An Inquiry-based Mobile Learning Approach to Enhancing Social ...

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Such devices include PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), laptop computers, ... strategies or tools to facilitate social science learning. To cope with this problem, ...
Shih, J.-L., Chuang, C.-W., & Hwang, G.-J. (2010). An Inquiry-based Mobile Learning Approach to Enhancing Social Science Learning Effectiveness. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 50–62.

An Inquiry-based Mobile Learning Approach to Enhancing Social Science Learning Effectiveness Ju-Ling Shih1, Chien-Wen Chuang2 and Gwo-Jen Hwang3* 1

Department of Information and Learning Technology, National University of Tainan, Taiwan Graduate Institute of Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan 3 Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan [email protected] // [email protected] // [email protected] *Corresponding author 2

ABSTRACT This study presents a mobile exploration activity that guides elementary students to learn during a social science activity with digital support from mobile devices and wireless communications. The students are situated in both the real world and the virtual world to extend their learning experiences. The learning activities between the field and the digital system not only demonstrate the practices of mobile learning, which emphasizes learning that happens close to real life, but also provides digital learning content to facilitate students’ field studies. To enhance the learning performance of the students, an inquiry-based mobile learning approach is employed to assist the students in constructing their own knowledge by taking cognitive load into consideration. To evaluate the effectiveness of the innovative approach, 33 fifth grade students were arranged to carry out investigations in the Peace Temple of southern Tainan with the inquiry-based mobile learning system. Through pre- and postclass questionnaires as well as observations and focus group interviews, descriptive quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed. The results show significant positive results in terms of the students’ learning.

Keywords Mobile learning, inquiry-based learning, historic monument investigations, cognitive load

Introduction Mobile learning entails the kind of learning in which learners use mobile devices with digital content inside, to learn in “anytime, anywhere” situations. Such devices include PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), laptop computers, cellular phones with wireless communication capabilities, as well as customized hardware (Liu & Hwang, 2010; Shih, Chu, Hwang, & Kinshuk, in press). To avoid students aimlessly wandering around, instructors need to carefully arrange the learning environment and design an interactive learning model, along with meaningful learning content provided in time. In the past decade, mobile learning has been used in a variety of educational fields in both informal and formal settings, such as bird-watching (e.g. Chen, Kao, & Sheu, 2003), chemistry experiments (e.g. Hwang et al., 2009), math (e.g. Zurita & Nussbaum, 2004), language learning (e.g. Cui & Bull, 2005), environmental investigation (e.g. Rogers et al., 2005; Lai et al., 2007; Chu, Hwang, Tsai, & Tseng, 2010), and butterfly ecology learning (e.g. Chu et al., 2008; Hwang, Kuo, Yin, & Chuang, 2010; Hwang, Shih, & Chu, in press). Most of the existing research has been carried out for science, language, or technique-oriented content that trains students to master certain structural or systematic knowledge or skills, while the use of mobile learning technology for social science learning is seldom reported. Moreover, researchers have indicated that, although mobile learning seems to be innovative and interesting to the students, their learning performance could be disappointing without proper learning strategies or tools (Chu et al., 2010; Hwang, Chu, Shih, Huang, & Tsai, 2010). Unfortunately, so far few scholars have applied mobile learning practices in the social science subjects, not to mention proposing effective strategies or tools to facilitate social science learning. To cope with this problem, this research aims to develop a mobile learning system for supporting exploration activities in authentic learning environments. Moreover, to evaluate the effectiveness of this innovative approach, a mobile learning activity for a social science course is conducted by guiding elementary students in southern Taiwan to learn in a local temple with PDAs. The project is targeted, as social science, to include geographical, historical, and cultural issues since learning about the temple in the students’ hometown requires overall content learning about these aspects. The students are situated in a learning scenario that combines both the real world (a local temple) and the virtual world (the PDA learning system with access to digital materials) to extend their learning experience. A ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at [email protected].

