Remote Inquiries in Science Education (RISE)

Within the framework of the Erasmus+ project RISE, Arteveldehogeschool organises a series of free inspirational science evenings for secondary school teachers that you can attend from your home.

Each session focuses on one or more steps of inquiry-based learning (see bottom of page for more information). During each session, we actively engage and, as a participant, you experience a mini-investigation yourself. After this experience, we will reflect on the possible adjustments you can make to get your students to engage in this enquiry themselves.

Series 1

Series 2

We strongly recommend attending all sessions but you can also register for one separate set of sessions. If you cannot attend one session, this is of course no problem.

The sessions will be taught online in English as teachers from several European countries (Ireland, Slovenia and Poland) will follow. 

In exchange for the free participation, we ask for the commitment to apply at least one insight covered during the sessions in your own lesson. For example, you can copy and test an activity from the sessions or apply a particular insight within your own curriculum.

You can register via this link. A few days before the session, you will receive an invitation giving access to the Teams meeting.

Distance learning sciences

The RISE project stands for Remote Inquiries in Science Education and surfs on new ways of teaching that science/STEM teachers and their students faced during the corona crisis. During the past year and a half, teachers nevertheless remained committed to inquiry-based, remote, @home learning. In addition, many teacher refresher courses continued online. It was also a real challenge for these coaches to add value for teachers online.

Coaching teachers on online inquiry-based learning

What does this project aim to achieve? The focus is on inquiry-based learning (IBL). Together with some European partners from Ireland, Slovenia and Poland, we will explore how we can coach online learning communities of teachers in inquiry-based learning. In Flanders, we will test and fine-tune a number of these online reshaping sessions. It concerns both inquiry-based learning in the classroom and remotely, @home.

What do we not want to do? We do not want to argue here for more online labs or research assignments. The corona crisis has taught us how important physical education is but also what the added value of distance learning can be.

The research cycle consists of several steps:

1. Generating ideas on a particular topic or problem initiates the whole process. At this stage, a general topic is chosen, usually a phenomenon. The question that then arises: why is this happening? Or why does something take this form and not another? The problem may originate from a topic in the curriculum or come about through the initiative of pupils who are intrigued by something they came across themselves. Generating ideas usually starts with a brainstorm around a problem. This is the phase of associations, examples from life, as well as reference to prior knowledge.

2. Formulating a research question is asking one or a series of questions related to the topic selected in step 1. This is where the topic narrows and becomes more specific. The question can be qualitative or quantitative, but basically it should be structured so that it cannot be answered directly with "yes" or "no". It should also be formulated in such a way that the answer can be obtained as a result of an investigation carried out under specific conditions created during lessons. By this we mean taking into account teaching time, availability of materials, conditions and student safety.

3. The corollary of formulating the research question is formulating hypotheses/predictions about the outcomes of the experiment. In some cases it happens just after the formulation of the research question, in others after the formulation of a plan of action, but always before the students proceed with the investigation as such. At this point, students brainstorm again, individually, in pairs or in groups, about possible outcomes. In many cases, the teacher can find out at this stage what misconceptions the pupils have. However, it is important not to direct them at this stage.

4. The investigation plan is the next phase of work organisation.

• Research groups are created and the division of roles is established by selecting the members who will perform the experiment directly, the person who will take notes, the students who will perform the data analysis, as well as the person responsible for the subsequent presentation of the results.
• At this stage, students decide on the selection of materials, tools and instruments needed to conduct the experiments.
• One of the important elements of the investigation is determining the sequence of work, i.e. preparing an action plan. However, it should be noted that the formalism of this task does not outweigh its desirability, especially at the lower stages of training.

5. Conducting the investigation. After making a hypothesis and preparing an investigation plan, students carry out one or more experiments, recording their observations and experimental data. The teacher's role here consists only of observing pupils at work and intervening only in an emergency situation.

6. Data analysis. After completing all phases of the experiment, students organise their notes and then conduct analysis of experimental data and observation.

7. Based on the elaborated results, students draw conclusions and try to answer the research question. During the first summary, pupils return to the hypotheses made at the beginning of the third phase and juxtapose them with the results of the experiment. While drawing conclusions, pupils combine information from all phases of the experiment and formulate conclusions that combine the collected results. In the final step of this phase, pupils critically analyse the correctness of the experiment conducted.

8. Sharing the results obtained is used to present and compare results and procedures. On the one hand, pupils learn to present research results in a clear and consistent way within a certain time frame and, on the other, to ask constructive questions of other research groups. If pupils worked on the same research question in different groups, they can compare their solutions.

9. Developing the problem is the concluding phase of the investigation cycle and, at the same time, a phase with potential to open the next investigation cycle. Enriched by the experience gained in the final cycle, students broaden their interest in the topic, think about subsequent phenomena and experiments and formulate new issues.