User-driven Development of an Inquiry-Based Learning Platform: Formative Evaluations in weSPOT

This paper describes the formative evaluation activities that were designed and implemented during the development of the weSPOT inquiry based learning platform. With the ambition to provide a platform that supports a broad range of inquiry activities in accordance with end-users needs, an agile software development approach was followed as a process of co-design between practitioners, researchers and developers. The paper focuses on the design of end-user centric evaluation activities for fully exploiting the potential of agile development. A detailed overview of several case studies is presented to demonstrate how implementing a continuous evaluation cycle allowed to pinpoint and help resolve arising issues in a process of collaboration between technology development and pedagogy

weSPOT: A personal and social approach to inquiry-based learning

weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a novel approach for personal and social inquiry-based learning in secondary and higher education. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mash-ups out of cloud based tools and services in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. This paper presents the research framework of the weSPOT project, as well as the initial inquiry-based learning scenarios that will be piloted by the project in real-life educational settings

User-driven Development of an Inquiry-Based Learning Platform: Qualitative Formative Evaluations in weSPOT

This paper describes the formative evaluation activities that were designed and implemented during the development of the weSPOT1 inquiry based learning platform. With the ambition to provide a platform that supports a broad range of inquiry activities in accordance with end-users needs, an agile software development approach was followed as a process of co-design between practitioners, researchers and developers. The paper focuses on the design of end-user centric evaluation activities for fully exploiting the potential of agile development. A detailed overview of several case studies is presented to demonstrate how implementing a continuous evaluation cycle allowed to pinpoint and help resolve arising issues in a process of collaboration between technology development and pedagogy

Working Environment with Social and Personal Open Tools for Inquiry-based learning: Pedagogic and Diagnostic Frameworks

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 and it contains three main development aspects: (a) define a reference model for inquiry-based learning skills, (b) create a diagnostic instrument for measuring inquiry skills, and (c) implement a working environment that allows the easy linking of inquiry activities with school curricula and legacy systems. The current work outlines the pedagogical and diagnostic frameworks for scientific inquiry. The pedagogical framework is aimed at supporting informal, self-regulated learning settings as well as the embedding in a formal learning context. The scientific exploration process can take place independently, or in collaboration with others. The diagnostic framework focuses on the pedagogical diagnosis, which will be tailored to the ambitious aim of inferring students' inquiry and meta-cognitive skills as well as domain-specific knowledge from observational data tracked within the weSPOT environment. Pilot studies planned to be conducted in 16 test-beds across 6 EU countries will test the reference model and make use of the diagnostic instrument

Working Environment with Social and Personal Open Tools for Inquiry-based learning: Pedagogic and Diagnostic Frameworks

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 and it contains three main development aspects: (a) define a reference model for inquiry-based learning skills, (b) create a diagnostic instrument for measuring inquiry skills, and (c) implement a working environment that allows the easy linking of inquiry activities with school curricula and legacy systems. The current work outlines the pedagogical and diagnostic frameworks for scientific inquiry. The pedagogical framework is aimed at supporting informal, self-regulated learning settings as well as the embedding in a formal learning context. The scientific exploration process can take place independently, or in collaboration with others. The diagnostic framework focuses on the pedagogical diagnosis, which will be tailored to the ambitious aim of inferring students' inquiry and meta-cognitive skills as well as domain-specific knowledge from observational data tracked within the weSPOT environment. Pilot studies planned to be conducted in 16 test-beds across 6 EU countries will test the reference model and make use of the diagnostic instrument.weSPOT is a 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) project funded by the European Commission under grant agreement number: 318499 (http://wespot.net)