The learning approach I will be discussing is inquiry-based learning. Inquiry based learning is an approach to learning that focuses on active engagement and critical thinking. Inquiry based learning is all about having the learners ask questions, investigate topics of interest, and explore solutions through hands-on activities, research, and collaboration (National Research Council, 2000). Inquiry based learning follows a cycle that loops where the learner first gets familiar with a topic, questions it, discusses it and reflects it. This allows for a thorough understanding of the topic and being able to reach a high level of understanding. Some challenges that are faced with inquiry based learning is that it is hard for some students to stay motivated because of lot of the learning is self-guided and another challenge is that it is difficult for students to know when they reached a good level of understanding. Though if the student is very interested in a subject or topic, inquiry-based learning really allows for the students creativity and passion to move forward.
For us, this relates to our learning pods topic because we are going to teach a subject and to keep it interesting we are going to incorporate all kinds of methods. Inquiry-based learning is especially important to us because inquiry-based learning is able to deliver more than your typical teacher classroom learning. This is even more relevant depending on the type of learner because personally I think that I learn better in a subject that I am curious about rather a subject that I don’t care about.
Inquiry-based learning will be used when we deliver our lesson on ChatGPT by triggering the curiosity of the students and then making them learn by exploring or investigating. This will be done by the students trying out ChatGPT by themselves and seeing what type of results are being returned, analyzing the data brought from ChatGPT as well as questioning the correctness of the results. I think that ChatGPT is a great subject for inquiry-based learning because ChatGPT is still relatively new and there is a lot of questions around it as well as ways that you can use it. In our case with ChatGPT for research, I think that students will delve into this black hole of a topic and make the most of the subject by their curiosity supplemented by the lessons that we deliver. Additionally, the students will be able to reflect and think critically about their learning because research methods with ChatGPT isn’t black and white. There is no 100% correct way and people are still learning about how to use ChatGPT as well as ChatGPT itself is changing.
References:
National Research Council. (2000). Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Hi Kevin! Thank you for sharing your post on inquiry-based learning and how it applies to your topic ChatGPT. It’s great to see how AI can be utilized to help students learn collaboratively by asking questions and sharing ideas. It would be helpful if you could focus a bit more on the key features of inquiry-based learning, its benefits and challenges, as well as suggestions for teachers who might want to use this approach in their classroom.