Inquiry Page Retreat Notes
Summarized by: Karen Lunsford
Time: July 27, 2001, ~9:00am-4:00pm
Place: Levis Center, 4th floor, rectangular seminar room with skylights and movable walls; also, the accompanying outside deck. Hazy sunshine both outside and through the skylights.
Attending: Ann Bishop, Heather Booth, Dave Brown, Chip Bruce, Sharon Comstock, Bryan Heidorn, Dan Kauwell, William (Bill) Kist, Jeanne Link, Karen Lunsford, Bharat Mehra, Trudy Morritz, Michael Mullin, Michael Novak, Akihiko Takahashi, Harold (Hal) Taylor, Judy Taylor, Michael Taylor, Mihye Won
8:30-9:10 Coffee, tea, pastries & bagels.
Various Inquiry teams overcame a few stubborn technology glitches (the easel, the projector, the laptop....)
9:15-9:50 Topics of Interest
Chip opened the meeting by suggesting that we model ourselves on the DIME meetings, in which people volunteer topics of interest, and the group decides which ones to take up for that day. In this case, Chip asked all of us to go around the table to introduce ourselves and to mention our areas of interest/current inquiries. Sharon Comstock took notes on a large note-pad so that they could be seen by the group; Karen has supplemented them here with her own notes. Starting from Chip's left:
Judy Taylor - Has been teaching 2nd- and 3rd-graders in multi-age classrooms. Her question was about how to design Inquiry activities to accommodate multi-age children in a classroom.
Hal Taylor - Has also been teaching in multi-age classrooms (8, 9, 10-year olds). Similar question as Judy's. Hal told the story of one of his students talking electronically with astronomer David Leek (sp?). She asked such sophisticated questions over chat that the astronomer thought that he was communicating with Hal. Visual equivalence of stunned silence when she wrote back that she was only 8. Astronomer eventually replied, "Oh, that changes things."
Michael Taylor - (Age 8) Was creating a picture of a Ninja (turtle?) to show to the group. Tall purple mountains in the background. Centered & foregrounded was a Ninja accompanied by symbolic colors/markings, wearing triangle-spiked shoes to enable him to climb the mountains and over the clouds.
Jeanne Link - In the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS). Asked how the philosophy of Inquiry related to the applicability of Inquiry.
Michael Mullin - Part of the CyberShakespeare project and NCSA. Interested in interactivity -modeling visualization.
Heather Booth - GSLIS. Asked the question, what is the "why" of inquiry?
Sharon Comstock - Chicago. Interested in engaging with Dewey-based education, particularly for her son. Also interested in the uses of technology with children in an inquiry-based environment.
Bharat Mehra - Interested in socially-grounded methodologies, and in the uses of inquiry in/as situated evaluation.
Akihiko Takahashi - Described a typical Japanese practice of teachers observing other teachers' lessons, and contrasted this to a typical US practice of isolated classrooms. Interested in inquiry as a collaborative activity.
Ann Bishop - GSLIS. Interested in local community settings for inquiry & grassroots movements/issues that involve inquiry. Also interested in the participatory design of the Inquiry site -where the users directly affect the design of the site -as well as in the nature of the Inquiry Page as a community.
Michael Novak - math & science teacher, involved with an NCSA Education Portal (Biology Workbench). What tools are useful for inquiry (identification of processes)? What tools might cross over between the two projects (Inquiry Page & Biology Workbench)? What social/community/affective frameworks might be further developed to support and encourage use of technology?
Bill Kist - currently doing teacher-training in a state with high-stakes testing; new teachers are skeptical of/afraid to use Dewey/inquiry-based methods because they are used to the didactic classroom. How can educators of teachers make inquiry-based education meaningful/important to these new teachers under these circumstances?
Dan Kauwell - Developing software, a graphical interface to support searches and other work. Interested in authentic uses of the Inquiry-page/tools in inquiry processes. Also interested in intuitive organization of web-based tools to support inquiry.
Trudy Morritz - Interested in applying inquiry in public health education, and interested in developing ways to communicate what inquiry-based education/methods might be. Like others in the group, interested in switching people away from the didactic-based classroom.
