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|title=weSPOT: A Cloud-based Approach for Personal and Social Inquiry
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-945/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-945
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ltec/MikroyannidisOS12
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==weSPOT: A Cloud-based Approach for Personal and Social Inquiry==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-945/paper2.pdf
1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
weSPOT: A cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry
Alexander Mikroyannidis1, Alexandra Okada1, Peter Scott1, Ellen Rusman2, Marcus Specht2, Krassen
Stefanov3, Aristos Protopsaltis4, Paul Held4, Sonia Hetzner4
1
Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
{A.Mikroyannidis, A.L.P.Okada, Peter.Scott}@open.ac.uk
2
Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies (CELSTEC), Open Universiteit
Valkenburgerweg 177, 6401 DL, Heerlen, The Netherlands
{Ellen.Rusman, Marcus.Specht}@ou.nl
3
Faculty of Mathematica and Informatics, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
5, James Bouchier str., Sofia, Bulgaria
krassen@fmi.uni-sofia.bg
4
Innovation in Learning Institute (ILI), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
{Aristidis.Protopsaltis, Paul.Held, Sonia.Hetzner}@fim.uni-erlangen.de
Abstract—Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of personal experiences. It leads to structured knowledge about
schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new a domain and to more skills and competences about how to
European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for carry out efficient and communicable research. Thus,
personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students learners learn to investigate, collaborate, be creative, use
to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to
their personal characteristics and identity to have influence
perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to
share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and in different environments and at different levels (e.g. me,
receive feedback from the learning environment and their neighbourhood, society, world).
peers. Learners can go through IBL workflow processes at
various levels of autonomy and complexity, consequently
Keywords-social learning, scientific inquiry, personal with various degrees of support [3]. At the highest level,
learning environment, cloud learning environment called ‘Open Inquiry’ they are only guided by self-
reflection, reason and they make sense of phenomena
I. INTRODUCTION individually or collaboratively, organize and orchestrate
Seely-Brown and Adler [1] describe learning as “based their (shared) activities and construct and disseminate
on the premise that our understanding of content is socially knowledge. At the lowest level, they are completely guided
constructed through conversations about that content and by the teacher when defining a problem, choosing a suitable
through grounded interactions, especially with others, procedure (method) and finding a solution.
around problems or actions”. In addition, learning is In addition, students are not sufficiently supported by
facilitated and triggered by one’s individual interaction with technology for conducting their inquiries and investigations
objects in an (real) environment, constructing meaning and in their everyday environment and in a social and
testing ‘hypothesized’ constructs while facing and (re)acting collaborative way. weSPOT will employ a learner-centric
upon unexpected phenomena or problems [2]. approach in secondary and higher education that will enable
Nonetheless, students in secondary schools and students to:
universities assume mostly a passive role within the 1. Personalize their inquiry-based learning
classroom, whilst the mentoring role is often exclusively environment.
held by the teacher. Students are seldom motivated to take 2. Build, share and enact inquiry workflows
initiatives within their learning and extend it outside school individually and/or collaboratively with their peers.
settings, motivated by their curiosity. In an Inquiry-Based Thus, weSPOT aims to lower the threshold for linking
Learning (IBL) approach learners take the role of an everyday life with science teaching in schools by
explorer and scientist as they try to solve issues they came technology.
across and that made them wonder, thus tapping into their From the European teachers’ perspective, the project will
personal feelings of curiosity. It supports the meaningful enable teachers as well as students to adopt methodologies
contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to for inquiry based science learning based on experiments
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
conducted outside schools in a real environment. Such rethinking and reasoning through their graphical
experiments could be backed-up with computer simulations representations. As visual language, they support users to
and 3D images and video, which will enable students to go make their argumentation clear for generating a coherent
deep to the science subjects. This in turn will enable new document outline.
models of learning and teaching to emerge, bringing When learners have acquired a certain level of inquiry
students close to the research, and creating new bridges to competence, they are awarded badges, which make their
business usage of science results. performance visual for others and which may be used in
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. We their personal profiles within social networks.
will first explain how we plan to support personal and social
inquiry based learning processes. Than we elaborate on the III. INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY
role of technology and its merit to support these processes. Inquiry-based learning can occur with or without
We conclude with future steps that need to be taken in order technology. But technology can play a special role in
to support IBL. supporting inquiry-based learning and in transforming the
learning process. To better understand the context in which
II. PERSONAL AND SOCIAL INQUIRY IN WESPOT technology can support inquiry-based learning, two
weSPOT will develop a reference model for inquiry skills important aspects should be considered: technology can be
as well as a diagnostic instrument to measure the individual viewed as the subject or tool for instruction, and can
performance on inquiry skills. The reference model and transform and enhance traditional practice. This is how
diagnostic instrument are based on the five inquiry skills technology is seen within the context of the weSPOT
areas described by the US National Research Council [4]: project.
