A “Laboratory of Knowledge-Making” for Personal Inquiry Learning

Abstract

Abstract-This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry learning. nQuire provides teacher support for authoring, orchestrating and monitoring inquiries as well as student support for carrying out, configuring and reviewing inquiries. nQuire allows inquiries to be scripted and configured in various ways, so that personally relevant, rather than off-the-shelf inquiries, can be created and used by teachers and students. nQuire incorporates an approach to specifying learning flow that provides flexible access to current inquiry activities without precluding access to other activities for review and orientation. Dependencies between activities are automatically handled, ensuring decisions made by the student or teacher are propagated through the inquiry. nQuire can be used to support inquiry activities across individual, group and class levels at different parts of the inquiry and offers a flexible, web-based approach that can incorporate different devices (smart phone, netbook, PC) and does not rely on constant connectivity.

Scaffolding in Mobile Science Enquiry-based Learning Using Ontologies

“…In this particular project, the data was collected, analysed, reflected on, and reported through mobile and sensor technologies. In another enquiry project, nQuire [29], a constraint-based toolkit was designed in order to support the continuation of enquiry-based learning between classroom and non-formal settings. Moreover, software running on mobile and desktop computers was used to investigate problems and guide the enquiry process by providing an interactive visual representation of scientific practice.…”