One of the key characteristics of inquiry learning is that students have to find out something themselves, an investigation is always the backbone of an inquiry process. As part of the student’s initiation and guidance, it may be a good idea to include a much guided, structured, step-by-step, exercise, but inquiry also means that student-led investigations are present. Therefore, an ILS should not be a mere sequence of step-by-step instructions for the student to follow like a recipe cookbook. There must be an inquiry aspect where the student searches for and tries various possible solutions. It is ok if the student initially fails and repeats a process. So, instead of telling a student which values to fill in for each variable, students should find out themselves what are the interesting values to use; of course, you can give them predefined experiment to follow (and you can define those experiments in the Experiment Design Tool), but there should be freedom for students as well.

Students often find it difficult to start with an ILS that covers the whole inquiry cycle because they are not used to inquiry learning. Make sure that students get a good introduction in the inquiry approach and the tools to be used. If you plan to do lab work and inquiry tasks regularly, be sure there is a gradual increase in complexity. Start off with cookbook like experiments and end with real inquiry. For instance, you could start with inquiry tasks in which you give the students (parts of) the hypothesis/research question or limit the set of options. In this way, the students can gradually get used to the inquiry approach. In that case, the students only perform some of the steps that are in the full inquiry cycle. Gradually increasing the number of steps in the inquiry process can help students getting acquainted with inquiry learning.

Students (especially the younger ones) need more instructions (guidance) than you would expect. Things that might seem obvious for a (more) experienced user (pressing a button or tab, clicking on an item to change its appearance or characteristics) are often not clear to new users. Many of the labs and apps listed in the Go-Lab repository (for instance all the PhET labs) don’t contain instructions for use. This means that users have to find out for themselves which elements can be manipulated and what they should do and in which order. This leads to trial and error behaviour and sometimes to frustration.

Put in the text explicit statements about what students are expected to do. For instance: “Now you have reached the end of the Orientation phase, press the tab “Conceptualisation” to go to the next phase” or “Click on the tube when you want to change the characteristics of the fluent or from the ball in the tube. Then use the sliders in the top of the window to actually change the characteristics”.

Provide students who have little prior knowledge with more guidance:

• Include the Experiment Design Tool (EDT) to help them plan their experiments. Explain the purpose of experimentation (and the importance of varying one thing at a time if appropriate) and give an elaborate demonstration of how to operate the EDT.
• Tell them which variable they need to vary in their experiment, and which variables they need to keep constant, instead of letting them figure this out themselves. This helps them conduct well-designed experiments from which they can better draw conclusions. You can do this by configuring the EDT with a readymade experiment yourself, so that students will start with this experiment when they go in their ILS.

Provide students who have some prior knowledge with less guidance.

• Do not include the Experiment Design Tool (EDT) for students who have already quite prior knowledge. They will gain an equal amount of knowledge when they use the EDT compared to when they don’t use the EDT, but they can get frustrated because they already know what they need to do.
• Do not tell them which variable they need to vary in their experiment and which variables they need to keep constant. They don’t need this additional guidance; just let them figure it out themselves!

It is possible to write an ILS which requires a student to scroll up and down and move backwards and forwards between tabs to complete the lesson. However, this can lead to unnecessary errors by students who do not always read detailed instructions.

Where possible, even if this means repeating a lab or app, design an ILS in which the student will normally progress downwards through each phase and from left to right through the phases.

Learning with online labs generally means that there is an interaction between extracting information from the lab itself and learning with other, more direct resources. Basically there are two standpoints:

• Labs and/or simulations are best used before other instructional materials (online resources, books, lectures), so that students are sensitive for the information to extract from the expository material.
• Before learning with an online lab, students should have sufficient knowledge to profit from their lab experiences.

As a general recommendation, it seems appropriate to use both approaches. This can be achieved by giving a brief preview of the lab in the orientation phase, so that students can make themselves familiar with the lab and get sensitive for the issues they need to find out. In the conceptualization phase, background information can be presented. This can be done directly in the conceptualization phase by linking to other web sources, or offline in a lecture. In the investigation phase, students then return to the lab and make their full inquiry.

If an Inquiry Learning Space (ILS) is used in a stand-alone version, care must be taken that students have the necessary background knowledge and understand all the terminology that is used in the ILS. If this is not the case, this information can be given concurrently with the ILS. There are a few options to do this:

• In the orientation and conceptualisation phase, necessary prior domain information can be directly displayed (as text, diagrams, videos, etc.).
• Internet links to background information can be included in each phase (using the insert link icon

  Symbol 1.3.png

  
  ), some permanent information can also be displayed under the tools bottom bar (see tooltip Make use of the general tool facility).

Misconceptions and gaps in student knowledge can greatly impact student learning. If the gap is too big, students will not be able to relate the content of the ILS to their prior knowledge. This will make it difficult for them to give meaning to the things they do in the ILS.

