Personal Learning Environments for

Inquiry-Based Learning

Alexander Mikroyannidis, Alexandra Okada, Peter Scott

Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University

1. What is Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL)?

2. What is weSPOT?

3. How will Personal & Social Inquiry be practiced in weSPOT?

Outline

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ddebold/1472415498

Meaningful contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to personal experiences.

Learners take the role of an explorer and scientist as they try to solve issues they came across and that made them wonder, thus tapping into their personal feelings of curiosity.

Learners learn to investigate, collaborate, be creative, use their personal characteristics and identity.

What is Inquiry Based Learning?

What is weSPOT?

The weSPOT project aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today’s curricula and teaching practices

The project focuses on inquiry-based learning with a theoretically sound and technology supported personal inquiry approach

In inquiry based-learning learners take the role of an explorer and scientist and are motivated by their personal curiosity, guided by self-reflection, and develop personal knowledge and collaborative sense-making and reasoning

In Short...

• Start: 1st October 2012• Duration: 36 months• Consortium: 9

partners from 9 EU countries

weSPOT is an EC-funded Research Project under the Grant Agreement no. 318499 of ICT FP7 Programme in Technology Enhanced Learning

Learners will be able to: – create mashups of personal and social

learning tools in order to perform scientific investigations

– share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks

– receive feedback from assistive inquiry technologies and their peers

Personal & Social Inquiry

• A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a facility for an individual to aggregate, manipulate and share digital artefacts of their ongoing learning experiences.

• The PLE follows a learner-centric approach, allowing the use of lightweight services and tools that belong to and are controlled by individual learners. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanspoldoja/4098840001

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petahopkins/2157928982

Personal Learning Environment

Widget (or Gadget)A widget is a micro-application performing a dedicated task. This task can be as simple as showing news headlines or weather forecasts, but also more complex like facilitating language learning or collaborative authoring.

Widget bundleA widget bundle is a set of widgets that complement each other and are used together for a common purpose.

Widget storeA widget store is a directory of widgets. Users can browse and download the widgets, as well as provide feedback on the widgets through ratings and comments.

What is a widget?

Learners aggregate and work collaborativelyon learning resources provided by the Open University (e.g. OpenLearn, iTunesU) and external sources (e.g. Wikipedia, SlideShare, YouTube)

Students interact with inquiry components (widgets), each of them tailored for a particular inquiry-related task, e.g. data collection, data analysis, hypothesis forming, reflection, etc.

A social learning environment is not a just a fun place to hang out with friends, but a place where learning takes place.

Learning does not take place by chance but because specific pedagogies and learning principles are integrated in the environment.

User-centric vs. Learner-centric

Students need to be constantly challenged and taken out of their comfort zones.

They need affirmation and encouragement that will give them the confidence to proceed with their inquiries and investigations beyond their existing knowledge.

Gamification approach: linking the inquiry activities and skills gained by learners with social media.

User-centric vs. Learner-centric

Thank you!

Working Environment with Social, Personal and Open Technologies for Inquiry Based Learning

http://wespot-project.eu

Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University

http://www.alexmikro.net