Progressive inquiry learning object templates (PILOT).

In most cases digital learning objects are used for individual learning (reading, looking, playing, quizzes) or by teachers in their class-room or online teaching (presentations). In PILOT project we argue that learning objects should be designed and presented in a special way in order to promote truly social constructivist learning. The project is based on the concept of progressive inquiry learning object templates (PILOTs). These learning objects support progressive inquiry knowledge building process in computer and database supported Knowledge Building environments; found for instance in Fle3 and IVA virtual learning environments. Design research methods such as participatory design and scenario-based design are used in the project to generate distributable and reusable PILOTs. The developed learning objects will be tested and evaluated by schools, teachers, and their pupils.

PEDAGOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

In most cases learning objects are used for individual learning (reading, looking, playing, quizzes) or by teachers in their teaching (presentations). For example in ARIADNE knowledge pool system, the majority of learning objects are narrative texts, excercises, hypertexts, and slides (Najjar, Ternier, & Duval, 2003). At the time of writing only 1.4% of more than 4,400 existing learning objects in ARIADNE were described as project statements, which means that they are most likely based on constructivist pedagogy.

In UIAH Media Lab our views are based on the social constructivist theory that sees learning as the participation in social processes of knowledge construction. We have developed the Fle3 learning environment (see http://fle3.uiah.fi), which is designed for social constructivist learning. The environment contains three learning tools: WebTop, Knowledge Building, and Jamming. WebTops can be used for storing different items (files, links, notes). With the Knowledge Building tool groups can carry out knowledge building discussions to debate on the given context and build their own theories. Jamming tool is used for collaborative design and construction of digital artefacts (images, sound, etc.) (Leinonen, Kligyte, Toikkanen, Pietarila, & Dean, 2003). The tools originally created in Fle3 are present also in IVA learning management system (see http://www.htk.tlu.ee/iva/), which was developed based on Fle3 source code in Tallinn University (Laanpere, Poldoja, & Kikkas, 2004).

The main tool of Fle3 is Knowledge Building, where discussions can be carried out with different thinking type sets. These are sets of labels with associated instructions for structuring the discussion process towards a process that the thinking type set tries to support. The most commonly used thinking type set in Fle3 is progressive inquiry. In progressive inquiry students can choose the the proper knowledge type for their note from five knowledge types (Figure 1).

The progressive inquiry pedagogical model was developed in the department of psychology, at the University of Helsinki. It is a model of learning where students are encouraged to engage in the process of question and explanation driven inquiry (Muukkonen, Hakkarainen, & Lakkala, 1999). As a method of teaching and learning this means that the pupils are encouraged to make their conceptions of the topics studied explicit, and then the study group works together to improve the presented ideas and explanation.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The conceptual framework of progressive inquiry is often presented (Muukkonen et al., 1999; Hakkarainen, Lonka, & Lipponen, 1999) as six steps that loosely follow each other. The steps are:

1. creating context,

2. engaging in question-driven inquiry,

3. generating one's own working theories,

4. critical evaluation of knowledge advancement,

5. searching new scientific information, and

6. engagement in deepening inquiry.

All six aspects of inquiry are shared with fellow inquirers. The aim of the process is accumulation and deepening of knowledge of all the pupils. As the students are encouraged to start the process with some open-ended research questions that are driving the inquiry, pupils may present with the help of their teacher questions that are suitable, challenging, and motivating for them.

THE DESIGN RESEARCH PROBLEMS

The use of Fle3 and IVA in classroom learning has shown that the environment would be easier for teachers to exploit if there are ready-made content packages that frame the context and give a starting point for the progressive inquiry process. The idea of the ready-made content is not to provide material that students should study in a traditional manner, but to open problems and questions that the students want to solve during the inquiry study process. The content should generate desire to present their own hypothesis on the topics and find out scientific information on them. This way the ready-made content may help teacher and pupils carry-out the first two steps of the progressive inquiry and give some hints to the third one.

The design problems of the research are:

* How is progressive inquiry supported with ready-made rich media content packages (LO's)?

* How should the ready-made rich media content package be?

* How is easy localization and reusability provided while retaining authentic context?