• engaging by scientifically oriented questions To answer the question however, "Will technology has
• giving priority to evidence in responding to significant effect on learning?" one needs to determine the
questions models of teaching and learning that underlie the instruction
• formulating explanations from evidence in the classroom. Pedagogy is the key element in applying
• connecting explanations to scientific knowledge the use of technology effectively. Looking at the interaction
• communicating and justifying scientific between pedagogy and technology so far, one can conclude
explanations to others that traditional pedagogy has not improved much by the
The reference model will define the skills and addition of technology. Good pedagogy, on the other hand,
competence levels in inquiry and these are translated in can be made significantly more effective by appropriate
observable indicators in the diagnostic instrument. uses of technology.
Based on the reference model, inquiry workflows will be weSPOT adopting this approach does not recommend a
defined, which can be build, shared and (en)acted one-size-fits-all inquiry-based learning model, but it takes
individually or collaboratively. The role of the teacher as the pragmatic view that the optimal level of inquiry is
well as the peers can vary when a learner follow these actually variable and it might differs between individual
workflows, based on the level of support needed by the learners or groups. It has to reflect key factors in the
learner(s), the need to reflect and/or to provide feedback and learning situation, including the content, context, skill of the
the need to collaborate to acquire an inquiry competence. student, knowledge of the teacher, and the materials
So, the instructional strategy will vary, dependent on the available. Students when compared to scientists are novices
learner, the context and the targeted inquiry competence in scientific inquiry. When their current knowledge of the
level. However, learners are in most cases stimulated to go topic is limited, the intellectual demands of fully open
through the whole inquiry process, although the level of inquiry may not generate effective learning and may even
complexity of the inquiry tasks guiding their activities will hinder learning by adding intrinsic or extraneus cognitive
vary [5]. load. weSPOT’s model will provide teachers and learners
Inquiry workflows can be described by graphical support and the technology tools to work ‘up the ladder’ to
representations, whose aim is to help users visualize and reach competence, progress and become able to find the
orchestrate their inquiry projects. They are key to personal optimal inquiry level to match the needs at hand.
as well as social inquiry based learning. Learners can link IV. RELATED WORK
diverse steps of their investigation as well as represent their
scientific reasoning by integrating graphically their The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and the Cloud
questions, hypothesis, concepts, arguments and data. Inquiry Learning Environment (CLE) have shown evidence of
workflows play an important role as visual strategy and facilitating learning and addressing the current limitations of
mediating tools in scientific reasoning. As knowledge Learning Management Systems (LMS). Compared to a
mapping strategy, they enable users to connect and make typical LMS, like Moodle or Sakai, where the learner is
their conceptual and procedural knowledge explicit. As restricted by the lack of adaptability and responsiveness of
reflective aid, they provide visual guidance for users the learning environment, the PLE follows a learner-centric
approach. It allows the use of lightweight services and tools
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
that belong to and are controlled by individual learners. Another useful idea can be borrowed from WebLabs,
Rather than integrating different services into a centralised European project focused on the development of a Virtual
system, the PLE provides the learner with a variety of Learning Environment (VLE) and WebLabs learning model
services and hands over control to her to select and use these [19]. The VLE allowed students, teachers and
services the way she deems fit [6-8]. geographically dispersed researchers to be involved in
The Cloud Learning Environment (CLE) extends the PLE science and math learning and explorations. Students
by considering the cloud as a large autonomous system not developed an understanding of mathematics as a science
owned by any educational organisation. In this system, the through partnerships in research activities. Additionally,
users of cloud-based services are academics or learners, who students shared their results and collaborated with peers,
share the same privileges, including control, choice, and thus gaining specific social experience [14].
