Tapping into your personal curiosity: Personal Learning Environments and Inquiry-Based Learning

Tapping into your personal curiosity:

Personal Learning Environments and Inquiry-Based Learning

Dr. Alexander MikroyannidisKnowledge Media Institute, The Open University

Part I1. What is Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL)?2. The weSPOT IBL model3. The weSPOT toolkit

Part II4. Hands-on session:

try the weSPOT toolkit5. Q&A

Agenda

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ddebold/1472415498

Meaningful contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to personal experiences.

Learners take the role of an explorer and scientist as they try to solve issues they came across and that made them wonder, thus tapping into their personal feelings of curiosity.

Learners learn to investigate, collaborate, be creative, use their personal characteristics and identity.

What is Inquiry Based Learning?

The weSPOT IBL model

The weSPOT inquiry-based learning model consists of six phases that mirror the phases that researchers need to go through in order to conduct their research.

Each phase consists of a number of activities.

The weSPOT IBL model is based on: • The steps required for good research as described in

scientific literature (Crawford & Stucki, 1990; Hunt & Colander, 2010).

• Existing inquiry models (see D2.1 State of the art analysis: http://wespot.net/en/public-deliverables).

Students/learners decide on a topic or area of interest and try to formulate the questions or hypotheses that they would like to pursue.

Problem / topic

The process of defining an unclear concept so as to make the concept clearly distinguishable or measurable and to understand it in terms of empirical observations.

Operationalisation

Learners select means of gathering data — a survey, an experiment, an observational study, use of existing sources, or a combination etc. The research conclusions will be only as good as the gathered data, so collecting should be done in a very rigorous manner and recording the data is essential.

Data collection

Inspecting, cleaning, transforming and modelling data with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making.

Data Analysis

Summarizing the steps one has followed and discussing the finding takes place at this stage. The discussion should relate the obtained conclusions to the existing body of research suggest where current assumptions may be modified because of new evidence and possibly identify unanswered questions for further study.

Interpretation

Research is not complete until it is written up and its results shared, not only with other scientists or fellow inquiry participants who may build upon it to further advance the science, but also with those who may benefit from it, who may use it, and who have a stake in it.

Communication

The weSPOT toolkit

A widget-based architecture enables the personalisation of the inquiry environment, allowing teachers and students to build their inquiries out of mash-ups of inquiry components.

Students can connect with their peers and form groups in order to build, share and perform inquiries collaboratively.

Personal & Social Inquiry

Inquiries are structured according to the weSPOT IBL model.

Students interact with inquiry components (widgets), each of them tailored for a particular inquiry-related task, e.g. data collection, data analysis, hypothesis forming, reflection, etc.

End of Part I

Questions?

Part IIHands-on session:

Try the weSPOT toolkit

Try the weSPOT toolkit

The weSPOT inquiry space:http://inquiry.wespot.net

The weSPOT Personal Inquiry Manager for Android devices:http://bit.ly/wespot-pim

Questionnaire:http://bit.ly/wespot-ple2014

Evaluate the weSPOT toolkit

Thank you!

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