Karen Lunsford - Center for Writing Studies. Interested in the Inquiry Page as a collaboratory, and how it might be used to support writing tasks, particularly courses in business & technical writing.
Mihye Won - College of Education. Question: How can one integrate inquiry-based teaching methods in diverse classrooms?
Bryan Heidorn - Developing database retrieval software (BIBE). Interested in the real-time use of digital tools. For example, learners engaged in an Ecowatch project might find insects in the field. With the right tools, they might both contact other experts in the field to ask them to help them identify a specimen; they might contact an entomologist "on call," who could ask them to manipulate & photograph the specimen to provide the appropriate identification; they might contribute to the database by entering these photographs. So, interested in facilitating collaboration in the field as well as using inquiry activities to build better resources.
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Chip Bruce - Raised questions about what directions the group is heading in; what paths are we taking and how should we take advantage of opportunities. Questions -
- How to deal with requests for workshops?
- How might we coordinate better with different groups/partners?
- In what ways and to what extent should the group build international components/connections?
- In what ways and to what extent should the group build partnerships with other educational groups (e.g., DICEP, DIME, Eduportal)?
- How should we handle the potential for the increased institutionalization of the Inquiry Page (e.g., distance-learning courses; grants; workshops)?
- In what specific ways should the website be improved?
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9:50-10:40 Discussion on reasons for/justifications for 'doing Inquiry'
Since many of the questions/interests involved questions of justifying Inquiry approaches to others, the group took up that topic first.
Chip - cited Frances Jacobson Harris [note from KL: see http://www.library.uiuc.edu/faculty/jacobson.htm] - Do teachers see the practicality & relevance of inquiry? Hal asked whether Chip was specifying inquiry-in-education in particular. Chip clarified that he saw inquiry as learning in life in whatever environment. What are the reasons for doing inquiry?
Karen - has done some interviews on behalf of the business & technical writing program. The report from employers of our science & technical students is that our graduates do well when faced with well-defined problems, but have trouble with defining their own questions & with thinking outside of the box. Need to incorporate more self-defined problems in the curriculum.
Bill - Cited Louise Rosenblatt & reader response. [Note from KL: see http://www.br.cc.va.us/vcca/i11chur.html for one summary of her work. ] Reading is a personal, unique, inquiring experience....the point is not to read to find precise answers. Chip - Noted that Louise Rosenblatt is still going strong in education; when called to be informed that she would be receiving an award and would be giving a speech, she asked whether it would be appropriate to talk about current national proposals for education and their ill effect on children.
Bharat - Mentioned that unique and individual inquiry is important, but that he also wanted to connect this to larger communities & action-centered research.
Bryan - Pointed to students learning not just answers, but processes for developing answers, and that these processes are appropriate not just for school, but for life. The idea is to teach students how to think about things differently and to act upon those thoughts.
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Heather - Noted that Bill had mentioned that his undergraduates are often resistant to inquiry-centered learning techniques. She asked whether younger children are also resistant, whether inquiry is more natural.
Hal - Responded that he has seen a range among younger children as well, from those who ask, "Yes, but what do I have to do to get an A?" to those who seemed more engaged in genuine inquiry. The problem, Hal explained, is how to allow/enable young students to engage in inquiry at the same time enabling them to pass the mandated tests.
Michael M. - Is there a breakdown by class rank for a student's ability to use inquiry well?
Hal - The bright children will be able to do fine no matter what, but the question is how to get the middle children in a position to pass the exams. It all goes to definitions of what's good science? what's good teaching? (Bill - and what's a good school?).
Bryan - Inquiry environments may motivate students to learn, and having information contextualized in the inquiry environment may aid in helping them "get" it because the information is useful, not just something to be memorized.
Dan - Inquiry is natural across kids, but it can get programmed out of students early on (didactic vs inquiry-based teaching).
Hal - agreed. Humans learn a lot between 12-20 months by testing things. We give up a natural way of learning in schools.
Bill - Statistics on US literacy are alarming. Even though we have a high literacy rate, most people do not read for pleasure....one of the lowest rates for reading. Somehow, the pleasure of reading is killed.
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Michael Novak - Introduced 2 issues. Remarked that if teachers are given the time & opportunity to do one-on-one instruction, they tend to go back to an inquiry model. The problem is that typical class sizes & structures lead to many constraints.
