Using educational data from teaching and learning to inform teachers’ reflective educational design in inquiry-based STEM education

Abstract

Highlights • Tool-supported Guidance is essential for effective Inquiry-based education • Teaching and Learning Analytics (TLA) can support teachers provide appropriate Guidance • The TLA method and supporting tool provides analyses of the level of Guidance in Inquiry-based scenarios • Analyses of the design can be investigated against customizable learners' data and profiles • Insights from these combined analyses could help teachers improve their teaching designs Abstract: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education is recognized as a top priority for school education worldwide and Inquiry-based teaching and learning is identified as one of the most dominant approaches. To effectively engage individual students in Inquiry tasks, appropriate guidance needs to be provided, usually by combining different digital tools such online labs, data analysis tools and modelling tools. This is a cumbersome task for teachers to perform manually since it involves (a) assessing during the education design, the type and level of tool-supported guidance to be provided to students and (b) potentially refining this level and types to meet the guidance needs of individual students based on educational data from the delivery of the educational design. Thus, in our research we target to investigate how to support this process with educational data analytics methods and tools from both the design and the delivery of educational designs, that inform teachers' decision making for systematic reflection. To this end, the contribution of this paper is the design and evaluation of a novel "Teaching and Learning" Analytics method and supporting research prototype tool, extending the scope of purely learning analytics methods, to (a) analyze inquiry-based educational designs in terms of the tool-supported guidance they offer and (b) relate these analyses to students' educational data that are already being collected by existing learning analytics systems, so as to increase teachers' awareness and understanding and scaffold their reflection. A two-layer evaluation methodology was adopted to evaluate both the capacity of our method to analyze educational designs in terms of appropriate guidance as well as to investigate whether the insights generated by the method offer statistically significant indicators that impact students' activity during the delivery of these educational designs. The results obtained, based on real-life educational data, argue that the proposed method and tool can support teachers to accurately analyse Inquiry-based educational designs and receive meaningful insights to improve and tailor students' learning experiences. The insights of this work aim to contribute in the research field of cognitive data analytics for teaching and learning, by investigating new ways to combine analyses of the educational design and the students' activity, so as to inform teachers' reflective decision making from a holistic perspective.

Critical Analysis of International STEM Education Policy Themes

“…The global theme of "subject integration/project-based learning/design-based education" was found documents mentioned about integrated STEM education, the creation of integrated STEM, the implementation of integrated STEM, and the assessment of integrated STEM. This global theme was related to other global theme including assessment, professional development, willingness, and STEM content, aspects previously described in literature (Pitt, 2009;Sergis, 2019). The relationship between the "subject integration/project-based learning/design-based education" global theme and assessment can be found in the words in the documents.…”

“…Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has become the topic of much debate in educational settings over the past several decades (Herschbach, 2011;Sergis et al 2019). Another cause for changes in STEM education is the difference in the way today"s students are motivated (Chittum et al 2017).…”

Intelligent analysis and data visualisation for teacher assistance tools: The case of exploratory learning

“…Notable examples in this area that relate to our work include Sergis et al . () that investigate how to support teacher guidance and reflection during inquiry tasks, Martinez‐Maldonado et al . () that aimed explicitly to enhance teacher awareness of small group work with interactive surfaces, and van Leeuwen () where teachers regulated collaborating groups in simulation situations.…”

“…This focus on orchestration creates a high synergetic potential between the work reported here and the use of LA tools in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and Inquiry-based learning (IBL) approaches. Notable examples in this area that relate to our work include Sergis et al (2019) that investigate how to support teacher guidance and reflection during inquiry tasks, Martinez-Maldonado et al (2015) that aimed explicitly to enhance teacher awareness of small group work with interactive surfaces, and van Leeuwen (2015) where teachers regulated collaborating groups in simulation situations. For a review in the broader area of natural user interfaces see Martinez-Maldonado et al (2017).…”

Enabling Indonesian Pre-Service Teachers to Design Biology Learning Tools Using Metacognitive Strategy

“…The lecturer should give feedbacks to strengthen the use of the strategy (Juwah et al, 2004;Sutton et al, 2010;Wiliam, 2013;) and correct or conduct remedial teaching if the implemented strategy was inappropriate or out of what has been expected (Luoch, 2016;Oyekan, 2013). OECD (2016) suggested that an excellent cognitive teaching strategy should at least (1) expect students to explain their thinking on complex problems; (2) encourage students to solve problems in more than one way; (3) require students to provide written explanations of how they the Sergis et al, 2019;Shaikh & Khoja, 2012;Whitaker, 2017). One of the most familiar learning tools is a lesson plan, which comprises identity, goals, materials, learning procedures, learning sources, and assessment (Cherasaro et al, 2015;De Witte et al, 2015;Surgenor, 2010).…”