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

1. Personal Inquiry: Designing for Evidence-based Inquiry Learning across Formal and Informal Settings Stamatina AnastopoulouLearning Science Research Institute, University of Nottingham, stamatina.anastopoulou@nottingham.ac.uk M. Sharples, S. Ainsworth, C. Crook

2. 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.”

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

7. Personal Inquiry framework Share and discuss my inquiry Respond to my question or hypothesis Reflect on my progress Find my topic Decide my inquiry question or hypothesis Plan my methods equipment & actions Analyse and represent my evidence Collect my evidence

8. Healthy Eating: November 2008 Theme: myself with Hadden Park High School

9. 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 enoughnutrients to be healthy?

10. Objective of “mobile” • Ultra-mobile PCs: Asus running the PI toolkit • Camera to keep a food diary

11. 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

12. Objective of the “formal” • Pupils to understand • the inquiry process • where they are • The domain (nutrients’ role)

13. 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?

14. 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

15. 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

16. Taking technology @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

17. 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?)

18. Taking photos of what they eat: Teenage attitudes of what they eat: • “[a bacon sandwich] looks disgusting…” • “Yes, some foods don’t look attractive.” • “Sometimes it tastes better than it looks.” • “When you’re eating, yes, it does sound nice when you’re eating, but then when you take a picture…”

19. Seeing the photos on their whiteboard “I don’t know, but people in this school do your head in. If they don’t like something they’re expecting you not to like it. And they’ll just take the mick out of you if you say you like it.”

20. Doing Homework • It took them several lessons to realise the need to do it • “If they didn’t do it, they would let down themselves” • A parent was taking photos of their dinners • they’d prefer to be given choices explicitly, • check web sites on healthy eating, • ask someone what they eat, • take photos of their food.

21. Thank you! any questions? Dr Stamatina Anastopoulou www.pi-project.ac.uk stamatina.anastopoulou@nottingham.ac.uk