Hal - Agreed. The structure of classes changes learning. One problem is that educational policy is additive: policy-makers pile new things onto a class/teachers, but do not take away any requirements. The result is a sometimes incoherent, and overwhelming pile of standards.
Michael Novak -The other issue: Students have different epistemologies/approaches to learning. Some tend towards a more absolutist stance, some are more comfortable with a relativistic stance.
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Chip remarked that participants appeared to be focusing more on the barriers to inquiry. Returned to the question, "What are some reasons why to do inquiry in the first place?"
Sharon - Commented that the directors and board of the U of Chicago Lab Schools have decided to "put the lab back into the Lab." The lower school (up to 5th grade) is lab-based; the lessons are based on children's initiative. But at 5th grade, the schools lose the inquiry-base needed to maintain a critical edge because they are shifting to prepare students for prep schools. Two concerns that have been voiced: a) frustration regarding changing policies b) inquiry methods may be more stressful on students
Picking up on the remark about inquiry being more stressful -
Dan - Yes, it's easier to take the online multiple-choice exam, and get a certain # of points than it is to be involved in an open-ended inquiry.
Chip - Cited Dewey's continuity of experience theory. If you want people to think in a certain way, then there needs to be practice in that way...for example, a connected experience of thinking critically.
Bryan - In this case, the continuity of experience with certain kinds of educational settings is creating the stress - the inquiry classroom breaks the typical pattern of the fill-in-the-blank, get-the-answers-right-on-the-test.
Dan & Hal - Does everyone really want people to think on their own? Politicians don't seem to. Ironically, testing standards tend to be lowered to accommodate a middling crowd. One problem is that people say, "Well, Inquiry is ok for gifted students, but the rest of them can't handle it." Hal - cited the example of a special education student being able to get algebra along with the rest of the inquiry-based class. Hal could show these results to legislators.
Michael N - Remarked that the artifacts need to make inquiry processes transparent (part of the problem is that results/artifacts are taken out of the contexts which produce them, so people don't see how students get from here to there)
Sharon - Frustration because teachers see good results with inquiry, light up, but then return to other methods.
Hal - Mentioned parents talking to him about the curriculum, demanding tests. Hal asks them about how they have taught their children to speak a native language. Asks them wouldn't it be better to have more learning in this manner. Also, one of the things that differentiates children is how quickly they can adjust to new, different environments.
Chip - Cited Wells in saying that the inquiry-based experience does seem qualitatively different from other experiences. Wells is talking about an aha moment near the end of the semester.
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Heather - Remarked that although there was some resistance to the inquiry-based assignment in Ann's course, she knew of people who got excited about their projects and continued them.
Ann - Commenting on her rationale & experience in the course: Students had projects that they needed time to explore. She wanted to provide space for students to think about what had brought them to GSLIS and what they wanted to get out of it. Also, students' experiences were quite diverse, so as a teacher, she needed a more flexible way to tap into the rich experiences of the group.
Hal - Need a successful balance between diversity and uniformity in the classroom -two key terms.
Chip - Matched this comment up to Dewey's comments on "interactivity" which is the interaction/transaction between the learner and the curriculum.
Akihiko - Asked, "What are the circumstances under which traditional teaching works?" He pointed to the martial arts, in which instructors/learners follow a very set program, and this is a successful method for producing a few experts. The conditions are a) people must be self-motivated, must be keen on learning a particular discipline, and b) several people will drop out of the program.
(I'm not sure who asked this) Is inquiry-based learning more democratic?
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BREAK
11:10-12:00 Inquiry & Collaboration
For this conversation, the group had moved to the outside deck to take advantage of the open-work, metal chairs, benches & a couple of tables. Half of the group was in the sun, half in the shade, with some people switching midway through. It was breezy enough that the list of topics had to be securely anchored in a corner. Chip had received a list of "famous last lines" from someone, and the conversation started with each member of the group reading at least one entry from the list.
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Michael M. - asked whether people had noticed a difference in genders in collaboration?
Akihiko - responded that a difference he had noticed was one between cultures -that in his experience, collaboration assignments had worked well for a Hispanic group, but not so well for a Caucasian group.