* What are the general features of the package?

* Would the package help teachers and pupils, who do not yet know the progressive inquiry model very well to use it in their teaching and learning practice?

The design research is looking for answers to the questions by building up concepts and developing prototypes of a package. In the following section we will present the concept and the prototype developed.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PILOTS

Our concept is called progressive inquiry learning object templates (PILOTs). PILOTs are the ready-made content packages made to facilitate progressive inquiry learning inside virtual learning environment. The word template emphasizes the reusability (using, editing, modifying, and sharing) of learning objects. The teacher is able to change the learning object before starting the context. PILOTs can be seen as a metaphor for guiding the knowledge building process.

The aim of the PILOT project is to develop several content packages for use in secondary school level. The learning objects are developed in cooperation between UIAH Media Lab Learning Environments research group and the Uusimaa Regional Environment Centre on the topic of wetlands. The school subject where PILOTs is primarily planned to be studied is biology or geography, but can also be used in environmental education study projects that are integrating several school subjects. There is a plan to translate the example PILOTs from Finnish to Estonian and create an English masterfile for future localizations.

The design process was carried out by the principles of participatory design by thinking and discussing among the design team about the scenarios of the possible use of the PILOTs in a primary school education. Our context scenario is a concrete story of use. The strength of scenario-based design lies in it's ease and accessibility. It does not require any special knowledge to understand a scenario. Scenarios are easy to change, they evoke discussion, and raise various questions (Carroll, 2000). The scenario was shared among the design team members to reflect and clarify the concept (Figure 2).

The project is done in close cooperation with the existing learning technology standard development, which is important in the context of PILOTs: IEEE Learning Object Metadata standard, IMS Content Packaging, and IMS Learning Design specifications. The aim of the IMS Learning Design Specification is to prescribe various activities for learner and staff in a certain order. It can be seen as the lesson planning for e-learning. The description for the wetlands learning event was developed on IMS Learning Design Level A (IMS, 2003). It describes a six week learning event, in which the PILOTs are used (see Figure 3). IMS Learning Design is designed to work together with IMS Content Packaging, because Learning Design itself does not specify information about the content. The use of PILOTs as content packages has not been implemented yet in Fle3.

Based on the scenarios and learning design description we started to design the first prototype of PILOTs. The main content of PILOTs, the knowledge building context, were written in cooperation with environmental experts and pedagogy experts. The texts were refined in several iterations. Context has a title, short description, and a long description. When the contexts were ready, short scenarios were written to describe the multimedia part of PILOTs. It was expected that a teacher will shortly describe the topic before launching the PILOTs, therefore long description of the context was used as a voiceover text in the scenarios. The voiceover texts were divided into three or four parts. Important keywords from the voiceover text were highlighted and relevant photos selected for all the parts.

Technically multimedia part of PILOTs was implemented in Macromedia Flash 7. Flash was used for multimedia content because it is the most popular browser plug-in for rich media playback. Recent studies show that 98.0% of web users have Flash Player installed (Macromedia, 2004). According to the scenario the most important keywords from the voiceover text are displayed in the movie. It is possible to navigate between the different parts of the movie and see the timeline. At the end of the movie all the ready-made research questions are displayed on the screen (Figure 4).

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

In the first version, voiceover and images were linked to the main movie, which made it possible to start the playback as soon as the main movie was downloaded. The main drawback of this solution was impossibility to guarantee, that the voiceover text will be exactly synchronized with the keywords, which were displayed only for a short period of time. In the second version voiceover and images were included to the main file. Typical duration of the movie is around 2 minutes and size between 500 ... 700 KB.

The PILOTs approach emphasizes the modularity, reusability, and distributability of learning object templates. With PILOTs teacher can build up a progressive inquiry course framework by bringing different kind of PILOTs to the one course. Currently this is possible by inserting the PILOTs text to Fle3 knowledge building context and adding a link to the Flash movie. Teachers can also save the PILOTs movie from the web, upload it to their Fle3 webtop and point the link in knowledge building to the webtop. It is also possible to make ready course frameworks, which already include context texts and movies. The administrator can export and import those courses in XML format, which is compatible with Educational Modelling Language. In the future we plan to change Fle3 Knowledge Building so, that it becomes possible to export/import individual PILOTs (both text and multimedia part) as content packages.

