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Inquiry in Co-Lab Co-Lab will foster the
development of inquiry skills by offering learners a safe and supportive environment in which they can develop their cognitive abilities with respect to experimentation and inductive reasoning. Co-Lab will do this by
offering a realistic experimental setting in which learners can design and perform experiments and a set of cognitive tools that will explicitly and directly scaffold the cognitive skills needed for inquiry. the purpose
of these cognitive tools is twofold. First by supporting the inquiry processes, learners can from day one engage in successful inquiry learning tasks and, second, by "fading", diminishing their support, cognitive tools
contribute to the acquisition of higher order inquiry skills by learners.The realistic experimental space consist of a source for experimental data that can be queried and manipulated by the learner. In such a way
learners can perform experiments by manipulating variables and observing the effects of the changes they make. The experiments are realistic in the sense that they represent real world simulations embedded in a
realistic context. |
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Inquiry Inquiry means that the
learner engages in scientific activities like designing and performing experiments, making predictions, stating hypotheses drawing conclusions from data. Moreover, learners needs to plan and monitor their activities.
As such inquiry is a complex activity and many cognitive skills are required for it to be successful. The skills needed for inquiry based learning are valuable in many contexts as they allow people to assess information
by its value and meaning and contribute to a critical attitude in general . |
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