A Learning Design to Teach Scientific Inquiry

This chapter reports the authors’ experiences of developing a learning design to teach scientific inquiry, of integrating the learning design with learning objects to create online inquiry projects, and of investigating student attitudes following implementation in second year biochemistry units at a major Australian university. We discuss constructivism, problem based learning (PBL), and inquiry learning as the philosophical and pedagogical approaches informing the learning design, and highlight how critical components of each approach were transformed into a learning design. We specify the learning design and highlight its important features. The claimed efficiencies of the learning object approach were evaluated during the development phase. Outcomes reported here indicate that reuse was most cost effective if many, elaborate learning objects were reused. Little benefit was gained by the reuse of many, simple learning objects. Finally, student perceptions indicate benefits from the inquiry projects that warrant their inclusion in a traditional teacher-centred course.165