Karen - remarked that the collaborative assignments for her course worked only when she provided some protection of the individual grades from the effects of group work.
Chip - noted that there is a tension between individual achievement and group work.
Ann - noted that the counseling services have seen an increase in student stress over group work, and that they've begun to offer workshops on group work.
Chip - cited a recent court case in which parents have sued a teacher because the teacher required peer review in class. They claim that this breaks the educational privacy rules (in which an individual student's records must be kept private) because peers can see a student's work. The case has gone to the Supreme Court.
Hal & Dan - Let's stop educating lawyers :-)
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Bill - (directing question to Michael M.) What is the current thinking in film/arts/orchestra about the director? Is it collaborative....or, to what extent is it "Director is King"?
Michael M - In one theater he knew, the fallacy was that it was collaborative, just as in Shakespeare's age. But, the reality was that the director already had an idea in mind about how the scene should be acted and where actors should position themselves, and the group would discover it. Also, we tend to refer to so-and-so's production of X, so that puts emphasis on the director, even though a lot of the credit should go to the designers. Michael asked two questions -did anyone know anything about artistic collaborations on the Web? How about successful collaborative teaching on the Web?
Chip - noted that team teaching is often a successful experience, but that a major problem is department accountability. Administrators are apt to count a teacher's role in a team-taught course as only 1/2 or a 1/3 course-credit of work, even though a teacher spends as much time (or more) on a team-taught course as on an individually taught course.
Bill - commented that many K-12 teachers do not want to collaborate because they do not want to give up directorship over their own rooms/classes.
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Dan - asked whether web-based teaching lends itself to inquiry. Many web courses appear to rely on lecture-oriented, traditional didactic practices.
Jeanne - answered that Chip's class was an inquiry- and web-based course. One key element was that the LEEP students had bonded during the GSLIS "boot-camp," and this bonding made all the difference. Noted that during a class discussion, people would work together --different members of the group would open new browser windows, behind the main conversation, and then report back what they had found.
Trudy - mentioned that a set lesson plan that is simply translated to the web does not equal inquiry. She summarized a successful assignment that might be translated to web resources: her son was given a budget and asked to plan a trip. It had to include stops at certain places -good practice for math and critical thinking skills. Would be easier now to find such information on the web.
Bryan - commented that a concern is that when people collaborate, it is sometimes difficult to get credit for one's work.
Chip - mentioned Collins, a psychologist, who noted that learning involves first some discomfort/disequilibrium/difficulty, and then satisfaction. People can work with/learn from each other to ease that discomfort.
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Heather - commented that professional business settings (as opposed to educational ones) appear to be more team-oriented; that they emphasize team-membership over individual work.
Bryan - responded that a business concern is that there are often conflicts among team members. One reason for the increase of group work in education is that businesses would like employees to receive more training in collaboration.
Chip - remarked that in his experience of annual reviews, one of the criteria was whether the person was interested in advancing himself/herself or in contributing to the company. Want employees who contribute to the company.
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Heather - Should that criterion be worked into grading in school?
Michael - One thing to keep in mind is that in corporations, teams are more usually divided into clearly defined roles.
Hal - Agreed. The meaning of "team" differs. Often, it can mean that a tyrant leads, and that the team's responsibility is to support/advance the tyrant.
Akihiko - Asked questions: What is going on through collaborative work? What did you learn? The problem is that many of the discussion/collaboration processes are tacit. Must find ways to make them visible. He has had students write comments to reflect on classroom discussions so that they will see what they are learning from each other.
Ann - Agreed that one of the concerns in her course is to account for contributions that students make to each other's learning. It's not just good citizenship to participate in a course; feedback to/from peers is a concrete learning experience. In a course that she was thinking about, there were not as many elected, directly chosen collaborative teams; she ended up clustering related topics into groups, and the group members were responsible for keeping up with each other's projects. It was not collaboration as partnership, but it was still a form of collaboration.
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Chip - Mentioned that one way to think about a course's success is to look at students' future engagements with projects. What do you see after the course? Do people become engaged enough to continue?
Heather - Some people from Ann's class are continuing projects, such as a project on connecting school and public libraries.
