Enquiry-Based Learning

Dr Peter KahnUniversity of Liverpool

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Outline

• Introduction to enquiry-based learning (EBL)• Opportunity to experience engaging in EBL

Practical ways forward • Planning to use EBL with your own students

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Why use EBL?

• What challenges do you currently face in your teaching?

• Are there abilities, qualities or dispositions that you have always wanted your students to develop more fully?

• Are there any gaps between your aspirations for student learning, and what actually happens?

• How satisfied are your students or other stakeholders with existing patterns of student learning?

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What is Enquiry-Based Learning?

• EBL is learning that is driven by a process of enquiry– Engagement with a complex issue that allows for a

variety of responses.– Students take responsibility for selecting the lines of

enquiry and the methods employed.– Requires students to draw on existing knowledge

and identify their required learning needs.– Students actively explore and seek out new

evidence.

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Approaches covered by the term ‘EBL’

Small scale investigations

Projects, dissertations and research

Problem-based

Learning

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Problem-based learning

• PBL - a structured process of enquiry based around a series of scenarios, in each of which:– students in small groups define the issues

emerging from the problem; – decide for themselves what further knowledge

they require in order to address these issues;– allocate and undertake research to acquire the

required knowledge– integrate findings in order to present outcomes.

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Projects, dissertations and research

• Traditional use of projects – Extended enquiries with an established record of usage within

higher education – Employed towards the end of a degree programme– Students make connections within a body of knowledge that they

have already mastered.

• Projects within an EBL context– Early use of project-work to master a given body of knowledge

itself.– Strategies required to ensure that the students direct the project– Earlier use suggests greater emphasis on smaller scale activity

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Small-scale investigations• Students are asked to complete a set task following a specified

process, and starting from a given stimulus, and within a limited time-frame:– Field-work– Case-studies as the trigger for a focussed task (e.g. detailed business

scenario with the requirement to write a consultancy report).– Workshops to master specific competencies– Simulations

For some examples see:https://

intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/as/claddivision/ebl/case-studies/index.aspx

http://www.ceebl.manchester.ac.uk/resources/

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The underlying basis for EBL

• Learning framed as the active construction of knowledge rather than its passive reception

• Learning that allows scope for dialogue, and understanding:– Places relationships and exchanges between those

involved at the centre of learning • Higher education tends to focus on knowledge

at the expense of commitment and identity.

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Agency and identity

ConcernsProjects

PracticesIdentity

after Archer (2000)

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Major issues

• Student engagement and motivation• Development of a range of skills and personal qualities• Addressing gaps in students’ knowledge or capacities• Gaps between theory and practice• Fragmented learning on modular programmes• Passive/transmission approaches foster surface learning• Divergence between research and teaching for staff• Mass higher education leading to a sense of anonymity

and social isolation• Diversity of learner needs and interests

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Supporting an enquiry

1. What will engage the students?– An enquiry in which genuine scope is present for students

to select their own lines of attack or focus.

2. How accessible is the enquiry relative to:– Students’ existing capacities to understand the area and to

manage an enquiry;– the ease with which relevant resources can be identified?

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3. How will the students support each other?– Timetabled group discussion to agree ways forward, division of

responsibilities, allocation of roles to fit existing expertise/characteristics of the students.

4. How will tutors facilitate the enquiry?– Ask open-ended questions that challenge and extend, provide

encouragement, assist them in following the process; but don’t tell them what to do or explain subject content.

5. How will you initially introduce the approach? – Introductory session(s); written guidance; seeing it in practice.

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EBL experience

• Short EBL taster, based on a scenario as a starting point. Agree a Chair and Scribe (who will report to the entire group)

• Begin the initial phase of the enquiry:– Issues: What are the key issues at stake in this enquiry?– Lines: What initial lines of enquiry would you pursue?– Staging: How would you stage the enquiry as it progressed?– Resources: What resources would support the progress of the

enquiry? Where could you locate these resources?– Roles: What roles would you each take on in carrying out the

enquiry? How would these roles match your existing expertise or experience?

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Ideas for enquiries• Starting points – detailed scenario that incorporates issues that need

following up; authentic situation within which the students can directly engage in completing a task, choice of a topic to which the process is applied.

• Process – social interactions (group or pair based - with roles, discussion and division of labour all planned out); staging of the enquiry (e.g. agreeing lines of enquiry, carrying out research, pooling findings, preparing presentation).

• Outputs – report, presentation, portfolio, reflective account, product, anthology, reader, conference, event, design, or single article within, issue of or regular publication of a journal, magazine or newspaper, script, commission, book, sermon, poster, proposal, application, website, action plan, project plan, educational course.

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Brainstorming

• What issues, tasks, activities, needs, authentic situations, practice settings, interests might provide a basis for student enquiry in your own context?

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A process for designing EBL • Decide on which curriculum areas it is appropriate to employ EBL

– Students may react against a sporadic or ill-thought out use of a method that requires them to take significant levels of initiative.

• Frame the process that the students should follow– Initial starting point, Group process, roles within the group, staging of the

enquiry

• Specify the outputs that should result.– Learning outcomes, required outputs (i.e. presentation, report, product,

publication)

• Outline the support that is available to them– Facilitation from tutor, resources that should be accessed, setting of initial

expectations, assistance in monitoring the progress of the enquiry

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References

• Archer M (2000) Being Human: The Problem of Agency, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

• Kahn P E and O’Rourke K (2004) Guide to Curriculum Design: Enquiry-Based Learning, Higher Education Academy, York

• Morley J and Truscott S (2003) ‘The integration of research-oriented learning into a Tandem learning programme’, Language Learning Journal, 27, 52-58