Abstract
This chapter focuses on model-based inquiry in computer-supported environments, especially through the use of the Go-Lab platform (www.golabz.eu). Go-Lab is an online learning platform that offers students the opportunity to engage in inquiry-based science learning, in a structured and supportive manner, by providing environments for learning (i.e., Inquiry Learning Spaces), where virtual or remote laboratories and software scaffolds (e.g., tools for generating hypotheses and designing experiments) that support inquiry learning processes have been integrated. The purpose of this chapter is to unravel how the Go-Lab platform, especially some of its virtual laboratories, can be used for model-based learning. In so doing, we discuss core requirements for model-based inquiry in expressing, testing, and revising models. Further, we present three examples of Go-Lab virtual laboratories, with modeling and simulation affordances, to explain how they could be used by educators as means for enacting model-based inquiry.
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Notes
- 1.
Broadly approached, terminology on modeling would separate among different modeling pedagogies (van Joolingen et al. 2005; Campbell et al. 2013), i.e., “expressive” modeling has been largely related to elicitation of students’ initial ideas, namely, students’ initial mental models, “experimental” modeling would necessitate empirical data to validate a model, “evaluative” modeling would involve screening among rival versions of a model, “exploratory” modeling would be operationalized by means of a ready-made model (i.e., a model which was not created by students themselves), and “cyclic” modeling would include model revision.
- 2.
Close-ended simulations do not offer students the option of expressing their mental models, because the model is already there. In this case, possible relations between variables would have to be assumed/discovered. It is an issue whether this variable-by-variable approach would allow the student to grasp a complete picture of the whole phenomenon under study, as if one would have expected based on a modeling procedure, during which the whole phenomenon would be modeled and remodeled. After all, the design rationale behind any modeling tool has been to first give students the opportunity to create a model and then simulate it. It could be that we might isolate a limited number of variables to study a phenomenon. However, nonlinear thinking and system dynamics with feedback mechanisms and delay cannot be easily addressed with matching variables in pairs of two, where we mostly presuppose linear relationships between two variables at a time. Here we come across epistemological issues linking model-based inquiry to systems thinking, where the latter cannot be facilitated without the former.
- 3.
With regard to the inquiry cycle, “exploratory” modeling (i.e., students working with ready-made models) might not always equate to the exploration trajectory in the inquiry cycle as defined by Pedaste et al. (2015). For instance, the exploration trajectory is distinguished from the experimentation trajectory in the inquiry cycle in that the first incorporates research questions, while the latter presupposes hypotheses. However, “exploratory modeling” might accommodate both questions and hypotheses.
- 4.
Learning products that are created by students themselves as they go through a learning activity sequence have been characterized as “emerging learning objects (ELOs)” in the frame of the Science Created by You (SCY) project (see de Jong et al. 2010, 2012). These can include concept maps, models, questions, hypotheses, experimental designs, tables or figures with simulation data, and any other artifact that is the product of student work and can be stored and recalled upon demand for educational purposes. Learning products provide a core alignment of computer-supported learning environments with the theoretical and operational framework of constructivism.
- 5.
- 6.
All software scaffolds available at the Go-Lab platform can be found at http://www.golabz.eu/apps. For a comprehensive review of guidance provided to students in computer-supported learning environments with virtual and remote laboratories, see Zacharia et al. (2015).
- 7.
The Go-Lab platform offers online an entire array of laboratories for supporting inquiry-based learning, including virtual laboratories and remotely operated educational laboratories (http://www.golabz.eu/labs). In this contribution, we have focused on virtual laboratories.
- 8.
Inquiry Learning Spaces available in the Go-Lab platform can be found at http://www.golabz.eu/spaces
- 9.
Educators can use the Go-Lab authoring tool to select virtual laboratories and software scaffolds/applications and embed them in phases and sub-phases of the inquiry cycle in order to create an Inquiry Learning Space (de Jong et al. 2014).
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Acknowledgments
This book chapter reports on work undertaken within the frame of the Go-Lab project (Project title: Global Online Science Labs for Inquiry Learning at School; Call identifier: FP7-ICT-2011-8; Project number: 317601) funded by the European Union. The present document does not represent the opinion of the European Union, and the European Union should not be held responsible for any use that might be made of its content.
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Hovardas, T., Pedaste, M., Zacharia, Z., de Jong, T. (2018). Model-Based Inquiry in Computer-Supported Learning Environments: The Case of Go-Lab. In: Auer, M., Azad, A., Edwards, A., de Jong, T. (eds) Cyber-Physical Laboratories in Engineering and Science Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76935-6_10
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