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series of educational activities between the field and the digital system are designed to demonstrate the practices of mobile learning, which emphasizes learning that happens close to real life. To achieve this objective, an inquirybased approach is proposed for developing the mobile learning system to facilitate students' field studies; in the meantime, the cognitive loads of the students were taken into account when designing the user interface. Furthermore, both qualitative and quantitative analysis methods were used to evaluate the learning performance of the students.

Literature Review Inquiry-based learning Inquiry-based learning is a concept which encourages teachers to allow learners to get in touch with authentic situations, and to explore and solve problems that are analogs to real life (Feletti, 1993; Li & Lim, 2008). By means of exploration, investigation, and observation, students become involved in more rigorous social interactions as well as higher level thinking. In inquiries, students not only develop a deeper understanding of the subject, but also ‘learn how to learn’ (Price, 2001). Lim (2004) stated that online inquiry learning ensures students’ positive participation, on-task behavior, and rich collaboration, as well as empowering students’ ownership and self-directed learning by increasing their involvement and responsibility for their own learning. Creedy et al. (1992) affirmed that whereas traditional approaches to education focus on the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, inquiry-based learning is intended to encourage students to be active learners rather than passive recipients of knowledge. Colburn (2000) defined inquiry-based instruction as the creation of a classroom where students are engaged in essentially open-ended, student-centered, hands-on activities. Moreover, various approaches, such as structured inquiry, guided inquiry, open inquiry and learning cycles can be used in an inquiry-based learning activity to assist the students in discovering relationships between variables, or otherwise generalize from data collected. After the teacher provides the concept, the students take ownership of the concept by applying it in a different context. The National Science Education Standards noted that scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work. Therefore, Edelson, Gordin, and Pea (1999) stated that inquiry experiences can provide valuable opportunities for students to improve their understanding of both science content and scientific practices. In the recent decade, inquiry-based learning has largely been used in nursing (e.g. Akinsanya, & Williams, 2004; Finn, Fensom, Chesser-Smyth, 2010; Horne, Woodhead, Morgan, Smithies, Megson, & Lyte, 2007; Kirwan & Adams, 2009; Rush & Barker, 2006) with or without the combined use of mobile devices to enhance students’ learning in both theory and practice. This research aims to extend the experience to social science learning which requires systematic investigation of real-world historical relics. According to Collingwood (1994), history is a kind of science which involves inquiry into the past. Inquiry-based learning opens a new way for social science learning. Educators believe that students should "systematically employ processes of critical historical inquiry to reconstruct and reinterpret the past, such as using a variety of sources and checking their credibility, validating and weighing evidence for claims, and searching for causality" (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994). However, unguided online historical inquiry does not guarantee meaningful learning (Molebash, 2004). In the research of Manlove, Lazonder, and de Jong (2009), it was found that cognitive regulation involves the recursive processes of planning, monitoring, and evaluation during learning. A support tool incorporating goal-lists, hints, prompts, cues, and templates is needed to support the cognitive regulation skills of students during a fluid dynamic task. Meanwhile, in Singapore, Li and Lim (2008) examined the different dimensions of scaffolding for online historical inquiry. The fixed scaffolds include written prompts and argumentation templates, while the adaptive scaffolds include questioning, modeling and peer interaction. Similarly, in Finland, Lakkala, Lallimo, and Hakkarainen (2005) applied inquiry-learning units in 12 primary and secondary level classrooms for various subject domains. The guiding principles behind the designs were the objectives of progressive inquiry, such as facilitation of question- and explanation-driven learning, and the use of collaborative technology to support the sharing of knowledge. They created a Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) and found it a valuable way to foster collaboration in classroom work. These are valuable learning activity design principles for this research to adopt, in 51

that using question-and-answer style activities with constructive feedback as well as collaborative group assignments might help the students to enhance their learning.

