About us and the playbook
Our group formed around mutual interests and experiences in enabling student open inquiry in bachelor's level science lab courses, sparked by discussions at a lab teaching conference in 2021. Our small group represents and teaches across the natural sciences within six departments from three different universities and includes a didactics researcher. A grant from SURF (footnote: the Netherlands' collaborative organization for IT in education and research: www.surf.nl) supports our work as a Community of Practice in both improving our teaching practices and externally sharing our gained knowledge and course materials with others online.
In the pages you will find our Playbook to design a labcourse or design-course that uses open inquiry as a didactical form for students in higher education. We do however, have the experience that secondary school teachers can benefit from the steps in the playbook. The playbook supports the reader to design a course in the own institute with the own available space and materials, points out blindspots and possible traps. You can contact us via the email address of the group and join one of our online sessions, ask questions or share your experiences.
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Operational definition of Open Inquiry
“Open inquiry in bachelor’s lab courses requires students to complete an entire, authentic scientific research or design process, coached in their work by teachers.”
In the following pages, we detail this definition to paint the full picture of what we think open inquiry in bachelor students’ lab courses entails.
All materials for each of the courses has been place online in Edusources. You will find the studentmaterial, teacher guide, study guide information, assessment rubrics and so on, on this platform.
The main student learning goals of the courses were (subject related content aside):
- Empiric cycle
- From literature research to own data and conclusions
- Not directly graded in rubrics, but implicit part of the process
- Research skills
- Identifying relevant sources of information (literature/stakeholders/whatever is on the internet)
- Discriminating the reliability and relevance of the given information and its context (develop a critical attitude towards information)
- Motivating scientific choices made
- Designing a relevant research question and hypothesis based on the information, context, and constraints.
- Developing an experimental design (measurement and analysis plan) that answers the research question
- Critically assessing and reflecting on own results in light of the experimental and scientific context (how to get trustworthy results)
- Research communication
- Presenting own research (data) in a structured and accessible manner both in written and oral formats
Design principles from student perspective
The first set of principles concerns the ins- and outs of the scientific research or design process the students will complete. Students working through open inquiry:
- Work in an authentic setting, which implies:
- Real stakeholder or person/problem/object
- (Authentic) Research setting – work like a researcher
- Both failure and success are possible acceptable (learning) outcomes.
- Follow expert ways of working, such as the ways of a:
- Scientific researcher
- Designer
- Professional (company)
- Iterative steps of design- and research processes
- Includes a safe working environment or practice.
- Formulate a design problem or research question and hypothesis, which includes:
- Design problem and possible (multiple) solutions or plans
- (quantitative) Research question and hypothesis
- Formulate when their design or research is successful (or not) and how they know.
- Consciously and critically look for information from:
- Experts (teaching assistants, researchers, teachers, students from previous years, content people)
- Books, the web, literature
- Other students
- Interpreting, questioning, reflecting on the information and advice from others
- Dealing with conflicting information and simplifications.
- Concisely (re)formulate design criteria or a hypothesis, which means:
- A description of an acceptable means to arrive at a quantifiable, measurable answer to the research question or design problem
- Returning to the description to reformulate in iterative manner.
- (re) Design a prototype or set-up an experiment, which means:
- Make choices
- Check on safety
- Iterative
- Construct a prototype and/or run the experiment, which includes:
- Repetition
- Quick test results,
- Calibrations,
- Feasibility,
- Uncertainty,
- Pilot studies
- Having alternative plans.
- Interpret results, these include:
- Relate to design and hypothesis
- Reliability, Error
- Reproducibility
- Validity
- Iterative -when possible in view of time, materials etc..
- Report on results in various ways:
- Present their results to others in:
- Presentation
- Report
- Article
- Defend results and choices and decision made
- What the results mean to others, implications
- Successes and failures.
- Draw conclusions, where they
- Describe their conclusions to the research question
- What the conclusion means to others; implications.
Design oriented courses
Design Oriented Open Inquiry Students:
- Are encouraged to work independently & take ownership
- Autonomously find stakeholders and experts
- Formulate a problem
- Look for information (all kinds)
- Formulate possible design solutions
- Work collaboratively:
- share ideas,
- discuss findings and experiences,
- provide each other with feedback
- Follow small design cycles:
- analyzing problem, designing solution, developing solution, implement solution, evaluate solution,
- where each step might involve tinkering, piloting, calibrating, improving, optimizing, and so on
- Come to a final design solution to their problem
Research oriented courses
Research Oriented Open Inquiry Students:
- Experience a setting as authentic to real research as possible
- Have autonomy in their research
- Formulate a (quantitative) research question
- Look for information (all kinds)
- Formulate a hypothesis
- Provide each other with feedback (e.g. peer review,intervision)
- Formulate & plan an experiment
- Formulate & plan the analysis
- Prepare sample / build experimental set-up
- Run the experiment
- Analyze & interpret results
- Report on & present results
Design principles from teacher perspective
The second set of principles is that students are coached on the process by a teacher (assistant), contrasting with the usual way of the teacher being the content expert. The process coaching involves that:
- Students are aware of the timeframe, in that they can:
- Keep track of time/planning
- Reflect on what they can achieve in given time
- Take availability of lab and materials into account.
- Students can complete the course’s assessment, including:
- Presentations
- Half-way tests, reports, products
- Deliverables.
- Work autonomously from teachers, which means they work through:
- Self-regulated learning
- Collaboration
- Peer feedback & intervision
- Scaffolding.
Towards student control
Depending on previous experiences, students are given control of the process later or earlier in the course. For first-year or inexperienced second year students, a time frame for receding control of the process to the students is represented by the figure below.