Apart from raising curiosity and gaining attention, an important element of the Orientation phase is activation of the prior knowledge. This can be done in several ways. For instance, by giving students a quiz with questions that refer to things they have already learned. Or by asking students to make a concept map which graphically organizes the concepts that they already know (and their relationships). By doing this, the students get a kind of mental hooks to which they can connect the new information.

For many students the inquiry approach is new. In traditional education, there is usually one good answer to a question. Often students also learn only one procedure to arrive at this correct answer. When they follow the procedure, and arrive at the correct answer, they know they have done well. With inquiry learning there is not just one ‘correct’ answer and there are many routes a student can take towards an answer. For many students, this is confusing. Students need to understand that there is not one way to go about an investigation. It is important to explain this to them extensively. Make clear that it doesn't matter whether their hypothesis is true or false, if it is well formulated. Explain that there is not a fixed number of experiments that they have to carry out, as long as they do enough to validate their hypothesis. Explain that there is not one way to design a good experiment, as long as they make sure the experimental design is sound. Students really have to change their way of thinking.

When you create an ILS you can work together with a colleague and share responsibility for the ILS creation. You can easily invite a colleague in Graasp (the Go-Lab authoring facility) to become co-author. Go the upper right hand part of your screen and select “members”. Type the name of your colleague (who needs a Graasp account) and enter the name:

Click on the “viewer” underneath the person’s name and change the person’s role from “viewer” to “editor” or “owner”.

If you copied an ILS from the Portal and made substantial changes to its content and structure, then you may republish it as an author. However, it is always recommended to reference to the original ILS and its author by providing its web-link and name. For example, you can do it in the ILS description in Golabz or in the description of your ILS in Graasp (in this case the reference will appear in the standalone view of the ILS). You may add a text like “this ILS is based on the ILS … which was originally developed by …”). We are working on an automatic reference system, which will do this work for you in the future.

If a phase in an Inquiry learning Space (ILS) is too long, students may lose focus as they have to scroll down too much. In this case you may decide to split a phase into two smaller phases (two tabs in the Inquiry Learning Space) and make sure you provide a connection between them. See the Tip “You can change the phases of the inquiry cycle” on how to add Phases to an ILS.

There should be a connection between inquiry phases so the students progress logically from phase to phase. You can reach that by including at the end of each phase a brief sentence that marks the transition to the next phase. See this example:

The most obvious approach in the conclusion phase is to ask the students to revise their hypothesis, select relevant data sets and observations, and adapt, if necessary, the hypothesis. This activity can be supported with the Go-Lab Conclusion tool.

To further support students, some statements or questions can be defined to be answered by the students. In some cases, the students may have to go back to previous phases to view those statements.

Examples:

• What is the influence of the sea breeze on the development of clouds?
• Is the total momentum (on the x-y plane) you calculated zero? If not, why is it not zero?

You can use the Input Box app to give students the opportunity to note down their answers.

Do not include too many videos and don’t choose too long videos - two minutes should be the approximate maximum (although there will be exceptions, of course).

Videos should have good visual and sound quality (i.e., brightness needs to be suitable to see what is happening and sound should not include excessive static or background noise).

Videos accompanied only with music (no voice-over explanations) should have accurate textual cues to explain what is happening during the viewing of the visual imagery.

Also please note that if you embed videos in Graasp (by dragging them into the ILS) and many students start the ILS at the same time (when your lesson begins) this may result in longer loading times. You may reduce this by linking the videos from YouTube.

If you add a picture in your ILS you can resize it by using the “gear” symbol at the picture you had inserted.

External web links can be added to an ILS as hyperlinks (using, for example, ctrl + K on windows or command + K on Mac OS). These hyperlinks always open in another tab. External web pages can also be directly embedded in an ILS by adding them as links (press the “+” button, then press “add link”).

When you create an ILS you can choose if and how your students need to log in to enter the ILS. Go to the sharing menu of your ILS in the authoring environment Graasp.

Here you can find the standalone view setting. Below the option to choose a language, you find the options for logging in.

There are three options. The first one, ‘username only’, means that students only have to enter a nickname to access the ILS. If you choose the option ‘username and password’, students do not only enter a nickname but also a password to log in the ILS. This makes it harder for students to enter the ILSs of other students and prevents problems with similar nicknames. In both cases, if the student logs in the ILS later using the same credentials (i.e. respectively nickname or nickname and password), the work saved in the previous sessions will be displayed (e.g., hypothesis created, text written in the wiki or the input boxed, files uploaded, etc.). In the same way, the resources generated by the students will be accessible to the teacher. The last option, ‘anonymous’, allows you to share the ILS without requiring a nickname. It should be noticed that, in this mode, neither the students will be able to recover the work done, nor the teacher will be able to know who used the ILS.

In case you get a pop-up window "This ILS has already been published” after clicking “Publish inquiry space” in Graasp (but you have not published this ILS to Golabz before), please click "Update".

You will land to the ILS metadata input page in Golabz. Please edit and add the metadata and click the “save” button after you have finished.