Bill - One thing that he sees his courses doing is modeling scholarship. Many of his student-teachers know that they must get their MA within 10 years of graduation. Inquiry projects create a line of research that they plan to pick up again when they return for the MA.
Chip - Cited a title, "Uncovering the curriculum" - the idea is to open doors, open up exploration instead of covering a subject in a semester.
Bill - Mentioned a similar, personal experience - that perhaps a more inquiry-based approach in his own learning as a child might have led to his doing more science as an adult.
Chip - Told us about Sir Harold W. Kroto, [note from kl: http://www.almaz.com/nobel/chemistry/1996b.html ] a Nobel prize winner who worked with fullerenes (or, more accurately, described the buckyball, a chemical molecule with 60 carbon atoms, shaped like a soccer ball). Kroto said that one of the most important influences on his thinking was the sketches of cathedrals that he did as a youngster. He also played the dulcimer. Rich set of resources/objects to rely upon when he was thinking about chemistry.
Bill - Cited Dava Sobel's _Longitude_ and _Galileo's Daughter_ as fascinating discipline-crossing accounts.
Chip - Mentioned a study by (was it Regelski??) that demonstrated that when teachers collaborate together across disciplines, each tends to trivialize the "other" discipline.
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Ann - Wondered whether learning before the establishment of the educational systems we know today was more inquiry-based; i.e., the Grand Tour. Karen disagreed -not necessarily, since other constraints were in place.
Sharon - Commented on home schooling, which is more traditional and so often follows children's interests. Cited the example of an astronomer who developed his talents because he was well-skilled in fixing machinery as a farm boy.
Michael N. - Noted that one model for education that people don't always notice is how they go about pursuing their avocations or hobbies. Hobbies are inquiry situations since you usually choose to learn more about something that interest you.
Bryan - Raised the topic of "traditional" again (picking up from Sharon) - Think of apprenticeships as mentoring.
Chip - Mentioned cognitive apprenticeships, where you work with someone and do small pieces of the task. Scaffolding.
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Akihiko - Commented that much of this learning depends on the individual's environment.....hobbies are not necessarily universal.
Hal - Right....the standardized tests tell you where the expensive homes are and where the professionals live. Strong correlation between socio-economic status and scores on tests. Karen -agreed; the same thing has been found for writing placement exams.
Chip - Told the scary finding that by the end of the first week of kindergarten, children are placed into tracks.
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Hal - Described one of his accidental discoveries that turned into a terrific inquiry activity. He bumped into a coupon collector at his local grocery store; she was buying 3 carts of groceries for $49. It was her avocation. He asked her to show his 2nd-grade students how to do that. They got really sharp at it -in the first month, they saved their parents $1,600 (collectively), and after that, they saved even more.
Bill - Are these units repeated?
Hal - Yes. This has also been done as a semester-long activity in which students have a certain budget and each group provides lunch (parents take the groups shopping). When the first group overspent, they had to come up with a way to replenish the fund. They decided to charge for the lunches ($1.55). They did all the cooking, too. The food got to be so good that teachers were buying lunches from the students.
Sharon - Commented that one problem is to get parents as engaged and available as these are.
Chip - Announced that lunch had arrived.
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LUNCH - Michael Novak demonstrated some of the features of his work, EduPortal. The URL will follow soon.
1:00 Understandings and Instantiations of Inquiry
By this time, the group had moved back indoors. At Sharon's initiative, retreat members went around the table to talk about various understandings of / instantiations of "inquiry."
Chip - started off by musing that although he works with inquiry methods a great deal, his definition could sound a bit too general or vacuous when articulated. He saw inquiry as a way of deriving meaning from experience -and this is not limited to educational settings, but includes any experiences in life. Also, even the most structured regimen affords inquiry methods (sometimes incidentally or regardless of other motives). Chip cited Dewey's idea of the continuity of experience...that learning can prepare one for further learning.
Dave - asked Chip what the opposite of inquiry would be, since so many things could fit under the definition.
Chip - responded that he saw it as the difference between the living tree and dried, dead lumber. Learning should be alive and engaged rather than cut & dried.
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Going around the table from Chip's right.....
