F.: wespot: A personal and social approach to inquiry-based learning

weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a novel approach for personal and social inquiry-based learning in secondary and higher education. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mash-ups out of cloud-based tools and services in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. This paper presents the research framework of the weSPOT project, as well as the initial inquiry-based learning scenarios that will be piloted by the project in real-life educational settings.

2013

Abstract—Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. Keywords-social learning, scientific inquiry, personal learning environment, cloud learning environment I.

2014 International Conference on Web and Open Access to Learning (ICWOAL), 2014

Personal Learning Environments have recently emerged as a novel approach to learning, putting learners in the spotlight and providing them with the tools for building their own learning environments according to their specific learning needs and aspirations. This approach enables learners to take complete control over their learning, thus becoming self-regulated and independent. This paper introduces a European initiative for supporting and enhancing inquirybased learning via a personal and social toolkit. This approach aims at supporting students in developing their self-regulated learning skills by conducting scientific inquiries in collaboration with their peers.

2012

Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. Keywords-social learning, scientific inquiry, personal learning environment, cloud learning environment

2013

Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers.

Math, science and technology (MST) education in Europe is significantly based on experiments and problem solving. The innovative project weSPOT aims at enhancing MST education by emphasizing scientific inquiry, individualization of learning and the role of social interaction. To achieve this goal, students are supported by a set of software tools, helping them to plan, implement, comment and document their personal scientific experiments. The students are encouraged to share and discuss their experience and to learn how to conduct scientific research. They share their achievements in class as well as in their own social community (friends, family, scientists, etc.). This paper describes in details the scientific approach which is the base for the pilot experiments of the weSPOT methodology. It presents the first pilot of Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) conducted in the First Privite Mathematical School and analyses applicability of the used software products.

2017 4th Experiment@International Conference (exp.at'17)

To effectively and efficiently implement blended science and technology education, teachers should be able to find educational resources that suit their need, fit with their curricula, and that can be easily exploited in their classroom. The European Union has supported the FP7 Go-Lab Integrated Project (2012-2016) and then the H2020 Next-Lab Innovation Action (2017-2019) to develop and disseminate inquiry learning spaces as open educational resources integrating online labs. This paper presents the technical ecosystem supporting these initiatives and combining loosely-coupled cloud services and platforms. The golabz.eu sharing platform is a repository offering online labs, scaffolding apps, and inquiry learning spaces created by teachers for teachers. The graasp.eu authoring platform is a social media enabling collaborative creation, agile personalization and secure exploitation at school, as well as exchange of best practices between teachers.

The International Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning, 2014

The weSPOT project aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today's curricula and teaching practices The project focuses on inquiry-based learning with a theoretically sound and technology supported personal inquiry approach and it contains three main development aspects: (a) define a reference model for inquiry-based learning skills, (b) create a diagnostic instrument for measuring inquiry skills, and (c) implement a working environment that allows the easy linking of inquiry activities with school curricula and legacy systems. The current work outlines the pedagogical and diagnostic frameworks for scientific inquiry. The pedagogical framework is aimed at supporting informal, self-regulated learning settings as well as the embedding in a formal learning context. The scientific exploration process can take place independently, or in collaboration with others. The diagnostic framework focuses on the pedagogical diagnosis, which will be tailored to the ambitious aim of inferring students' inquiry and meta-cognitive skills as well as domain-specific knowledge from observational data tracked within the weSPOT environment. Pilot studies planned to be conducted in 16 test-beds across 6 EU countries will test the reference model and make use of the diagnostic instrument.

2014

Collaborative inquiry learning are made possible by the development of cloud based application such as Google Doc or Microsoft Office Web apps. With single sign on permission on an email account students can edit and work on task based or research paper collaboratively, while on presentation and data tabulation they can create a rich media content by adding video, hyperlink to a website, interviewed voice or iffen an animation. Students are allowed to exchange their idea, data or opinion that they have collected discuss and proposed it in a paper or presentation in their process of learning. While teacher need to design the theme, essential rule and rubric of assessment on the process. This study use an exploratory methods to explore and experiment more to the design methods of teaching and learning also with the usage of cloud-based application that can foster students collaborative inquiry learning. Cloud based application that used in this study is Google drive document and mindmeister adds on As the result of the study is teacher have a variation on teaching method that will foster students-based inquiry learning that integrated with language, Science, ICT and art Skills. While students have an engaging and integrated learning experience while studying how to collaborate with others and build up their knowledge through inquiry based learning.

2016

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 differen...