Mobile Learning Due to the advancement of technology, some educators have quickly adopted the prevalent wireless handheld devices to build learning environments for students to not only extend their learning experience to outside the classroom, but also to enhance their thinking abilities (Hwang, Wu, Tseng, & Huang, in press). Wu and Lai (2009) used PDAs to support a clinical nursing practicum course in which students can record information, organize ideas, assess patients, and interact, as well as collaborate with peers during an on-site clinical practicum. They proved that handheld devices can provide students with scaffolds to enhance learning and at the same time facilitate peer cooperation and interaction with the instructor. Other researchers have placed emphasis on the design of mobile and ubiquitous systems to support student learning. For example, Peng, Chuang, Hwang, Chu, Wu, and Huang (2009) proposed a Ubiquitous Performance-Support System (UPSS) that facilitates instructional decision making and provides learning assistance. Students’ motivation, interactivity, and learning effectiveness were found to be positive in their research. Other than facilitating individual learning from the cognitive perspective, some researchers have focused their attention on fostering collaborative learning environments. Huang, Jeng, and Huang (2009) developed a mobile blogging system to create virtual classrooms for students to publish their comments in authentic contexts anytime and anywhere. From these previous experiences we see that adopting mobile devices in various educational fields requires different instructional strategies, and the learning effectiveness can also cover a wide range including cognitive and social interaction perspectives. In this research, we chose to place the research focus on applying inquiry-based learning strategies to facilitate students’ field learning, especially in the context of social science subjects. A mobile learning model that supports field learning with learning guidance and supplementary material via the PDA is developed. Furthermore, we investigated the learning effectiveness and the cognitive load of the students who employed the innovative approach to learn during field observation activities, which are the main concerns of teachers and researchers in conducting technology-enhanced learning activities.

Cognitive Load Researchers have indicated that the background of the learners and the environmental contexts are the main sources of cognitive load (Paas & Van Merriënboer, 1994). Sweller, van Merriënboer and Paas (1998, p. 251) further indicated that "Cognitive load theory has been designed to provide guidelines intended to assist in the presentation of information in a manner that encourages learner activities that optimize intellectual performance." They suggested that instructional designs should facilitate learners to establish automatic formation of schema; moreover, during the learning process, there are two types of cognitive load to be noted:  Intrinsic cognitive load, which comes from the nature of the learning materials, the learners’ cognitive levels, and their cross-effects. It can be decreased by obtaining schema and automation, and by matching the teaching materials to the learners’ abilities.  Extraneous cognitive load, which can be decreased by the appropriate organization and presentation of information. Thus, in this study, we attempted to design the mobile learning system and the presentation of the information on the PDA by taking into account the factors that might affect the cognitive load of the students. Consequently, the following instructional design principles for minimizing cognitive load proposed by Sweller et al. (1998) are adopted:  Goal-free effect: Students should have free thinking space instead of being bounded by teachers’ goals so that they can more freely express their learning process.  Worked example effect (Cooper & Sweller, 1987; Sweller & Cooper, 1985): Teachers can provide examples in the problem-solving process to establish schema on students in order to decrease their cognitive load.  Completion problem effect (Paas, 1992): Provide students with half-completed worked examples to enhance their in-depth reading. 52

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Split-attention effect (Chandler & Sweller, 1992): When students are facing multiple information sources, the appropriate integration and presentation of the information can help them process the information more easily. Modality effect (Moreno & Mayer, 1999; Mousavi, Low, & Sweller, 1995): Baddeley (1976) stated that the working memory system includes the central executive system, and the articulatory system and visuo-spatial sketchpad system to support the function. Students’ cognitive load can be decreased by enhancing the distribution of information to use different working memory systems. Redundancy effect: Avoid sending the same information repeatedly using more than two working memory systems. The repeated information will increase students’ cognitive load because learners have to make redundant associations between information from two sources. Variability effect: Teachers can use different teaching methods and presentations of information so that students can be more involved in those learning tasks and their learning transfers can be more obvious.

