Technology Applications that Promote Inquiry Learning

The world of our parents changed each evening as the evening news was broadcast or as the next edition of the newspaper was updated. Today’s world can barely keep up with the Twitterã, Facebookã, and exponential increase in social chatter. Learners of today need to learn how to grow, explore, and cope in this new world. When the only restriction upon how fast one can get a fact is how fast one can type into Google, skills such as rote memorization become obsolete. Inquiry-based learning strategies are used by educators to help the learner learn how to become a better learner, and in the case of science, how to become a scientist. Thus, inquiry-based learning answers the call of this new age. How is inquiry-based learning being used in games and online environments? Is the literature examining this strategy as it moves with us into the 21^st century?

First, inquiry-based learning should be defined and aligned to its historical foundations. Central tenants of inquiry-based learning are that learners that engage in inquiry following a path similar to that of scientists investigating a problem. The learner will use the steps of observe, hypothesize, experiment, evaluate to make decisions (De Jong, 2006). These skills go beyond just their use in science; they are relevant in our increasingly complex world. “Memorizing facts and information is not the most important skill in today's world. Facts change, and information is readily available -- what's needed is an understanding of how to get and make sense of the mass of data” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2004, para. 4). 

Because inquiry-based learning is similar to a science experiment, the learner behaves as a scientist while learning content. This is opposite to the more traditional view of a student as passive, receptive, and the follower of directions (Franklin, n.d.). Inquiry-based learning is the opposite of expository or ‘chalk and talk’ learning. “In traditional schools, students learn not to ask too many questions, instead to listen and repeat the expected answers” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2004, para. 3). Proponents argue that inquiry-based learning actually teaches the skills of problem solving that will, eventually, serve the student much longer and better than drill and memorize features of learning.   As stated by Van Joolingen et al, “this is the main claim of inquiry learning: engaging learners in scientific processes helps them build a personal knowledge base that is scientific, in the sense that they can use this knowledge to predict and explain what they observe in the natural world” (2007, p 1.).

Use of inquiry-based learning can be traced back into history and continues to the current day. The historical foundations of inquiry-based learning are as old as the quest for knowledge; some claim that inquiry is older than Socrates (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2004). Anytime a person asks a question they are engaging in an inquiry. Inquiry-based learning has become popular in the United States since a 1984 conference by the National Academy of Sciences proposed that students needed to learn how to think, not just what to know if our nation was to excel at math and science.   The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the national professional organization of science teachers advocating and analyzing teacher preparation programs as a Specialization of NCATE feels that inquiry-based learning is so important to incorporate that NSTA mentions it in their position statements, “that scientific inquiry is central to the learning of science and reflects how science is done” (NSTA, 2004, para. 7). In this way, inquiry-based learning is as central to the basic, pervading concepts of science as the cell, evolution, and the laws of motion. Inquiry-based learning has a strong foundation on the constructivist philosophy, a field that draws from science.

Constructivist philosophy is based on the rationalist philosophy “characterized by the belief that that reason is the primary source of knowledge and that reality is constructed rather than discovered” (Smith and Ragan, 2005 p. 19). The use of scaffolding or learning support that begins as encasing and is removed as learner progress. Inquiry-based learning requires scaffolding as a primary function because when posing a problem to students to solve, the instruction can have the learner veering off into the wrong direction or come to the wrong conclusion. 

Constructivist philosophy meets cognitive learning theory with the increased use of technology in the science classroom; literally the learner is thought of as an advanced computer. The popularity of inquiry-based learning in science education aligns approximately with the ascent of cognitive instructional strategies (Smith & Ragan, 2005) although uses of labs, case studies, deriving equations, and posing open-ended questions have always been tools in the science educator’s toolbox.   Van Joolingen and al. (2007) note, however, that inquiry-based learning requires scaffolding especially in computer-supported environments because students often arrive without the skills of knowing how to succeed in inquiry. Often when presented with a task, a learner does the task as directed and does not contemplate how the doing of the task has affected the learner’s own thought and decision-making processes as.   This causes a conundrum since inquiry-based learning by its nature cannot answer every question a learner has…it needs to show the way to the answers while letting the learner find and follow the path: “support needs to leave room for learner freedom” (Van Joolingen et al, 2007, p. 112).   Computer-assigned learning that uses inquiry, therefore, risks a Model I flaw—the learner may get caught in a cycle of early failure and give up (Argyris & Schon, 1992). There are ways, however, to escape this flaw with the use of educational games.

So how do virtual worlds take the mantel of inquiry-based learning and run with it. The nature of some virtual worlds endows the learning medium with the tools necessary for inquiry. Users can instantly create objects and models. Users can interact over large spaces. Users can explore concepts that are too expensive, dangerous or impossible to do in traditional science laboratories. Finally, there are advantages in the increase geographical spread of the possible learners and the affordances this gives to culturally based learning.

There have been few studies looking specifically at science education in virtual realities or virtual worlds that purport to engage in inquiry-based learning. Ketelhut et al (2010) researched the inquiry-based learning features of RiverWorldã with high school-age learners. The authors studied inquiry as a learning process but also inquiry via assessment. While there is some evidence that the learners achieved and showed evidence of inquiry-based learning, the authors changed features of their study during the research, weakening the research overall.

The study of virtual worlds is just beginning. Each question posed of education in a virtual world represents the first time that question is being researched. While there is lack of peer-reviewed published research available, there are many parallel avenues of online education that can be explored that would inform research in virtual worlds. These parallel avenues share the same foundational elements of simulations and experiential learning.

Inquiry-based learning in virtual worlds is still largely unexplored. The recent popularity of inquiry-based learning practices in science lends itself to a study of their use in virtual worlds, games, and simulations. Given that inquiry skills are so critical of the 21^st century student, is this a science question that is being left unanswered?