn from the PI experience and
do they change their attitudes towards science?

• Domain knowledge multiple choice test
• e.g. Why is calcium good for?
• Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA)
• e.g. I enjoy what we do in science class.
• Inquiry Skills cartoon Analyse a characters
  flawed personal inquiry