Personal Inquiry project

Trevor Collins

Knowledge Media Institute

The Open University, UK

www.pi-project.ac.uk

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Overview

• PI project

• Inquiry learning cycle

• Structuring an inquiry

• Collaboration

• Progression

• Authoring and customisation

• Summary

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PI project

• Through a process of participatory design we are developing a toolkit to support personal inquiry learning

• Iterative approach– Key stage 3 (11-14 year olds)

– Geography (OU) & Science (UoN) inquires

– Seven trials over the last two years

• Builds on Drupal content management framework

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Inquiry learning cycle

Find my topic

Decide my inquiry question or hypothesis

Planmy methods, equipment, actions

Collectmy data

Analyseand represent my data

Respondto my question or hypothesis

Shareand discuss my inquiry

Reflecton my progress

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Structuring an inquiry

• Activities– A constituent task (e.g. form a hypothesis)

• Phases– Logical groupings of activities (e.g. plan investigation)

• Stages– Temporal parts of the investigation in which a set of

activities are undertaken (e.g. week one)

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Structuring an inquiry

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Structuring an inquiry

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Structuring an inquiry

• Inquiry– Stages (temporal)

– Phases (logical groups)

– Activities (tasks)

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Actors and audiences

• Moving between individual, group and class levels

Class

Group

Individual

S ta g e 1 S ta g e 2

W rite m y hyp o the s is

D e c id e what to m e asureD e c id e o n o ur lo catio ns

C o lle c t d ata

S ta g e 3

V ie w m y d ata tab leS e le c t m y p ho to g rap hs

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Actors and audiences

• Add an activity– For which group (specific)

• Everyone in the class can write a hypothesis

– Audience (relative)• Each individual writes their

own hypothesis

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• Activity status– Add

– Edit

– View

– Unavailable

Progression

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Progression

• Intra-stage transitions– A newly added item can

be edited

• Inter-stage transitions – An editable item can be

viewed

Phase Activity Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Decide my hypothesis

Write my hypothesis

Decide what to measure

Plan my methods

Decide my locations

Collect my data

{Locations}

View my data table

Present my data

Select my photographs

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Progression

Phase Activity Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Decide my hypothesis

Write my hypothesis

Decide what to measure

Plan my methods

Decide my locations

Collect my data

{Locations}

View my data table

Present my data

Select my photographs

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Progression: Control flow and data flow

• Control flow– Intra and inter stage transitions (i.e. workflow rules)

• Data flow– Very difficult to represent data flow abstractly

– We use concrete instantiation of a generic inquiry cycle

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Data flow

Find

Decide my inquiry question or hypothesis

Planmy methods, equipment, actions

Collectmy data

Analyseand represent my data

Respondto my question or hypothesis

Share

Reflect

Data flow

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Information blocks

• Information blocks emphasise dependencies between activities

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Dynamic activities

• Choices in activities propagate to other activities

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Authoring and customisation

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Authoring and customisation

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Authoring and customisation

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Summary: Personal Inquiry project

• Structuring– Inquiry stages, phases and activities

• Collaboration– Moving between individual, group and class levels

• Progression – Intra-stage and inter-stage transitions

• Teacher support– Authoring and customisation