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 What is OILEs?

 1.Conditions

 2.Inquiry Module

 3.Support Systems

 4. Community of
 Inquiry

Three Learning Modes

There are three learning modes: User mode, critical reading mode, and design mode. In OILEs, teachers can take a learning module, criticize it, and design it.

If the OILEs ask teachers to take a learning module or lesson unit, it uses a user mode. Sometimes, the OILEs allow teachers to criticize a learning module or lesson unit (critical reading mode). The critical reading mode is usually used in combination with the other two learning modes. When teachers are asked to design a learning module or lesson unit, he or she learns in a design mode. These three learning modes do not exclude each other. They can be easily combined to make an inquiry occur.

Among three modes, I found that design mode was widely used for professional development. This is a kind of learning-by-web design. Lim et al. (2001) indicate that learning-by-web design may help learners develop search skills and design skills that are essential to inquiry. This study shows similar findings. It seems that providing design experiences is particularly important in developing inquiry skills. Usually designers need to consider their audience, closely look at the contents, articulate authentic problems, and try to figure out what knowledge and thinking skills are needed to solve the problem. These mental activities facilitate inquiry skills and nurture inquiring minds. In the design mode, designers may develop their metacognitive skills and multiple perspectives, endure different point of view, and develop their ability to search, select, evaluate, and organize the information in productive ways.

However, design is not easy. In my study, I found that teachers had a lot of difficulties when they designed a lesson unit or learning module. I found three main limitations that teachers have. First, teachers usually work in isolation and their experiences mainly come from classroom practices. It is often hard for them to get out of their "teacher-students" mode and to become designers for other teachers. As Carter (1993) indicates, teacher knowledge is situated in the context of classrooms and concrete teaching activities, not in terms of abstract principles. Second, when teachers are required to develop a lesson unit, they tend to take a task-oriented approach. They are practitioners, so they are concerned with the product itself rather than the design or inquiry process. Also, teachers are not trained to be instructional designers. They usually lack skills in instructional design. For example, in all three cases, teachers had a difficult time articulating ill-structured, authentic, overarching problems and representing them in a meaningful way.

Design experiences might be more effective in helping teachers overcome these limitations rather than the other two modes. To illustrate this, let us compare the three modes in terms of developing inquiry skills in problem finding and writing. If teachers are in a user mode, they may simply read the problem and try to solve it by following procedures. Even in this mode, the problem in the learning module can be a model. Since many teachers are not familiar with the ill-structured problem and unaware of its meaningfulness in the classroom, the experience of reading an ill-structured problem and solving it might be beneficial to their inquiry skill development. In a critical reading mode and design mode, teachers may criticize the problem or develop a problem by themselves, which is more difficult than simply reading the problem and solving it.

Combining and Sequencing Three Learning Modes

We have seen that the three cases use a learning-by-design approach for professional development. Most likely this is an effective way to learn inquiry, but there are some pitfalls when learning by design is used without careful consideration. First of all, design activities include a lot of aspects beyond inquiry such as designing an interface, considering the ascetics aspects, and so on. Teachers might be more interested in technical and ascetic aspects of the design process instead of inquiry. Next, designing an inquiry module is not an easy task for many teachers. As we saw in the previous chapter (the LTTS case), teachers lack design skills and have limited knowledge on instructional design. To the novice teachers, design itself is challenging and so they may not focus on the inquiry process. Sometimes, simply taking an inquiry module helps teachers develop inquiry skills and may motivate them to design their own module. The existing inquiry modules are a good starting point for novice teachers when they design an inquiry module. Therefore, combining three learning modes (taking, criticizing, and designing a module) is a good way to develop inquiry skills and inquiring minds.

Various Sequencing of Three Learning Modes

There are many variations available for sequencing the learning modes as follows:
Type 1: User mode ( --> critical reading mode) --> design mode
Type 2: User mode --> design mode (--> critical reading mode)
Type 3: Critical reading mode (--> user mode) --> design mode
Type 4: Critical reading mode --> design mode --> user mode
Type 5: Design mode (--> critical reading mode) --> user mode
Type 6: Design mode --> user mode (--> critical reading mode)

Types 1, 2, and 3 might be the most common approaches to sequencing learning modes. For many teachers, designing inquiry modules is challenging and they may feel overwhelmed. The starting point might be just to take existing ones or to criticize the existing ones. As Dr. Dodge indicated, most teachers do not design; instead, they just act as learners. And "we do that to give them the experience of learning in that way so that we're modeling behavior that we hope that they will pick up and use as well." As teachers get experienced, they start to design their own inquiry modules.
Sometimes, teachers may start with designing an inquiry module (e.g., teachers in the LTTS project). In this case, during the design process many teachers might take and criticize existing modules in order to get an insight for their design. When teachers learn in this way, they use three learning modes at the same time. Therefore, by integrating these three learning modes, type 4, 5, and 6 might be a more powerful learning sequence. The conditions to use types 4, 5, and 6 are as follows:

• Teachers need to have strong motivation to design a module (e.g., monetary compensation, classroom use, etc.)
• Teachers need to have some design skills, inquiry skills, and background knowledge of the content.
• OILEs provide sufficient resources and tools for the teachers to begin with.
• OILEs should be accompanied with human facilitators or peer supports.