Abstract

Teachers have readily adapted to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to support students in their learning. A study in June 2020 (Association for Science Education, 2020) showed that 60% of secondary school teachers expected to reduce the amount of practical work this year, particularly affecting students in the age range 11-14. The reduction is due to students having lessons away from a school laboratory, equipment needs to be quarantined, and students have to self isolate at home. The amount of practical work will be significantly reduced further due to more nations introducing national lockdowns and closing schools.

This project aims to produce open educational resources (OER) that support secondary school teachers in carrying out scientific inquiry activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, using Arduino science journal application (app) (Arduino, 2020) and other open digital tools.

Scientific inquiry is defined as “the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work” (National Research Council, 1996, p. 23). PISA’s 2018 Science Framework (OECD, 2019) definition of scientific literacy focuses on three competencies: explaining phenomena scientifically, evaluating and designing scientific inquiry and interpreting data and evidence scientifically. All relevant to inquiry-based teaching and learning.

Inquiry-based learning has various meanings. The definition that this project will use is a student-centred pedagogy where students propose the scientific question to investigate, design an investigation to answer their question, draw conclusions, evaluate their investigation and then finally apply new knowledge to explain other similar situations, which links into PISA’s 2018 Science Framework (OECD, 2019).

Arduino science journal (Arduino, 2020) is an open-source app that turns smartphone sensors into a tool that students can use to investigate the world around them. Digital tools have four main ways that they can enhance inquiry-based learning (Jeskova et al., 2011):

· Supports active learning, students work in a similar way to scientists in laboratories.

· Encourages critical thinking.

· Students can be provided with individualised feedback without constant supervision from a teacher.

· Encourages collaboration.

Many learning designs and frameworks have been developed based on the Learning Cycle (Karplus and Thier, 1967) created to translate scientific inquiry into a process that can be used by teachers and students. The Learning Cycle consists of three stages: exploration, invention and discovery. Bybee et al. (1989) then modified the three-stage Learning Cycle into the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) 5E learning cycle, which is still in widespread use. The BSCS cycle still contains the original three stages renamed explore, explain and elaborate, but these are in the middle between engage and evaluate.

This conference presentation will report on the development of a learning design based on the 5E model (Bybee et al., 1989) that can be used to carry out inquiry learning using Arduino science journal by secondary school students. The presentation will also discuss publishing this design and developed examples, on a website under a Creative Commons licence.