The cause of this problem is: Golabz has its own publishing system, but Graasp marks an ILS as published once the data has been sent to Golabz (whether the user has completed the publishing process is unknown). Thus, it can happen that Graasp marks an ILS as published although the publishing process in Golabz is not completed. We are in the process of cleaning up the Graasp ILS database. Before the database is cleaned up, please use the solution described above.

There is no limit or maximum number of students that can use an ILS simultaneously. However, if you experience problems or find that the system is slow, then you may consider grouping your students in teams of two or three per available PC. Usually, system performance in the classroom depends on the internet speed, so a large number of users can slow the system down, if the internet connection is unstable.

Go-Lab Sharing and Authoring Platforms have been developed to be used on any device, so it is possible to use it on tablets and smartphones. However, we recommend you to use a bigger screen for authoring, as it is more convenient (for example, use your PC or laptop). For students, it is better to use a PC, laptop, or tablet, as a smartphone-screen might be too small for studying with an online lab.

Go-Lab cares about students’ data protection, so privacy features have been built in by design. Students’ privacy is guaranteed, as students do not need to provide any email address to log in, merely only a nickname, which protects their identities from anyone but the teacher (as in a real classroom). If you want to see your students’ data, you can ask students to login with known pre-assigned nicknames. You can then inspect and assess the students’ products (e. g., spreadsheets uploaded by the students, created concept maps, etc.).

You can also inspect and track patterns of usage of an ILS by using the learning analytics facilities (AngeLA). You decide whether you want to include AngeLA in the ILS. To activate AngeLA, add “user” AngeLA as a member to your ILS and give her editor rights.

Go-Lab tools (or Go-Lab inquiry apps, e.g., the concept mapper, the hypothesis/question scratchpad, the experiment design tool) can offer students pre-defined concepts of the domain. These concepts can be inserted through the configuration option (

) of these tools. This option is available when you use a tool in the authoring environment Graasp, but not in when you use the tool in the stand alone view. When you add the Concept Mapper for example, it offers a few pre-defined concepts like the ones depicted in the tool below. Make sure you adapt these terms to match the domain of your ILS, or delete them all together if you wish.

In this Questioning Scratchpad the building blocks are adapted by the teacher to match the domain of the ILS.

Another option is to not only provide students with pre-defined terms, but to go one step further and offer them partially filled tools. For example you can offer an (incomplete) concept map in the Concept Mapper tool or a set of hypotheses in the Hypothesis Scratchpad. This may help students who are not as yet very proficient in the larger domain and/or experimentation. You can prepare these (partially) filled tools in the authoring environment Graasp. Anything you create in a tool while you are in the authoring view (e.g. a set of hypotheses), will be visible for the students when they start up the ILS.

Tools (or Go-Lab inquiry apps) that are offered in an Inquiry Learning Space (ILS) are most probably new for students. This means that a tool should be accompanied by some instruction for students on how to use it. This also, or maybe even stronger, holds for general tools such as note pads. If students are asked to fill these notepads in, it might be effective to give them topics or headings to use and in any case make explicit what is expected from them. Also, if you ask students to make questions or hypotheses, it may be wise to tell them, especially for inexperienced students, how many you expect.

Go-Lab tools (or Go-Lab inquiry apps) have a help button for students. As an author, you can adapt this help through the configuration button in the authoring phase. The help becomes visible when students click the “?” button on the tool.

Students often have difficulties designing (good) experiments. Give them suggestions on how to set up experiments that allow them to draw conclusions on research questions. For example, using extreme numbers in their experiments may help them to explore the boundaries of a domain. Varying just one variable and controlling for all other variables may help them to understand the effect of the varied variable on the results when they have a first understanding of the domain.

Implementing the Experiment Design Tool can support students in setting up experiments, especially the ones with low prior knowledge. Information about the EDT can be found in this video: http://www.golabz.eu/video/experimental-design-tool.

The conclusion tool uses data from the hypothesis scratchpad or question scratchpad, the data viewer and the observation tool. You need to include at least one of both scratchpads for the tool to work. To be able to fully use the tool, you should also include the data viewer and/or the observation tool.

Explore the potential of Go-Lab lessons for a combination of individual and group work. For instance, the use of apps such as Padlet, and of some of the scenarios such as Jigsaw, Structured Controversy or Six Thinking Hats. For more information have a look at the Go-Lab Scenarios.

The “Teacher feedback” app allows you to give feedback to individual students.

You place the app next to the app you like to comment on when the lessons is over. For example you place it after the Concept Mapper where students created a concept map, or after a notepad where they formulated an answer to a question. You can include the Teacher feedback app by choosing this app from the list of available apps in Go-Lab.

Once you have included the Teacher feedback app in your ILS you can prepare feedback for each student. Go to the “members” section in Graasp, look for “Standalone users” and select the student you like to give feedback.

You will enter this student personal ILS and see it as the student has used it (so the tools and notepads will include the input from the student). Be careful, any changes you make will be saved as if the students made these changes himself, except for the comments you put in the feedback tool. You now can type in your feedback in the app, which will look like this:

When the student opens the ILS he or she will see your feedback, but cannot edit it. You can place as many Teacher feedback apps in your ILS as you wish.