Online ‘process-oriented guided inquiry learning’ (Cyber-POGIL)

During the coronavirus pandemic, in the absence of a vaccine, formative assessment of virtual experiential learning is deemed a necessity. A scholarly literature review undertaken by Purkayastha et al. (2019) found 112 articles published between 2010 and 2018 about process oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL), with a steady growth in interest over the period, however only a few pertaining to online teaching. They distilled the critical components deemed necessary for implementing POGIL in an online setting, and coined it Cyber POGIL, which has a dual nature, namely supportive and monitoring.

Purkayastha et al. (2019: 80) remark that using “early assessment to check if the learner understands things correctly is an age-old tradition in the practice of teaching, later conceptualized as formative assessment”; that formative assessment has often been called ‘high-impact instructional practice’; and perceived “as the single most effective intervention to increase student learning”. However, formative or early assessment, in online and blending learning, “is challenging due to the differences in space-time between the teacher and the learner” (p. 81).

Purkayastha et al. (2019: 79) “developed a student team learning monitor (STLM module) in an electronic health record system to measure student engagement and actualize the social constructivist approach of Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL)”. They employed various online engagement techniques to engage students, such as project-based learning, active learning, experiential learning and inquiry learning for virtual laboratory experiences. However, lack of skills among students and low engagement continued to present problems. In order to address the challenges and to provide formative assessment, they “designed a novel monitoring tool called Student Team-Based Learning Monitor (STLM)” (p. 80).

Purkayastha et al. (2019: 81) report a shift; in particularly science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education; towards student-centred teaching and learning techniques over recent decades. Process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) is deemed one such instructional approach. POGIL-specific teaching has three broadly defining characteristics, namely:

1. Learning materials are self-managed and the lecturer serves as a facilitator of learning, rather than as a source of information
2. Knowledge is constructed among learners by exploration, refining and integrating shared concepts
3. Embedded in learning structure and content is at least one targeted process skill

POGIL inherits its core principles from guided inquiry, observe Purkayastha et al. (2019: 82); it depends on a learning cycle of exploration, concept invention and application; and the development of POGIL informed by:

1. Students generally do not learn from teaching by telling
2. However, when “part of an interactive community [students] are more likely to be successful”
3. “Students enjoy themselves more and develop greater ownership over the material when they are given an opportunity to construct their own understanding”, because knowledge is personal

Purkayastha et al. (2019) They provided didactic content through an online learning management system (LMS); divided the students into small groups; and assigned two roles to each student, namely an iTrainee and a rTrainee (pp. 86-87):

• The “inquiring student” called the iTrainee is asked to create a set of tasks based on the concept that will be discovered based on the background information provided in the lecture material and instructions from the instructor. The iTrainee is not aware of the most efficient way to perform the task but tries to perform the task on their own, based on the concepts explained in the lecture slides.
• After performing the task, the iTrainee requests the other students of their group (rTrainees) to perform the same task. In creating this request, the iTrainee does not describe how the task was performed. Instead, the iTrainee defines a question that will be answered by performing the task.

After completion of the given task, the rTrainees and iTrainee will be able to compare their work with other members of the group. The iTrainee will also similarly have to play the role of a rTrainee when other members of his/her group make inquiries and propose new tasks to the group. [They] found that with each attempt as a rTrainee, there is improved student learning of the concept, followed by knowledge reconstruction that occurs by observing the comparison of the tasks performed by different students.

Purkayastha et al. (2019) illustrates the POGIL pedagogy with exemplars of three iterations of the four-step management method for continuous improvement, namely Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA).

Purkayastha, S., Surapaneni, A.K., Maity, P, Rajapuri, A.S. & Gichoya, W.G. (2019). Critical components of formative assessment in process-oriented guided inquiry learning for online labs. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 17(2), 79-92. Electronically accessible from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1220140.pdf