Bryan - saw inquiry as an action or study taken to answer a question or to address an issue. Or, rather, the objective is not necessarily to answer the question, but to engage in asking and exploring questions.
Karen - identified inquiry methods with a certain format for writing introductions, one that sets up a question for a paper and the reasons why the question is worthwhile. One thing that the group hasn't addressed is how do we know when a question will sustain an inquiry process -the 'worthiness' of questions is something that's negotiated among learners.
Dave - explained that he resonated with Bryan's response. Science is a living endeavor. Inquiry is more than a particular teaching approach; it's a way of being that focuses on means rather than the end.
Bill - agreed with Chip's definition of inquiry as being alive. Associated with the metaphor of the tree -not so much a tree as a journey or a path in which what's important is not necessarily answering the question, unless the question is a guidepost on the journey. Introduced Frost's lines: Two roads diverged in a wood and I - / I took the one less traveled by/ And that has made all the difference. Ended up drawing upon the paperboard an illustration of how it's not just the fork that is important, but where you end up at the far end, i.e., the difference. Asked the question, "What are the conditions needed to be set up to foster inquiry?" Cited Steiner's Notebooks of the Mind, which talks about the balance needed in a creative endeavor between individual and collaborative activities.
Bryan - asked, "Is that the purpose of the Inquiry Page? To create the conditions to foster inquiry?"
Ann - commented that the reflection part of inquiry is very hard to get across in a class -that it is hard to convey the purpose of reflecting on something. In one course, the best reflection she saw occurred in the middle of the course - it was a way of developing the meaning of the course as well as developing a sense of students' individuality. Has been looking for ways to recreate this as a reflection on a particular assignment.
Bharat - was concerned that the cycle as pictured on the Inquiry Page could be seen as a trap, as a way of trying to get to a specific question. Rather, it could be a way of understanding another person's definition of who they are, because inquiry means having a stake and ownership in what you're doing.
Sharon - defined inquiry as a learner-centered activity; all learning begins with the learner. Learners create knowledge from experience and from authentic engagement. Commented that kids tend to reflect and integrate new knowledge quickly.
Heather - thought about inquiry in terms of libraries - a librarian's job is to facilitate inquiry processes, to facilitate information finding. One must have a passion for finding things out.
Michael M - picked up on the metaphors of the path/journey and the tree. Commented that sometimes you must trust in serendipity -that you'll find out stuff, discover new things. Trust in plain ol' Irish luck.
Jeanne - referred back to the Frost diagram behind her. The fork in the road equals a choice -the learner in an inquiry-based situation gets to make an authentic choice. This validates having confidence in the learner; it is a mode of respect to people (esp. students) to be given authentic choices. She sees herself learning with people in a library with the questions that they have chosen.
Hal - declined to define inquiry per se because sometimes definitions detract from things. Discussed the metaphors -rather than a forked road, he saw a spider's web. Pluck one place on the web, and all parts hum. A definition is too linear; cannot capture this unfolding & refolding of discoveries. Compared the difficulty of defining inquiry to the difficulty of defining the taste of strawberries. Instead, he preferred to say,
"Inquiry is . . ."
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Chip - picked up on the idea of difficulties of capturing a many-faceted thing from multiple perspectives. Drew a Necker Cube on the paperboard and asked people what they saw. [note from Chip: See see http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/%7Echip/show/constructivism/. Also, Ihde, Don (1977). Experimental phenomenology: An introduction. New York: Putnam.]
Sharon -grocery bag on its side; origami; Bryan - Ys and Ts; Dave - two-dimensional figure; Chip - insect; truncated pyramid, perhaps in motion; Jeanne - an argyle (as in an argyle pattern).
Michael M - cited Edward Tufte's work on the visual representations of reality. [note from kl: The visual display of quantitative information (1983); Visual explanations: images and quantities, evidence and narrative (1997); Envisioning information. 2nd printing, with revisions (1991). ] Also cited further optical illusions.
Chip - compared the challenge to Edwin Abbott's _Flatland_, which is a 2-dimensional world that encounters the 3rd dimension only in slices, only partially. For inquiry, we are 'living' in a 2-dimensional world; a child is a 3rd dimension, and we are only partially aware of everything that's going on. Other dimensions are only very partially visible.