Teamwork and Grievances
With open inquiry usually a lot of teamwork is involved which may lead to some grievances between the students (students not pulling their weight vs students pulling too much of the weight, different grade satisfaction thresholds between students). As a teacher you could guide this by:
- Being available during the course for students to discuss the issues
- Including peer feedback on group work in the rubric
- Introducing a team-charter to lets students discuss their preferred mode of work within the group, but also plan what they’d like to contribute and what they actually contributed
- Having students discuss their expectations of working in the group with the group (grade, contributions, work ethics)
- Working with a ‘first author/second author’ principle. Student’s need to present at least once during the course, but have to contribute to the other presentations during the course as well.
Must Haves
The group agrees that to their experience, the ‘must haves’ are:
- Having teacher (assistants) regularly available in the lab during the course
- Making clear students are expected to form their own opinions / insights based on information and use that in their work;
- Having students report to each other what they (are going to) do (presentations) to allow peer feedback and share results;
- Making students aware that failing is always an option and an opportunity to rethink their plans;
- Giving a grade for the process – how they worked, academic attitude, how they have shown they learned, behavior and so on;
- Giving a grade for a test half-way (on theory or on procedures or some other half-way item);
- Using a rubric for assessing the report, article, presentation.
Must haves: Rubrics
Types of rubrics for open inquiry
Process rubrics
- (midterm/labmeeting/update) Presentation
- Labjournal
- Academic/Professional Attitude
- Teamwork, Feedback, How do you tackle the problems at hand
Output rubrics
- Final Preparation/Proposal
- Final (scientific ) presentation
- Reports
Necessary in the rubrics
- Use constructive alignment, rubrics should reflect the learning goals
- Research skills should be in the rubrics
- Formative feedback on rubric categories during open inquiry (via rubrics or orally, go/nogo point)
What we think is course specific or optional in a rubric
- Teamwork
- Safety
- Project management, data management
- Taking on feedback and giving and internalizing
- Research communication (Presentation, report, tutorial, video, manual)
- Output Rubrics
Tips on how to use rubrics / How to come from a rubric to a grade (pass/fail)
FAILING THE EXPERIMENT ≠ FAILING THE COURSE!
With open inquiry you’re grading the process rather than the outcome/knowledge obtained. Using a Rubrics give students guidelines of what is expected of them and what would qualify for a high(er) grade. It will standardize the grading between teachers and gives teachers guidelines on what to focus on during the course.
Rubrics as a feedback tool for the students tends to work best during the course, as students like to know what they can improve on to receive a high grade; at the end of a course students generally just like to know their grade.
We have experienced the following points when using Rubrics
- Rubrics with strict levels (e.g. 1, 4, 7, 10) may lead to tweaking rubrics to give students the grade the assessor would like to give, which surpasses the goal of the rubrics as a way to give feedback.
- Too few categories will results in large differences in grades
- Too many categories will average out in grade ~7 for all students
We found these can be circumvented by:
- Have one level for insufficient and 3-4 levels for sufficient criteria
- Have a different weighing for different categories/items
- Grade outstanding items above a 10 - for example 12 or 13
- Add extra criteria for outstanding students - for eample add 0.5 points to the total grade
- Let students add a learning goal in the rubrics
- Divide broad categories in subitems (e.g. experimental design in research question, approach, measurement plan, and analysis plan).
- Other than giving grades, you can use pass/fail per learning goal. The learning goals can be used as a basis to determine which items need to be passed by the students to pass the course.
Restrictions and boundary conditions
In the experience of the group there can be various restrictions and boundary conditions, dictated by the setting, context and demands of the university involved. A few of these to consider are:
- The kind of laboratory available
- The required student knowledge for the lab course;
- The number and kind of teacher (assistant)s;
- The kind of result expected of the student (product, report, presentation, exam);
- The kind of testcase / example / prescribed practice run (procedural);
- The possible information (literature, books, etc.) and people (experts) a student could use;
- Assessment details – final score calculation, weights, assessors;
- Open inquiry projects are much more time intensive than closed inquiry projects.
Online publications related to the labcourses
About the courses:
Bradbury, F. R., & Pols, C. F. J. (2020). A pandemic-resilient open-inquiry physical science lab course which leverages the Maker movement. Electronic journal for research in science and mathematics education 24 (3).
Logman, P. S. W. M., & Kautz, J. (2021, May). From Dublin descriptors to implementation in Bachelor labs. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1929, No. 1, p. 012065). IOP Publishing.
Article on the website Leiden University "Only when you give students freedom, exceptional results are possible."
De Putter, L. and Logman P. (2023). Basis voor studeren: leerlingen meenemen in de onderzoekrs- en ontwerrol om ind e bachelor goed beslagen ten ijs te komen. WND conferente 2023. https://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/woudschotennatuurkunde/verslagen/Vrsl2023/2023/werkgroepenza.html#basis-voor-studeren-leerlingen-meenemen-in-de-onderzoekers-en-ontwerperrol-om-in-bachelor-goed-beslagen-ten-ijs-te-komen
Student publications from the course:
Feenstra, L., Cramer, J., & Logman, P. (2021). A Lego® Mach–Zehnder interferometer with an Arduino detector. Physics Education, 56(2), 023004.
Van Willigen, J., Loman, C., Thibaudier, P., Fokkema, D. B., & Hijmans, T. W. (2020). Uranium fission and plutonium production in the undergraduate lab. American Journal of Physics, 88(3), 200-206.
Design form Open_inquiry
