3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
Personal Inquiry:
Designing for Evidence-based Inquiry
Learning across Formal and Informal
Settings
Stamatina Anastopoulou
Learning Science Research Institute,
University of Nottingham,
[email protected]
M. Sharples, S. Ainsworth, C. Crook
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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 1114 to understand themselves and their world
through a process of active scientific inquiry
across formal and informal settings.”
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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.
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
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3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
Personal Inquiry framework
Reflect on my
progress
Find my topic
Share and
discuss my
inquiry
Decide my
inquiry question
or hypothesis
Respond to
my question
or hypothesis
Plan my
methods
equipment &
actions
Analyse and
represent my
evidence
Collect my
evidence
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
Healthy Eating: November 2008
Theme: myself
with Hadden Park High School
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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 enough nutrients to be healthy?
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
Objective of “mobile”
 Ultra-mobile PCs:
Asus running the PI
toolkit
 Camera to keep a
food diary
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
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3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
Objective of the “formal”
 Pupils to
understand
the inquiry
process
where they are
The domain
(nutrients’ role)
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3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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?
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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?)
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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…”
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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.”
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
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.
3rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London
Thank you!
any questions?
Dr Stamatina Anastopoulou
www.pi-project.ac.uk
[email protected]
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