Personal Inquiry

Designing for evidence-based inquiry learning across formal and informal settings

The Personal Inquiry (PI) project is a collaboration between the University of Nottingham and researchers from CREET and KMi in The Open University. The aim of PI is to develop a new approach of scripted inquiry learning in which students aged 11-14 can use personal technologies to guide scientific investigations that span the classroom, home and field locations.

Activities will be based around topic themes - Myself, My Environment, My Community - that engage young learners in investigating their health, diet and fitness, their immediate environment and their wider surroundings. These topics are key elements of the new 21st century science curriculum that requires students to reason about the natural sciences as a complex system and to explore how people relate to the physical world.

Other partners include Hadden Park High School in Nottingham, Oakgrove School in Milton Keynes, ScienceScope, a company that develops sensing and datalogging equipment, Nottingham Museums and Galleries, Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre and Gulliver's Eco-Park, Milton Keynes.

PI is a three year project funded by the UK ESRC and EPSRC research councils.

Mulholland, P., Anastopoulou, S., Collins, T., Feisst, M., Gaved, M., Kerawalla, L., Paxton, M., Scanlon, E., Sharples, M. and Wright, M. (2012) nQuire: Technological Support for Personal Inquiry Learning, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 5, 2, pp. 157-169

Gaved, M., Collins, T., Mulholland, P., Kerawalla, L., Jones, A., Scanlon, E., Littleton, K., Blake, C., Petrou, M., Clough, G. and Twiner, A. (2010) Using netbooks to support mobile learners' investigations across activities and places, Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 25, 3, pp. 187-200

Scanlon, E., Conole, G., Littleton, K., Kerawalla, L., Gaved, M., Twiner, A., Collins, T. and Mulholland, P. (2009) Personal Inquiry (PI): Innovations in participatory design and models for inquiry learning, TLRP TEL symposium, American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Diego, CA

Mulholland, P., Collins, T., Gaved, M., Wright, M., Sharples, M., Greenhalgh, C., Kerawalla, L., Scanlon, E. and Littleton, K. (2009) Activity Guide: An Approach to Scripting Inquiry Learning, Workshop: Intelligent Support for Exploratory Environments at AIED 2009, Brighton, UK

Scanlon, E., Littleton, K., Gaved, M., Kerawalla, L., Mulholland, P., Collins, T., Conole, G., Jones, A., Clough, G., Blake, C. and Twiner, A. (2009) Support for evidence-based inquiry learning: teachers, tools and phases of inquiry, 13th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), Amsterdam