Free inquiry is at the heart of teaching and learning in colleges and universities. Through inquiry we build on existing knowledge and develop new understandings that serve society and the greater good. In addition to our own research and development efforts, we also strive to encourage our students in their own inquiry.
 
This is a topic I’ve explored on this blog, both in terms of specific strategies to support inquiry, and a more conceptual conversation on inquiry with David Slykhuis. However, if we hope to encourage our students to thrive in this area, we must first be clear on what we mean by inquiry and how we might “level up” our efforts.
 
What exactly do we mean by inquiry?
When one peruses definitions of inquiry, we find many different words and phrases, including:

• a systematic investigation
• an examination into facts or principles
• the act of asking questions
• exploration
• analysis

I think this variance in definitions and terms indicates the myriad ways we might approach inquiry in the higher ed classroom. If we want to consider incorporating more or higher level inquiry in our classes, we need to agree on a particular definition or approach. For the purposes of this post, we’ll consider inquiry as “the systematic investigation or exploration of a particular course concept.”
 
Levels of Inquiry
Of the many models available, the one that resonates most with me is the Levels of Inquiry framework introduced by Tafoya, Sunal, & Knecht (1980). They organize their framework according to level of student autonomy in the process, summarized below:

• Level 1: Confirmation or Verification – at this level, students confirm or verify a concept or principle through an instructor-designed activity in which the results are known in advance
• Level 2: Structured Inquiry – in structured inquiry, the instructor poses a question and structures as a process; the results may not be known in advance
• Level 3: Guided Inquiry – with guided inquiry, the instructor poses the question, but the students devise a process to answer the question; results are not known in advance
• Level 4: Open Inquiry – with open inquiry, the students have autonomy for all phases of the process

 
I think this framework provides a helpful way to think through the appropriate level of inquiry for a particular course project, experience or assignment. While it may seem that open inquiry is the “best” form of inquiry, it may not always be appropriate for your topic, your students, or the context of a course. For example, open inquiry is most appropriate (and essential) for a doctoral student embarking on her dissertation. A student in an introductory course may not even know what kinds of questions to ask. In this case, a confirmation or structured experience would be most appropriate.
 
What can we do, though, if when we evaluate the level of inquiry in a particular project we want to “level up?” There are several different simple strategies you can use to change your game plan.
 
Leveling Up Inquiry

1. Provide more autonomy – While some students may not be prepared to create a structure for how they explore a particular concept or question, you might provide them with choice in a number of different ways that would increase their autonomy. For example, they might choose the topic or specific focus for their inquiry. You might provide different pathways to guide the process from which they can choose. You might also provide choice for how they present their results. All these choices relate directly to Universal Design for Learning and provide higher levels of student autonomy.
2. Provide access to authentic tools – Whatever level of inquiry you opt for, you can greatly increase the authenticity of the work when you provide access to rich tools and datasets. For example, in a data-based exploration, setting students up with high yield data visualization tools can create a rich experience for students.
3. Provide access to rich resources - Similarly, when we expand the data sources, students can interrogate their way through a variety of Web-based resources, thus increasing the authenticity of the experience. When we open up research material in a case-based learning experience beyond what is included in the textbook, we enable a higher level of inquiry.
4. Consider hard scaffolds when removing the structure – In a previous post, I explored the idea of hard scaffolds – the learning supports that you design in advance to facilitate challenging work. When we shift from a level 1 or 2 activity to a level 3 guided inquiry approach, we may need to consider the kinds of scaffolds that students will need to successfully structure their work. We don’t need to provide them with the steps, but we may need to provide prompts for them to consider important variables or different approaches.
5. Provide mentoring at higher levels – When we strive to provide students with an open inquiry experience, we may need to coordinate mentors for our students. When students explore a concept or data source outside your particular area of expertise, it can be important (and perhaps essential) to connect them with a mentor to support them in the work. This can take the form of a face-to-face mentor on your campus, or a virtual mentor via Skype from the other side of the globe.

 
How do you support inquiry in your courses?
Please post your comments below.   

The following article is a guest post from Diana Theisinger, a doctoral student in the Curriculum & Educational Technology program at the College of William & Mary. While originally posted here for K-12 teachers, I think you’ll see that there are important lessons for college and university faculty to be gleaned as well. Enjoy.
 
