This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

Despite their increasingly widespread adoption in post-secondary education, scholars and practitioners know very little about the impact of digital data displays on instructors' sense-making and academic planning. In this manuscript, I report the results of comparative case studies of five different introductory physics instructors at three…

Through a multi-year, national calculus study, researchers have recently identified seven characteristics of successful college calculus programs. We identified these seven characteristics by visiting five doctoral-granting mathematics departments with successful calculus programs and uncovering the common traits among them. These seven traits…

The benefits of rich tasks, project-based learning, and other inquiry-based approaches in terms of student understanding and engagement with mathematics are well documented. Such pedagogies are consistent with the development of mathematical proficiencies as described in the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" (Australian Curriculum…

Current trends and challenges in higher education (HE) require a reorientation towards openness, technology use and active student participation. In this article we will introduce Social Learning Analytics (SLA) as instrumental in formative assessment practices, aimed at supporting and strengthening students as active learners in increasingly open…

This article examines the case of Catch Me Excel (CeMeE), an electronic feedback system developed to facilitate video, image and written feedback in the workplace to educators about pedagogical-related outcomes. It comprises a sophisticated, technological feedback system of which the resultant data can be used to enhance classroom, schools and…

In response to the wide-scale proliferation of "the cone of learning"--a fanciful retention chart confounded with Dale's Cone of Experience--the authors make four major claims debunking this fantasy and provide documentary evidence to support these claims. The first claim is that the data in the mythical retention chart do not make…

Critics have been attempting to debunk the mythical retention chart at least since 1971. The earliest critics, David Curl and Frank Dwyer, were addressing just the retention data. Beginning around 2002, a new generation of critics has taken on the illegitimate combination of the retention chart and Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience--the corrupted…

The authors are attempting to set the record straight regarding the sources frequently cited in the literature of the mythical retention chart and the corrupted Dale's Cone. They point out citations that do not actually connect with relevant works; provide correct citations of sources that are often cited erroneously; add references for overlooked…

This paper describes a participatory design approach to the development of inquiry-based learning supported through a technology toolkit. The work is part of an interdisciplinary project--Personal Inquiry (PI). The paper focuses on the approach we adopted, concentrating in particular on the two mediating artefacts we used to guide and frame the…

Newton's cooling curve was chosen for the four-part laboratory inquiry into conditions affecting temperature change. The relationship between time and temperature is not foreseen by the average high school student before the first session. However, during several activities students examine the classic relationship, T = A exp[superscript -Ct] + B…

Extending inquiry-based learning to allow students to develop their own questions and design and perform their own experiments can greatly enhance education. Students gain an appreciation of how knowledge is acquired and insights into evaluating data. Although easily applied to laboratory courses, the technique is also applicable to lecture…