Editing, Localizing, and Reusing PILOTs

The main idea behind teaching is to offer students learning material in an appropriate context. The awareness of learning context in a learning situation is not a new idea, but researches rarely pay attention to the framework of learning contexts or activities and emphasize more on content, neglecting context (Afonso, 2002).

From a pedagogical point of view incompatible context proved to be a serious problem (Christiansen & Anderson, 2004). According to the instructional design, context is crucial to provide sense and structure to content (Afonso, 2002). Contextualized learning material helps students catch the meaning and deep understanding of the concept, procedure, information, or skill that learners are required to learn (Martin, 1998).

The PILOT model forestalls the critical issues in terms of contextualizing learning objects. Referred to the technology-based anchored instruction, PILOTs consists of a similar idea by setting up an authentic learning context. Anchored instruction was developed by the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt and stresses the importance of placing learning within a meaningful context (Bransford, 1990).

Learning objects with provided pedagogical context enable reuse of objects, as it also becomes possible for the teacher to modify the learning methods according to the other contextualized issues such as learner group, background, and so forth (Wilson, 2001).

PILOTs can be modified and edited according to the target group and objectives of the lesson by localizing the content and providing an appropriate learning context without needing to modify the original template of an object. Editing PILOTs does not mean that teachers have to know how to use Flash or other multimedia authoring tools. In most cases the teacher will edit only the text part of PILOTs. It must be seen as a template for the progressive inquiry context, not the ready-made learning object.

CONCLUSIONS

PILOT is currently work-in-progress. The first rich media content PILOTs have been developed and internally tested in the design team.

The development process has shown that participatory design and scenario-based design methods, which include experts from different fields is suitable for developing this kind of learning objects. The design research still requires evaluation and iteration of the first prototypes.

More research is needed on testing PILOTs with teachers. First, the research should look for teachers' ways of taking the PILOTs in use, ways of editing and improving them, and testing how the improvements could be shared among other teachers. Second, research should focus on the actual use of the PILOTs among the pupils. Do the pupils find it easier to adapt in the progressive inquiry process with PILOTs or do PILOTs actually lead students to a process that is no more progressive inquiry within their own framing of the topics under study. In this case learning process may end up being only simple gathering of information to find answers to the ready-made questions without deeper cognition and regulation of the groups' work.

The evaluation of PILOTs in school lessons was planned for Autumn 2005. Additional information and the rich media part of example PILOTs are available on the project homepage: http://fle3.uiah.fi/pilot/

References

Afonso, A. P. (2002). Models for the development of learning contexts: Managing learning and knowledge in virtual environments through learning communities. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers in Education, (pp. 1504-1505), Auckland, New Zealand.

Bransford, J. (1990). Anchored instruction: Why we need it and how technology can help. In D. Nix & R. Spiro (Eds.), Cognition, education, and multimedia. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Caroll, J.M. (2000). Making use. Scenario-based design of human-computer interactions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Christiansen, J.A., & Anderson, T. (2004). Feasibility of course development based on learning objects: Research analysis of three case studies. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. Retrieved February 21, 2005, from http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Mar_04/article02.htm

Hakkarainen, K., Lonka, K., & Lipponen, L., (1999). Tutkiva oppiminen. Alykkaan toiminnan rajat ja niiden ylittaminen. Porvoo: WSOY.

IMS (2003). IMS learning design information model. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/ldv1p0/imsld_infov1p0.html

Laanpere, M., Poldoja, H., & Kikkas, K. (2004, August). The second thoughts about pedagogical neutrality of LMSs. In Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, (pp. 807-809). Joensuu, Finland. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE.

Leinonen, T., Kligyte, G., Toikkanen, T., Pietarila, J., & Dean, P. (2003). Learning with collaborative software--A guide to Fle3. Helsinki, University of Art and Design Helsinki.