“Teachers committed to a multiliteracies pedagogy help students understand how to move between and across various modes and media as well as when and why they might draw on specific technologies to achieve specific purposes.” –Borsheim, Merritt, & Reed, 2008
 
So, what are multiliteracies anyway?
Back in 1996, the New London Group coined the term “multiliteracies” to describe an emergent phenomenon they were studying. It resonated with practitioners and researchers alike and has grown to command a significant following in the education community. If you haven’t heard of it, the multiliteracies framework will probably seem like pretty common sense. It’s the idea that our brains shift approaches, even if very slightly, when we encounter different types of media (or different cultural and social norms). For print, we use one set of literacy skills; for videos, another; and for our Facebook news feed, yet another.

A few examples: When I read print material—say an article on BBC.com—I’m reading for understanding, but I’m also doing a lot of thinking: What else do I want to know about this topic? Does the writer seem credible? Are the related links on the sidebar interesting to me? Should I bookmark this article for a future blog post? Conversely, when I watch an instructional video or a recipe demonstration, I switch to a different part of my brain. I’m trying to take mental notes or snapshots about what’s happening so I can replicate those events later. There’s not a lot of critical thinking I would do with most of the print media I encounter, but I am applying a specific, honed set of skills to the task of interpreting the video. Then, let’s consider my Facebook news feed—that’s a whole different unique set of skills. There’s the part of my brain that’s just interested in catching up on what friends are doing; the part of my brain that’s wondering if the latest viral post will pass the Snopes test; the part of my brain that’s trying not to react to a friend’s inflammatory political post; and the part of my brain that’s nagging me to get off Facebook and get back to work. That last part may not be directly related to multiliteracies, but I would argue the rest of those processes are related.
 
Now let’s broaden the perspective a little and think about what this looks like in the classroom. I’ve written previously that I don’t put much stock in the idea of “digital natives” and I think that’s an important point to keep in mind here (and a personal bias I’m disclosing for the critical reader). We need to set aside the assumption that kids who are in K-12 classrooms right now “grew up with the Internet” and therefore innately know how to use it for learning. Then, we need to confront the fact that we aren’t teaching them much about how to use digital tools for learning. Smartphones and tablets are nearly ubiquitous for a large portion of US society, so I’m not arguing whether kids know how to do things like download apps or find loopholes to get around firewalls. What I’m saying is that we need to move toward a paradigm where we explicitly teach kids, from elementary school to college, how to optimize digital tools and media to help them be more productive, learn more effectively, and complete tasks more efficiently.
 
How can I support my students in developing multiliteracies?
One way to do that is to view digital media through the multiliteracies framework. If we accept the assumption that kids do, in fact, need to be taught how to use digital tools for learning, then we can move forward with the premise that, just as we taught them to read print text when they were in early elementary school, we need to teach them how to make meaning from print media, podcasts, videos, mashups, tweets, and anything else they might encounter on the Web. Okay, maybe not anything they might encounter, but at least the things that might help them learn and do school-related tasks better, faster, and smarter.
 
Here’s what I think teachers need to know about multiliteracies to implement this framework in the classroom:

• Teach students how to be skeptical, critical, fact-checking readers. Tell them about the importance of finding multiple, reputable sources that support the same conclusion. Give them concrete examples of reputable sources. Show them this comic from xkcd.
• Teach students how to be skeptical, critical, fact-checking viewers, too. Critical reading isn’t just about reading. That’s the whole point of multiliteracies. A lot of us learn really well from watching—better than we learn from a textbook or a lecture. And, especially since the rise of the Flipped Classroom movement, there is so much instructional content online in video form. It’s great for students to know where and how to find reputable math and science tutorials. Not so great if they don’t know how to differentiate between the quality stuff and the junk.
• Show them how to use a variety of tools to reach diverse audiences. Borsheim (from the quotation at the top of this post) gives an example of this: “I asked students to adapt their traditional research paper into a media genre appropriate for reaching an audience outside the classroom. For example, one student, who wrote about issues related to healthy relationships, filmed and edited a short informational film intended for a teenage audience….The process of composing a traditional research paper and another type of text raised students’ awareness of the ways and reasons they might use media to reach audiences and achieve diverse purposes.” (p. 88)
• Similarly, train students how to use appropriate digital tools to make planning, writing, and collaborating easier. I’m a huge fan of Mendeley for organizing references and Google Docs for co-writing papers. But there are so many more options available and the choice of the right tool can be daunting. Help guide students toward smart choices.
• Encourage students to consider social and cultural perspectives and differences. Just as we'd teach them to consider bias in a global-warming report that was sponsored by a pro-oil lobbying group, we need to teach them to identify social and cultural bias: Is that really weird, or is it weird to me because it’s different and I don’t know what to make of it? How can I learn more about that? 
  ​ 

