“Inquiry-Based Learning”

Inquiry-Based learning allows students to have a hands-on experience with what they are learning by becoming the experimenter.  This type of learning is hard to do with all subjects but applies well to science and mathematics since you can easily conduct experiments with a hands-on approach. According to Lazonder and Harmsen (2016, p. 681-718), inquiry-based learning has been one of the best ways for students to get a more effective and deeper understanding of the topic being handled. There are restrictions with inquiry-based learning because it is harder to use with younger children since they do not understand some key learning outcomes needed to understand tasks. These key learning outcomes needed are to develop a hypothesis to predict what will happen, the ability to do the experiment, the ability to provide evidence or a reason why this happened, and the ability to reflect and reason based on previous knowledge.  Additionally, many people like the Knowledge Quest Learning blog (2019) break inquiry-based learning into the 5 E’s; engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate, these 5 steps all allow the students to experience the hands-on steps while having a deeper understanding behind the answer.

This aligns with our chosen topic for our blueprint since we are asking students to try new study habits as well as reasons why their previous study habits were not beneficial prior to learn new strategies. When teaching new outcomes, we encourage the students to hypothesize how this study habit will affect them and use previous knowledge to apply why this study habit did or did not work.

This does have a place in our final interactive learning design since students need a deep understanding of study habits to understand how to use them. Additionally, study habits are something that needs to be practiced to understand if they work with your learning style, and the best way to do this is through Inquiry-based learning. Additionally, my group’s interactive learning design blueprint works with inquiry-based learning because you need to understand what the 5 E’s are to learn how to study differently and to affect your learning style.

Lazonder, A. W., & Harmsen, R. (2016). Meta-Analysis of Inquiry-Based Learning: Effects of Guidance. Review of Educational Research, 86(3), 681–718. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315627366

Northern, S. (2019, August,30) The 5E’s of Inquiry-Based Learning. Knowledge Quest. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/the-5-es-of-inquiry-based-learning/