Macromedia (2004). Macromedia flash player statistics. Retrieved October 26, 2004, from http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/

Martin, K. (1998). Learning in context. Issues of Teaching and Learning, 4(8). Retrived February 21, 2005, from http://www.csd.uwa.edu.au/newsletter/issue0898/learning.html

Muukkonen, H., Hakkarainen, K., & Lakkala, M. (1999). Collaborative technology for facilitating progressive inquiry: Future learning environment tools. In C. Hoadley & J. Roschelle (Eds.), Proceedings of the CSCL '99: The Third International Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (pp. 406-415). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Retrived January 19, 2004, from http://web.archive.org/web/20000916210308/http://kn.cilt.org/cscl99/A51/A51.HTM

Najjar, J., Ternier, S., & Duval, E. (2003). The actual use of metadata in ARIADNE: an empirical analysis. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://rubens.cs.kuleuven.ac.be:8989/ariadne/CONF2003/papers/NAJ2003.pdf

Wilson, S. (2001). Comment & analysis: Why context Is king. Retrived February 21, 2005, from http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content/20010827123828

HANS POLDOJA, TEEMU LEINONEN

University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

TERJE VALJATAGA

Tampere University of Technology, Finland

[e-mail]

ANTTI ELLONEN, MARJO PRIHA

Uusimaa Regional Environmental Centre, Finland

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

According to the national educational curriculum, the six-grade teacher
is starting a course in her classroom on wetlands. The course should
have a perspective of environmental conservation and lead student to
understand what are the wetlands and why they are important. Teacher is
an expert of progressive inquiry learning method and has been using Fle3
with her students for several years. She starts the planning of the
course by searching from Internet ideas on how to organize the course
with her students. With search engine she finds from the learning
material database of the Finland's Environmental Administration a PILOTs
with a title "wetlands". She looks for the description and realise that
it could be a suitable for her needs. As the PILOTs is offered by the
Environmental Administration she may trust that it is well designed and
contains valid information. She downloads the PILOTs in her own computer
and brings it to her Fle3. She takes a closer look of the content of the
PILOTs inside Fle3, makes some minor editing to some ready-made research
questions of the PILOTs. Now she is ready to use the PILOTs. She starts
the course with her students.

Figure 2. Scenario of the use of PILOTs in a six-grade environmental
education

The Wetlands
Introduction

The Wetlands is designed as a six-week progressive inquiry learning
event (2 lessons in a week) for students at the age of 13-15.

The learning event has three main phases:
  1. Finding out what is a wetland? ("Kosteikko--maan ja veden valissa")
  2. Studying different kind of wetlands and their differences ("Suo
     siella, kosteikko taalla")
  3. Why wetlands are important? ("Kosteikossa kuhisee")

These three main phases are also the contexts in the Fle3 Knowledge
Building.

The resources and facilities needed include:
  * Content:
    - Aims and Objectives of the learning activity itself.
    - Short and full descriptions of the course contexts.
    - Ignition questions, which aim is to help to get the KB on the run
    - Multimedia PILOTs of the course contexts
  * Tools:
    - Learning environment with Knowledge Building tool.
    - Image processing software
    - Pen and notebook
    - Microscope
    - Binoculars
    - Ph test kit
    - Rubber boots
    - Recording equipment
  * Communications:
    - Small groups and classroom discussions
    - Knowledge building discourse
    - Presentations

PILOTs is the new type of learning object developed to introduce the
topic and to encourage the Knowledge Building discussions.

The basic sequence of the learning event is:
  1. Introduction to the wetland's topic
    a. Multimedia "teaser" about the wetlands in general
    b. Classroom discussion about the wetlands
    c. Introduction to progressive inquiry learning
    d. First progressive inquiry session in KB
  2. Different types of wetlands
    a. Multimedia "teaser" about the wetlands in general
    b. Classroom discussion about the wetlands
    c. Introduction to progressive inquiry learning
    d. First progressive inquiry session in KB
  3. The biodiversity of wetlands
    a. Multimedia "teaser" about the wetlands in general
    b. Classroom discussion about the wetlands
    c. Introduction to progressive inquiry learning
    d. First progressive inquiry session in KB

Figure 3. The IMS Learning Design description for wetlands learning
event (Level A)