sharing of content on these services. This approach has the On the base of all our experience from these projects we
potential to enable and facilitate both formal and informal formulated the prerequisites for the successful
learning for the learner. It also promotes the openness, implementation of inquiry-based science education (IBSE)
sharing and reusability of learning resources on the web [9, in schools [20]: change teachers attitude and provide
10]. stronger support to students (at micro level), provide
Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) comprises an essential schools management support, form teachers team to share
aspect of the PLE and the CLE, as it enables learners to experience and best practices and provide the needed ICT
become “metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally support (at mezzo level) and national curriculum reform,
active participants in their own learning process” [11]. SRL constant training for teachers and provide rich set of
is enabled within the PLE and the CLE through the resources based on ICT infrastructure (at macro level).
assembly of independent resources in a way that fulfils a
specific learning goal. By following this paradigm, learners V. TECHNOLOGY FACILITATING PERSONAL AND SOCIAL
are empowered to regulate their own learning, thus greatly INQUIRY
enhancing their learning outcomes [12, 13]. As we have learned from the European project ROLE
In weSPOT, we are planning to apply at new level our (Responsive Open Learning Environments - www.role-
experience from previous research projects. For example, in project.eu), what is often missing from the PLE and the
the Innovative Didactics for Web-Based Learning - IDWBL CLE, is not the abundance of tools and services, but the
[14] project web-based learning comprised five forms: web means for binding them together in a meaningful way.
referral, web quest, web exploration, e-mail project and weSPOT will address this issue by providing ways for the
collaboration. In such a way students were put in a situation integration of data originating from different inquiry tools
to explore new methods and techniques, guided by teachers. and services.
They shared their innovative approaches which peers and We plan to realize this with the use of standard
teachers and in such way they enriched the traditional work integration technologies, such as OpenSocial, which has
in class. The teachers reported an improvement of the become one of the de-facto protocols for data exchange
thinking process of their students and an increase in their between social applications on the web. Linked Data
motivation for learning. methodologies will also be employed in order to represent
In order to apply inquiry-based science education, and connect the semantics of inquiry workflows. Most
teachers need to develop new practical methodologies, importantly though, weSPOT will enable the cognitive
approaches and tools in their day-to-day practice. To integration of inquiry tools by connecting them with the
address this need, an useful experience was the I*Teach student’s profile, as well as her social and curricular context.
methodology [15], which is based on active learning Individual and collaborative student actions taking place
methods, with the student at the centre of the learning within different inquiry tools will update the learning
process and the teacher as a guide and a partner in project history and learning goals of the student, thus providing
work based on didactic scenarios encouraging the creative them and their tutors with a cohesive learning environment
thinking of learners [16]. This methodology focuses on the for monitoring their progress.
development of specific skills in the context of the ICT The Web 2.0 paradigm offers new opportunities for
education: work on a project, teamwork, presentation skills, social learning by facilitating interactions with other
and information skills. This methodology was integrated in learners and building a sense of connection that can foster
the TENCompetence pilot project [17], Share.TEC pilot trust and affirmation [21]. Social learning, according to
teachers’ training [18], and in the training of 750 VET Hagel, et al. [22], is dictated by recent shifts in education,
teachers in Innovative Methods and New Technologies. It which have altered the ways we catalyze learning and
was integrated in the textbook for Information technologies innovation. Key ingredients in this evolving landscape are
teaching, used actively in the training of teachers for IBSE the quality of interpersonal relationships, discourse,
in Fibonacci project (http://www.fibonacci-project.eu/). In personal motivation, as well as tacit over explicit
2009 the I*Teach project has been awarded for best knowledge. Social media offer a variety of collaborative
products results. resources and facilities, which can complement and enrich
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
the individual’s personal learning space, as shown in Figure inquiry workflows. Students will then be able to display
1. Figure 4: Personalised learning space onto resources and people these badges in their preferred social networks. This
approach will enhance the visibility and accrediting of
personal inquiry efforts, as well as raise motivation, personal
interest and curiosity on a mid-term effect.
