An analysis of student inquiry performances in computer supported light-weighted collaborative experiment

Collaborative simulations was found more flexible and enhance students’ motivation. Although it is an effective way to implement science inquiry in classroom, the orchestration is complex and how the pedagogy influence students’ inquiry is still not clear. Therefore, this study address a light-weighted collaborative experiment pedagogy, which consists of computer simulations, teacher’s guidance and the whole-class reflection. To investigate the impact of such pedagogy on students’ inquiry performance and the science knowledge change, 33 8th grade students participated in this study. Results show that although the students design the experiment properly, their concept improvement is not significant which is not aligned with our expectation. Their inquiry process of the first time participating in light-weighted experiment demonstrated their inadequate ability of analyzing the experiment data, which led to obstacles of constructing knowledge by using computer simulation. Therefore, more de-briefing on data processing while conducting light-weighted experiment is suggested. Besides, whether a series of light-weighted experiment implementation enhance students’ performance is valuable to further investigate.