Bryan - plus, there are changes over time. We have to trust that people will make connections where needed.
Chip - As difficult as this is, we still need some sort of definition as a working theory. The problem comes when this definition is institutionalized.
Dave - commented that the classroom is usually even more linear than even the 2-dimensional world, especially with prescribed 'coverage' rules.
Chip - right; we need to make something that's 1-dimensional into something at least 2-dimensional; great if we can get the other dimensions in there. The danger of laying out a definition is that it will be taken up as the "right way"
Hal - Heuristic would be a better term.
Chip - We don't want to cut off engagement.
Bill - There's a debate in the U.S. over curriculum development. How can the Inquiry Page project inform this debate over the curriculum, especially the idea of "scripting" courses for the teacher?
Hal - The problem with writing all of this down is that it can become a trap.
Bill - But the writing process itself can be seen as progressive.
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2:15 BREAK
2:30 - ~3:45 Inquiry Page Development Discussion
Discussion of plans for mission & vision statements, workshop kits, wish lists, and how to sequence and/or map units. [note from kl: Some of these ideas have been taken up and implemented by one of the smaller, on-campus groups. ]
Chip - opened floor to ideas for the site, posters, workshops, other projects. What would be helpful?
Sharon - asked how we can better accommodate people who do not have Internet skills. For example, how do we let people know that they can click the words in the left side-bar?
Bill - asked where the mission & vision statements were.
Sharon - suggested moving discussions to the electronic dialogue page.
?? - commented that the 'up' arrows on the add-a-unit page were causing confusion. People didn't realize that they meant 'go back to the top' and thought that they were suggesting an optimum path through the add-a-unit page.
Several people - How do we deal with the varying quality of the units on the Inquiry Page? After workshops, we often end up with dozens of 'empty' units that people have started to fill out, but have not completed.
Chip - Suggested that we develop a new category system: Karen -units in use, Chip -completed units, under construction.
Sharon - problem with "in use" is that it sounds like an airplane's lavatory -you can't use it when someone else is.
Dave - Is there any way to track the spinoffs to determine use?
Michael M. - perhaps units ought to expire 2 weeks after a workshop if no one has returned to work on them.
Heather - suggested a checklist - units for the classroom; units for exploration.
Chip - one difference between the Inquiry Page and other information sites is that many info sites are for reading only, whereas the Inquiry Page is a site for writing.
Sharon - it's a resource & personal creation tool.
Dave - has it been used that way?
Michael M. - is there an activity counter?
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Chip - raised the issue of sequencing the units. On the one hand, some of his units could be read as extremely broad, essentially outlining activities for a whole course. On the other hand, he wants to draw upon those same units for shorter course units. There's a question about how to develop a course syllabus on the Inquiry Page. Link units? The trick is that the Inquiry philosophy is that you discover a sequence as you go through the process; but for a course, it's useful to have things planned out ahead of time (so that, for example, you can order course books). What do you do first?
Ann - noted that Inquiry units allow students to record the process so that it becomes visible (to them, to teachers).
Dave - suggested linking units as a concept web. Would it be possible to pluck an activity from a unit, and then have the computer suggest a good path through the next related units? This would allow syllabus creation.
Chip - suggested the software program, Walden's Path (which tracks where you've been)
Sharon - mentioned that Infolab at Northwestern is working on Watson.
Dave - what we need to do is to allow multi-dimensionality plus sequencing.
Chip - right - a way that says we may not be able to solve a problem necessarily, but that fully articulates the problem.
Ann - need to be able to share ways that people have thought about the problem.
Dave - something that determines where to go next based on what has happened.
Bryan - raised the concern that it is difficult to hyperlink among units.
Michael M - the metaphor here may be 'treasure hunt'
Dave - What kind of assessment information can you get from the paths that people follow?
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Michael M - named a list of things for a workshop kit: best of the best list of inquiry units, workshop handouts, poster, folder, web tutorials, perhaps a short video
Dave - What is the purpose of a workshop? To introduce the Inquiry Page itself? or to encourage using inquiry in a class? Chip-both
Sharon - is doing a web tutorial
Chip - summed up list of things to do
Party at Chip's house
November 10, 2001 has been set aside for the next Retreat!
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