Inquiry-based Instruction

Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI) is a good way to get students to develop their problem-solving skills. Students will be given a question and the tools that they need to answer these questions. The students will then use their problem-solving skills to discover one possible solution to the question. The nice thing about IBI is that students can use different methods to come up with different answers, this allows for a variety of solutions to a possibly simple question. In the way, it is performed IBI is very similar to Problems-Based instruction but with one key difference.

The main difference between Inquiry-Based Instruction and Problems-Based Instruction is that Problems-Based instruction usually has a single answer. While both types of instruction require students to search for their answer the way the question is answered is different in the number of possible answers. Inquiry-Based Instruction gives students a greater opportunity to answer the question correctly as there is more than one possible answer. This makes it a bit easier to answer the question as multiple options mean multiple ways that students can find an answer.

There are seven key elements IBI that teachers and students both take part in to complete this type of instruction. These key elements are Planning, Retrieving, Processing, Creating, Sharing, Evaluating and Reflecting. These elements are essential to both creating and performing the IBI, as teachers must know how to find all of the information to create the problem and the students must be able to find and use the information to solve the problem.

I have used Inquiry-Based Instruction in one of my labs for AEE 412. The lab that I used it in was how to use Macroinvertebrates to assess water quality. My students were given a variety of macroinvertebrates to use in their assessment and they were asked to assess how the water quality changes between two separate samplings. Students could have found a variety of answers with how water quality has changed. The variety in possible answers is due to the many different possible combinations of macro-invertebrates for the water quality assessments. I plan to use this lesson again during my student teaching; however, I may edit it about depending upon how the lesson flows. I plan to create more IBI lessons for my student teaching experience as I feel the can positively impact my students. In the meantime, I will be creating an inquiry-based lesson for a workshop later this week.

Outside of my AEE 412 class, I have had a few instances where I have taken part in inquiry-based learning even though I did not know what it was at the time. The first was the creation of a habitat management plan. I was given a species and a specific area to create a management plan for. While there were many ways I could have gone about creating this plan I chose the one that I felt would work out the best for all involved parties. The second time that comes to mind was also a habitat management plan but in a different context. In both of these situations, there were many routes I could have taken, but I chose to use the route that I felt would have the best outcome.

As with any type of inquiry-based learning, the answer is open-ended, while the teacher may think of many possible answers the students may find a solution that they didn’t think of. Have any of your students ever found a solution that you hadn’t considered, and if so how did you react?