The key is to help students develop a robust set of literacy skills that will be applicable not only to what we currently conceptualize as media, but also to the next big thing as well. It really comes down to some of the same skills teachers have been trying to get students to master since the one-room schoolhouse days: think critically, ask smart questions, consider how specific examples fit into the big picture, and know how to communicate what you know.
 
How do you help students to develop these skills?
Please post your comments below.   

I just returned from the Teaching Professor Technology Conference in New Orleans over the weekend. I was there to present integrating 21st century skills in college coursework. Whenever I go to a conference focusing on teaching and learning, I want to really up my game. At these kinds of conferences, there is an increased expectation for participation, interaction, and engagement with the attendees. This includes being on point with my slides.

I know how many folks scoff at the use of PowerPoint as being passé or perhaps too corporate. I honestly think it gets a bad rap. It isn't the tool that's bad, in my opinion. Slides can be used in a way that help you more effectively communicate your ideas in a visual manner and “speak” to your audience. I want to create visually pleasing slides, but I also need to communicate information as well – particularly when, as with this conference, presenters are encouraged to post their slides on the conference Web site.
 
How then can we communicate effectively and provide conference attendees with the takeaways they need?
 
Starting points for effective slides
There are a number of great resources that provide guidance on designing powerful slide presentations. I particularly like Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen approach. Nancy Duarte’s Slideology also provides a more technical, but no less inspiring approach. We know that there are some helpful general rules for creating effective slide presentations for conferences and teaching:

• No complete sentences on the slides
• No more than 3-5 bullets or ideas per slide (a single key idea is best)
• High quality visuals should connect well with and augment the key idea from the slide

 
All you need to do is watch the next keynote from an Apple event or check out some of the examples from the sites above, and you’ll see some visually stunning presentations. Unfortunately, these kinds of presentations may not provide the depth of information (on screen at least) that a conference presentation or class session demands.
 
What’s a professor to do?
 
Leverage the handout
One particular concept from Garr Reynolds that has stuck with me for years and has made a huge difference for me is to avoid the “slideument.” A slideument occurs when we try to include all the content for a presentation within our slides. We’ve all experienced this, and many of us are probably guilty of creating one. You know what I mean – 19 bullet points on a slide in roughly 14 pt font. When we do this, we create lousy looking slides. They’re also overwhelming. Richard Mayer’s research on multimedia learning explains through 10 different principles why this approach is a bad idea and wildly ineffective for communicating our ideas.
 
What Reynolds argues is that when we approach our slides this way, what we’ve really done is created a presentation and document in one. Unfortunately, these presentations are neither effective slides nor documents. They’re slideuments. He explains that:

• “Projected slides should be as visual as possible and support our points quickly, efficiently and powerfully.”
• Handouts are completely different and should highlight key ideas, provide references, and essentially synthesize the message we are trying to convey.

 
When we develop both slides and handouts separately, we can leverage the power of both much more than when we merge them.
 
Slides and handouts
I think of the slides as a visual representation of the ideas I hope to convey in a way that helps the participants to connect with the content on a different level. I try to use big, bold images with as little text as possible. This tends to draw in the audience much more effectively than densely packed slides. Here is the slide deck from my 21st century skills presentation as an example.
 
I see the handout as a takeway – something attendees or students can take with them after the session. Ideally, the handout will have a similar visual feel to the presentation and inspire the reader to think further about the ideas or experience. This handout from New Orleans synthesizes the key points and provides a copy of the Higher Education Learning Activity Types taxonomy that we used in the session. This handout I created for a Lilly Conference last Spring is more action-oriented and supported the interactivity in the session. 
 
I’ve always got more to learn and develop with my presentations, but through deliberate practice and the great ideas from others, I’m making progress. Breaking apart the slides and handout is a great first step.
 