The inquiry-based mobile learning model is developed based on these principles. For example, in the learning activities, appropriate tasks, a sequence of hints and clues in question-and-answer style, and interactive dynamics are designed to minimize the students’ cognitive load. In addition, the PDA learning system has been designed with the minimum number interface icons and messages, few hyperlinks, and a step-by-step Q&A procedure to simplify the learning process. These considerations mainly aim to avoid increasing the students’ extraneous cognitive load (DeStefano & LeFevre, 2007). Students’ cognitive load is usually measured in terms of the task-oriented dimension and the learner-oriented dimension. The former is to evaluate the “mental load” that is generated when the students face tasks. It includes the intrinsic characteristics of the tasks such as their complexity and difficulties, and extraneous characteristics such as learning material designs and presentation methods. The latter is called “mental effort”, and represents the energy and resources which the students devote to completing the tasks (Sweller et al., 1998). In most previous studies, subjective measures with seven or nine point rating scales were widely used to assess the cognitive load; this assumes that students have the ability to think retrospectively and reflect on their cognitive changes in the learning process, while at the same time quantifying their feelings using the rating scale. It has been recognized as being a convenient and efficient way of measuring students’ cognitive load (Paas, Tuovinen, Tabbers, & Van Gerven, 2003). Thus, this study applies the subjective measure to evaluate students’ cognitive load.

Research Methods Instructional Design This study facilitated the investigation of a historic site using handheld devices, i.e. PDAs. The objective of the teaching was to support students’ cognitive learning, and increase their inquiry learning ability. We first designed learning content and activities related to the historic site, and then designed an application model for the mobile devices according to the learning themes, based on which a supportive learning system for the students’ field investigation was developed. Three learning stages were designed to guide the students through the inquiry process. Before the first stage activity, there was a PDA orientation. The teacher used an 80-minute class session to provide the course orientation to the students by bringing them to the library to find materials related to local culture. Then, the teacher introduced the historic background of the temple, local cultures and religions, and other related information so that the students could be aware of the basic concepts related to the trip. This warm-up activity was designed to provide the students with basic knowledge, and stimulate their learning motivation. In the first learning stage (Figures 1 and 2), the students were led out on the fieldtrip to the Peace Temple. It was a two-hour class session. They were randomly divided into groups, to which different themes were assigned by the digital system, such as “Gods”, “the religious world”, or “culture”. The students then used the mobile devices to explore the temple in person. They visited spots of interest guided by the pre-designed hints for each learning theme in the PDA. They could gather more information with the PDA by finding out answers to the hints and taking notes when there were open-ended questions. For example, some hints were given to guide them to conduct detailed observations of the architecture and placement of the Gods, and they interviewed the temple keepers and people living in the neighborhood regarding their thoughts about and impressions of the temple. In addition, through the 53

wireless connection, they could even access the Internet and search for more information about what was not taught in class.

Figure 1. Learning Stage 1- Field Observation for Task 1

Figure 2. Learning Stage 1- Field Observation for Task 2

In the second learning stage, the students participated in an 80-minute in-class session for the production stage of the activity. They were asked to synthesize and categorize their data collected in the field, and then to construct reports to share with their classmates. The discussions and feedback stimulated higher levels of thinking. Assessments of learning were conducted from various perspectives, including by the teacher, their peers, and themselves. Hence, multiple assessments were performed. Learning effectiveness was assessed based on the students’ perceptions and their group discussions, collaboration and communication behaviors. Learning achievements were evaluated based on their oral and artifact reports, the feedback they gave to others, and their academic examination scores in the social science course.

