A model organism for inquiry-based undergraduate laboratories
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This website is supported by National Science Foundation Grants, DUE-0535903, DUE-0815135, and DUE-0814373 to Morehouse College and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Guided-Inquiry Laboratories

 

Guided-inquiry laboratories are a compromise between the extremes on the continuum of inquiry-based learning. At one extreme, free inquiry is the learning process in which the students specify all aspects of the study. This is open ended research, as practiced by working scientists, in which students choose the question, develop the hypotheses, create an experimental protocol to test the hypotheses and finally conduct the experiment. At the other extreme, traditional cookbook studies are exercises in which the instructor gives students a question, provides the alternative hypotheses, the instructor specifies a detailed experimental protocol (the cookbook) and students are told to collect data by following the instructions of the teacher.

 

Guided-inquiry is a compromise in that the instructor provides a question and the context for a study, but then guides students to develop alternative hypotheses, and the students design an experimental protocol to test the hypotheses. Students conduct the experiment that they have developed. This learning-teaching process is much more authentic than a cookbook approach but gives instructors a more active role than free inquiry in guiding the learning process for a laboratory class.

 

The following outline describes the role of the instructor in guided inquiry laboratories:

    1. Specify a question
    2. Provide some context
      a. background
      b. tools
      c. supplies
    3. Solicit hypotheses from students
    4. Solicit predictions from students
    5. Solicit experimental design and consensus from students
    6. Students conduct experiment
    7. Students collect data, create class data set, statistical data analysis
    8. Students report findings
      poster, written report, seminar

 

Click this link to view a video of Larry Blumer teaching a non-majors science laboratory class using the guided inquiry process described above.

Last Updated: 9 August 2010

Copyright © by Lawrence S. Blumer and Christopher W. Beck, 2010. All rights reserved. The content of this site may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes, with proper acknowledgement of the source. All other uses are prohibited without prior written permission from the copyright holders.

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessary reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, Emory University, or Morehouse College.