Critical Components of Formative Assessment in Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning for Online Labs

Abstract

In the traditional lab setting, it is reasonably straightforward to monitor student learning and provide ongoing feedback. Such formative assessments can help students identify their strengths and weaknesses, and assist faculty to recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately. But in an online virtual lab setting, formative assessment has challenges that go beyond space-time synchrony of online classroom. As we see increased enrollment in online courses, learning science needs to address the problem of formative assessment in online laboratory sessions. We 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). Using iterative Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles in two undergraduate courses over a period of two years, we identified critical components that are required for online implementation of POGIL. We reviewed published research on POGIL classroom implementations for the last ten years and identified some common elements that affect learning gains. We present the critical components that are necessary for implementing POGIL in online lab settings, and refer to this as Cyber POGIL. Incorporating these critical components are required to determine when, how and the circumstances under which Cyber POGIL may be successfully implemented. We recommend that more online tools be developed for POGIL classrooms, which evolve from just providing synchronous communication to improved task monitoring and assistive feedback.