What are your best tips for effective presentations?
Please post your comments below.   

The further students move through upper level courses in their major and the more complex our learning goals for our classes become, the more student supports are required to help them be successful. The term we often use in education to describe these supports is scaffolds. While some disciplinary jargon can be trite or unnecessarily confusing, I really like the idea of scaffolds.
 
Scaffolding in construction projects provides the necessary support structure to enable the carpenters and other crew members to do their work. In building a skyscraper or even working up high on a home, these scaffolds are absolutely essential. When these supports are no longer required, they are gradually removed.
 
Learning scaffolds function in much the same way. They provide the necessary guidance and support that students need when they are new to a concept, procedure, or skill. When they are no longer necessary to enable students to be successful, they are removed so that students can function independently.
 
Common Learning Scaffolds
If you think back to English class in middle school, I’ll bet you remember being introduced to the “five paragraph essay.” This format consists of an introductory paragraph with an assertion, three supporting paragraphs with some form of evidence, and a summary concluding paragraph. This relatively simple approach to helping students to structure an evidence-based argument is a very concrete, albeit simplistic, way to help students develop the habits of mind for argument structure. Once students have some practice with this approach, the teacher removes this structure and encourages students to develop more sophisticated and creative approaches to convey their ideas.
 
And who can forget the classic atomic structure diagram with electrons orbiting neatly around the nucleus in a perfect circle? We later learned that the structure of an atom is much more complex and messy than this simple diagram reflects. However, these more sophisticated understandings are built with the help of this initial, more simplistic way of understanding the concept.
 
One interesting contribution by Tom Brush and John Saye exploring learning scaffolds in historical inquiry through computer based simulations is the categorization into hard and soft scaffolds (Brush & Saye, 2002). They define the two types of scaffolds in this way (p. 2):

• Hard scaffolds are static supports that can be anticipated and planned in advance based upon typical student difficulties with a task.
• Soft scaffolds are dynamic, situation-specific aids provided by a teacher or peer to help with the learning process

The two examples I offered above (i.e. five paragraph essay and atomic diagram) are what Brush & Saye would describe as hard scaffolds. They are built around an understanding of how students struggle with a particular concept or process and are designed to help the students overcome these obstacles. Other examples of hard scaffolds are pre-created concept maps that students complete, specific strategies to solve problems or work through an experiment, and structured case studies that walk students through the process.
Soft scaffolds come more in the form of “just-in-time” support during a learning experience. For example, when we see that a class discussion is headed off the rails or students seem to be developing misconceptions related to the topic, we can  redirect the conversation through a carefully formed question or simply reframe an idea. This can happen in an online discussion board in much the same way. To effectively facilitate a discussion online, we need to be “present” and interject strategically into the conversation when necessary. I have also stopped a class working in groups when I see multiple examples of questions or misunderstandings for a brief discussion or demonstration to get them back on track. These are not often issues you can anticipate, but these soft scaffolds can help to save the day in many instances.

How to Determine the Appropriate Scaffolds
 Whenever I’m teaching a topic or concept that I know or suspect might be challenging for students, I try to anticipate the trouble points. These can also be identified based on prior experience in teaching the same topic. In these cases, I work to develop some form of hard scaffold in advance that I may or may not choose to use in the class session, depending on how things unfold. It’s comforting to know, though, that I have a support planned out in case I need it. In other cases, I implement the hard scaffold from the outset. In either case, I try to determine the minimum level of support needed and try to remove it as quickly as I can to help students develop independence in their learning.
 
Soft scaffolds can be more tricky. If you’re like me, it can be difficult to think on your feet – particularly when a carefully designed lesson seems to be faltering. I do my best in these instances to redirect students, particularly drawing on past experience when it’s relevant. My other strategy is to “unpack” the class session afterwards and make notes on any challenges I encountered. As best I can, I then reflect on the experience to learn from the challenge so that I can better anticipate the need for a hard or soft scaffold in subsequent class sessions.
 
The reality is that teaching and learning is challenging stuff. Where we can anticipate challenges and put scaffolds in place, we should do so. Where we can’t, we try to adjust on the fly. In all cases, we should strive to be reflective and learn from our experience to grow as teachers.
 
What kind of scaffolds do you find effective?
Please post your comments below.