Inquiry

A professional development circle of the SDSU College of Education How do we know what we know in Educational Technology? What is inquiry? Studious examination of facts or principles; research Investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws Three perspectives on inquiry Basic research: scientific investigation to develop or enhance theory Applied research: testing theory to assess its "usefulness" in solving (instructional/educational) problems Evaluation research How can we help our students engage in learning that's inquiry-based? Practitioner angle Examples of technology-infused tools that ED791 students have built and implemented this Spring: Lori Killpatrick (CIS Department/Cuyamaca College) Erica Mohr (Jossey-Bass Publishers) Jimm Johnson (Jack in the Box) Examples of data gathering in which students have engaged as graduate assistants: ACT Now! (class observations) Patterns (reflections) Tools with which you might want to be familiar: Sociology Workbench (Educational Center on Computational Science and Engineering) SurveyShare.com (free ... for now; part of CourseShare.com [founded by Curtis J. Bonk of Indiana University]) Survey School Free Online Surveys.com SurveyTracker my3Q (free ... but with which I'm not overly familiar) WWW Survey Assistant (launched by William C. Schmidt of University of Buffalo/SUNY) AppForce.net (subscription fee) Zoomerang (subscription fee) Response-o-Matic SurveySuite Perseus (licensing fee) SurveyMonkey WWW Survey Assistant Quia (for introducing students to data via quizzes, games, crossword puzzles, and other creative venues) Formsite FileMaker Pro Web tutorial [.pdf] (1-hour) for building a database and creating a set of Web pages with which to gather data. Educators are increasingly interested in PDAs ... both as tools for learning and as devices for capturing data. Download a handout on the topic that accompanied Marcie's session at the 2001 American Evaluation Association conference. Have you thought about ways to conduct inquiry-based action research? The Ohio Literacy Resource Center offers structured guidance for planning action research projects Action Research International (a publication of Australia's Southern Cross University) is one of several peer-reviewed journals seeking rigorously conducted action research projects Goshen College (a small liberal arts college) provides a comprehensive set of web links focused on participatory action research Web-based experiments to promote student learning Students learn research-validated principles by participating in replications of experiments or original studies. For example, in Bob Hoffman's Multimedia Development courses, students are interested in text design. They want to know which type fonts are most readable. In addition to reading and viewing examples, students access a Web site where they can participate in several short type design experiments, then immediately view their own and others' results. Benefits of Experiments: Students actively participate and discover knowledge Students immediately view congregated data in the context of their own responses Experiments model asking and answering questions using data Instructors can use data to further their own professional development. Studies indicate that the data from Web-based experiments match up almost perfectly with that from laboratory experiments. The example above is relatively concrete, but more abstract issues can be the topics of experiments as well. For examples moving in this direction, see the following URLs: http://edtechfm.sdsu.edu/bhoffman/designprin/principles00.htm http://edweb.sdsu.edu/canal/lockthru00.htm Technology to implement: Web survey instruments (listed on this site) Custom Web-database interactions (examples listed here use FileMaker Pro Web databases with Web pages or additional multimedia like Flash and Director Shockwave movies embedded. See this 1-hour basic Web/FileMaker Pro tutorial [.pdf]) Links and literature on Web-based research: Azar, B. (2000). A Web of research [Electronic version]. Monitor on Psychology, 31(4), . Retrieved February 7, 2002, from http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr00/research.html Birnbaum, M.H. (Ed.). (2000). Psychological experiments on the Internet. San Diego: Academic Press. Birnbaum, M.H. (2000). Introduction to behavioral research on the Internet. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. PsychExperiments: http://psychexps.olemiss.edu/ Psychological Research on the Net: http://psych.hanover.edu/APS/exponnet.html Social Psychology Network: http://www.socialpsychology.org/expts.htm Our thanks to Kris Rodenberg for providing us with interesting articles to spur thinking on inquiry-based learning: Using the Internet to Promote Inquiry-Based Learning The Disney Learning Partnership (Inquiry-Based Learning) Questioning the Author: An Approach for Enhancing Student Engagement with Text (Beck, McKeown, Hamilton, & Kucan) Articles available thru Wilson Web, EBSCO, or other SDSU/Love Library databases Bevevino, M. M., Dengel, J., & Adams, K. (1999, May-June). Constructivist theory in the classroom: Internalizing concepts through inquiry learning. The Clearing House, 72(5), 275-278. Caroll, S., & Yarger-Kane, G. (2000, Summer). Designing projects to promote student teacher inquiry: An evolutionary approach. Action in Teacher Education, 22(2), 90-99. Drayton, B., & Falk, J. (2001). Tell-tale signs of the inquiry-oriented classroom. NASSP Bulletin, 85(623), 24-34. Magnussen, L., Ishida, D., & Itano, J. (2000). The impact of the use of inquiry-based learning as a teaching methodology on the development of critical thinking. Journal of Nursing Education, 39(8), 360-364. The faculty development circle on inquiry-based learning Faculty interested in Inquiry Learning are invited to join us for informal discussion, consultation, and sharing stuff. Contact Bob Hoffman (Bob.Hoffman@sdsu.edu) or Marcie Bober (bober@mail.sdsu.edu) for further info meeting times.