Inquiry learning strategies with big data

Inquiry learning strategies with big data

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  Inquiry Learning Using“Big Data” Strategies for student investigation and research. Thomas Meagher, PhD STEM Coordinator Owatonna Public Schools January 14th, 2015
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  What is Inquiry-Based Learning? Instructional approaches to learning based on scenarios or problems that are investigated from student generated questions and often assisted by a teacher or facilitator.  Students will identify and research issues and/or questions, usually in teams to develop their knowledge or solutions.  Effective small group inquiry should be rooted in equitable teams of three people.  Teaching through inquiry focuses on student learning through collecting data to answer measurable questions.  The era of “Big Data” has arrived, our goal is to help students figure out how to find, analyze and interpret the data that already available for
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  Review of differenttypes of inquiry research:  Confirmation inquiry: ◦ Team research support concepts studied in class, very structured.  Structured inquiry: ◦ Teams follow procedures to investigate specific teacher presented problems or questions.  Guided inquiry: ◦ Teachers provide guidelines that focus team questions and research into specific concepts or content areas.  Open inquiry: ◦ Students generate their own questions and teachers provide opportunities and materials for students to investigate
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  What is “BigData” and how can we use it?  Recent and historical data sets are available online and area searchable.  Data is collected on virtually everything such as experimental data, survey data, opinion data, demographic data, etc.  Meta-analysis, examining multiple sources of data and interpreting the patterns or relationships among the data sets.  Let’s find some data together and see
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  Some helpful onlinesites for data analysis.  Word/text analysis ◦ Wordle ◦ Wordcounter ◦ Tapor  Data analysis ◦ Plotly ◦ Chartgo (Create charts & graphs) ◦ Picktochart for Informatics (Creating informational charts, diagrams & graphs)
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  What does Inquirylearning look like with “Big Data”?
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  Walking students throughthe process.  Present information to be learned and demonstrate how this can be linked to other knowledge. Motivate students interest in the subject matter. Help students build a Growth Mindset.  Encourage concrete (proximate) questions: Who, What, Where, When, How. Refrain from WHY questions. These are difficult to support with data and usually outside the an appropriate time for class.  Students develop hypotheses based on their own knowledge  Guide students to develop research methods or experiments to can collect measureable data.  Take time to organize data results and collaborate on interpreting the results.  Publish their study, through papers, posters, presentations, webpages, etc. Allow students to be the experts on their research and teach the class.  Hold the other students responsible for learning from their
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  How does inquiryfit into different subject areas? Now we practice researching and analyzing “Big Data”  Art  Language arts  Math  Music  Phy Ed  Reading  Science  Social Studies  What have we missed?
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  How to shiftlessons to Inquiry? Previously, “canned” curriculum would have: ◦ “The purpose of this lab is…” or “The objective of this lesson is…” or “The goal…”  Change these to questions or ask students to change these to questions.  Look at the lessons or units coming up and explore how you can shift to be more open ended, student directed and collaborative.  Ask yourself how can I have students using higher order thinking and evaluating information instead of simply memorizing, word searching, matching or filling in the blank.  Provide experience first followed by language acquisition and end with
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  Where do Igo with inquiry in my classes?  Examine this week and begin small with a single lesson shifted to simple inquiry.  Planning next unit to include inquiry in several lessons or activities.  Plan one research or group project that students can investigate and present.  Provide experiences that can lead students to research new ideas and concepts.  Allow students to explore and generate questions that focus the upcoming lessons, within the guidelines you have set.  Allow your students to be active and focused on learning, take to pressure off yourself to be in “control”.