The role of scaffolding in the instructional design of online, self-directed, inquiry-based learning environments: student engagement and learning approaches

Abstract

One of the profound educational challenges in the modern world where technology is all pervasive is for educators to harness the complex array of available tools in the quest to provide learning environments that facilitate the learning of students with diverse backgrounds and learning preferences. Engagement with this challenge has the potential to lead to the development and provision of programs that allow a more diverse student population to access these resources and become independent learners. However, the methods for the successful implementation of these technologies are still problematic in curriculum areas such as science education. This suggests that determining the features of such programs that are reflective of individual student needs requires careful deliberation and calibration. In this context, it is considered that the quality of differentiated support, referred to as scaffolding, is paramount in the design and structure of programs offered to students in an online environment. This study strives to determine how to empower students as online learners and the role of scaffolded learning modules to support student engagement in their inquiry process has been investigated in the context of self-directed online environments. A powerful pedagogical scaffolding strategy, predict, observe and explain (POE) (White et al., 1992), originating from the paradigm of constructivism, has been adopted to formulate an extended predict, observe, explain and evaluate (POEE) pedagogical framework by introducing an additional Evaluate (E) phase. This noble scaffolding framework has been employed as the platform for the development of two learning modules that are used in this study to guide students in the process of learning abstract science concepts.A mixed method research study has been applied to examine students’ engagement and learning approaches within the scaffolded learning environment. This has been transacted through interviews, observations, video recordings and student written responses to provide a clear, multifaceted picture of students’ independent interactions with the learning modules.Findings from this study support the strategic value of an evaluate (E) phase, as an extension of the widely used predict, observe and explain (POE) scaffolding framework, in new learning contexts notably in self-directed online learning. In particular, the study exposed the considerable influence of strong instructional supports, strategic integration of multiple external representations, and question prompts embedded in the POEE scaffolded learning modules on students’ ability to engage effectively with independent study. It is significant that learners with prior knowledge and experience benefitted most in this self-directed environment in terms of their level of engagement and the deeper learning approaches they adopted; conversely the lack of prior knowledge and relevant experiences for some learners jeopardized their opportunity to gain deeper science conceptual understandings. This implies the need for more personalized learning settings for novice learners.This study concludes that despite the inherent limitations manifest in the online context, scaffolded learning modules can provide a proximal learning environment for inquiry-based online learning. The findings of this study contribute to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that the strategically designed implementation of inquiry-based online learning holds promise for the creation of a successful learning environment to meet the ever-changing demand for online educational reform.