Figure 3. Learning Stage 2- Classroom Discussion for Task 1

Figure 4. Learning Stage 2- Classroom Discussion for Task 2

In the third learning stage, the students were asked to give a learning result presentation (Figures 5 and 6) which consisted of two tasks. The learning tasks were designed to identify whether inquiry-based mobile learning can expand the students’ breadth and depth of knowledge. In the first task, they collaborated to tell a historical story relevant to the temple. They were required to creatively use their field collections to make up a story. The purpose was to require the students to demonstrate the results of their field inquiry. In the second task, the students were asked to design a new temple using paper crafts. They had to describe the special features of the temples to their peers. The purpose was to encourage them to observe the temple architecture, decorations, and displays. Most of the students were very enthusiastic about the task, and felt a sense of achievement when they were able to illustrate what they had dreamed up during the project.

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Figure 5. Learning Stage 3 Group Presentation for Task 1

Figure 6. Learning Stage 3 Group Presentation for Task 2

System Design The nature of social science is very different from that of science. Science, in general, consists of clear-cut facts and unambiguous conceptual relationships, where all items are mostly in a linear, structural, and systematic hierarchy; on the contrary, social science consists of items that have different attributes or which belong to different conceptual categories. The concepts should be in dynamic flux rather than in a static and fixed form.

Figure 7. PDA interface for Inquiry For this reason, inquiry-based learning is appropriate for social science learning since the knowledge form is dynamic and can be expanded according to students’ exploration. Inquiries are designed to enhance students’ contact with instructional items that are related to the people, things, times, places, and objects around them. Students are given two tasks, four themes for each task, a few hints for each theme, and selected choices for every hint. They can use those hints to collect the necessary information in order to complete the tasks. The hints are organized under the themes, and are prompted consecutively and progressively. With each hint, the students can look up more information from either the database or the Internet. There are two kinds of hints: closed hints were questions with suggested choices, and open hints were questions that led the students to write down their observation notes. On the PDA, the interface design was kept simple for the small screens. At the top of the screen, there is a dynamic menu of the themes. One hint is displayed at a time with the related choices (Figure 7). 55

In the field, students can also conduct digital inquiries online. Whenever they feel the need, they can use the “online search” function to use the Google search engine (Figure 8). The students can retrieve their observation notes on the PDA (Figure 9) with their own account number and password. Notes are documented according to hint order. The students can then prepare for the task of reporting by comparing their notes with those of their peers.

Figure 8. PDA interface for digital inquiry with Google

Figure 9. PDA interface for observation notes

Research Process This research is designed as shown in Figure 10. There were thirty-two fifth grade elementary school students who participated in this research. At the beginning of the learning process, the teacher provided orientation in the use of the PDAs. Then, after the students filled out the pre-class questionnaire, which is for the researchers to understand their initial understanding of the course materials, the students went through the three learning stages. In order to further understand the students’ learning, both internally and behaviorally, we made close observations of the students’ learning process. After completing the learning tasks, the students returned to the classroom and filled out the learning sheets with regards to their thoughts about the learning process and outcomes. At the same time, a post-class questionnaire and cognitive load assessment were distributed. After the researchers obtained the preliminary results of the 56

questionnaires, a follow up focus group interview was conducted to obtain further explanation of some parts of their thinking that were unclear in the questionnaire responses.

Figure 10. The Research Process Diagram The pre- and post-class questionnaire include three parts, namely the learning content, peer interaction, and learning satisfaction, all using a six-point Likert scale. In addition, the cognitive load questionnaire developed by OuYang, Yin, and Wang (2010) was adopted. It consists of seven items using a 9-point Likert scale of which a higher rating implies a higher cognitive load. The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.857, which shows high reliability.

Research Results Learning Achievement From the students’ test scores before and after the inquiry-based mobile learning activity of the social science course, it was found that they made significant improvement in learning achievement. The average score for their pre-class understanding of the course materials was 85.56, while the average score of their post-class understanding increased to 95 (as shown in Table 1). That is, the inquiry-based learning model proposed in this research had significant positive effects on the students’ learning achievement. Table 1. Paired-t test for pre-test and post-test learning achievement Mean N SD Learning achievement (pre-test) 85.56 32 8.84 Learning achievement (post-test) 95.00 32 3.81 *** p