Piloting the weSPOT inquiry tools with students and
teachers in real-life scenarios in secondary education will be
essential for collecting requirements and feedback from the
end-users. The “Energy Efficient Buildings” pilot will
concern the use of guided discussions to help students to
identify disadvantages of the current building from the
energy-efficiency point of view. Students will try to predict
(providing evidence) future energy problems. Working in
teams, they will develop reasonable ideas for future energy-
efficient buildings. Teachers will be able to provide help by
asking questions like:
• What type of new materials for new energy efficient
building components with reduced embodied energy to
Figure 1. Personal learning space, resources, and social interactions [23] use?
What technologies will ensure a high quality indoor
•
weSPOT will provide students with the ability to build environment, keeping in mind Ecology?
their ownFigure 5: Some dimensions of a social learning design space
inquiry-based learning environment, enriched with
social and collaborative features. Smart support tools will be In this way, students will learn better concepts and skills
offered for orchestrating inquiry workflows, including from the domain area, but will also learn new inquiry skills
mobile apps, learning analytics support, and social and competences.
collaboration on scientific inquiry. These offerings will allow VI. MOBILE SUPPORT
students to filter inquiry resources and tools according to
their own needs and preferences. Students will be able Mobile technologies enable the integration of inquiry
interact to with their peers in order to reflect on their inquiry project support into everyday life situations of learners. To
workflows, receive and provide feedback, mentor each other, support their individual or collective inquiry projects, several
thus forming meaningful social connections that will help mobile services are foreseen within weSPOT:
and motivate them in their learning. From a learner’s 1. A mobile personal inquiry manager supporting a self-
perspective, this approach will offer them access to directed approach for creating and managing inquiry
personalized bundles of inquiry resources augmented with projects and (the representation of) acquired
social media, which they will be able to manage and control competences (in badges).
from within their personal learning space. 2. A context-aware notification system that enables the
It should be noted though, that there is a significant contextualized sharing and notification of real world
distinction between the user-centric approach of the Web 2.0 experiences. Learners can link inquiry projects to certain
paradigm and the learner-centric approach of weSPOT. This
What design implications might this have? Certainly, it must be easy to find and interact
locations, physical objects, or combinations of
withispeople,
because a social
building a senselearning environment
of connection that can fosteris trust
not and
a just a fun (an
affirmation contextual factors, i.e. the weather at a certain location
early prototype
place was not
to hang outstrong
withenough in this
friends, butregard, renewing our a
predominantly concern
placewith at a specific time of the year. Furthermore, notifications
getting this right!). But what other shifts are needed to go into deeper social learning? can trigger the collection of data dependent on several
where learning takes place and it does not take place by
chance but because specific pedagogies and learning parameters (location, time, social context, environment).
principles are integrated in the environment. Quite often, This enables learners to easily link objects and locations
what students want is not necessarily what they need, since of daily life to inquiry projects.
their grasp of the material and of themselves as learners, is 3. A mobile data collection system supports the direct
incomplete [23]. submission of sensor data and manual measurements
In order to transform a Web 2.0 environment into a social into the workflow system, to collect data to test a
learning environment, students need to be constantly hypothesis. It also supports submission of annotations
challenged and taken out of their comfort zones. This raises and multimedia materials, to enable reflection, peer
the need of providing students with the affirmation and support and collaborative inquiries.
encouragement that will give them the confidence to proceed 4. A mobile inquiry coordination interface supports
with their inquiries and investigations beyond their existing inquiry coordinators by giving them access to on-going
knowledge. weSPOT will address this issue through a multi-user inquiries and the contributions of all
gamification approach, by linking the inquiry activities and participants. It allows central dispatching of messages
skills gained by learners with social media. In particular, this and management of tasks and data. In case of formal
approach will define a badge system that will award virtual settings, teachers may use this service to keep an
badges to students upon reaching certain milestones in their overview and to provide feedback, in informal settings
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
learners may use it to coordinate their self-initiated [11] B. J. Zimmerman, "A Social Cognitive View of Self-Regulated
collaborative inquiry efforts. Academic Learning," Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 81,
pp. 329- 339, 1989.
VII. CONCLUSION
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scientific investigations through a cloud-based approach for
[13] K. Fruhmann, A. Nussbaumer, and D. Albert, "A Psycho-
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Pedagogical Framework for Self-Regulated Learning in a
technological ways towards lowering the threshold for
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VIII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Computer-aided design meets computer aided learning, Dordrecht,
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