Guided inquiry in an engineering technology classroom

Abstract

Active learning methods are becoming increasing popular in science classrooms, and are beginning to move into engineering classrooms. One of these methods is called guided inquiry. This method of teaching involves the students in a different level of learning than traditional lectures involving a knowledge transfer. In this type of learning students are often asked to pose questions, develop experiments to try to answer those questions, analyze information obtained from those experiments and draw conclusions. Guided inquiry tries to focus the discussion a little more narrowly through questions posed by the instructor. One goal of guided inquiry is to help the students to develop a deeper understanding of core principles. This is in contrast to a traditional classroom where problem solving skills are often the focus. The two are not mutually exclusive, but compliment each other. A better understanding of core principles gives the student a better foundation for solving problems than just problem solving skills alone. The approach suggested by this paper is a three step process. The first step is to make a simple and short in class demonstration designed to 1) expose student misperceptions about the topic, and 2) get the students' interested in the topic. The second step is to deliver a traditional lecture on the material where the students can learn the theory and basic problem formulations. The third step is a more extensive lab experience with the same equipment that was used for the demonstration. Questions are posed during the exercise designed force the student to think about core principles instead of just typical problem solving. These lab exercises are not graded. This takes the pressure off the students to be "right", and gives them more freedom to let you know what they are really thinking about. This paper describes the guided inquiry approach to learning and gives one example of this approach using a hair dryer to teach core principles of the first law of thermodynamics for an open system. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2008.