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Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is essential to Science Education since it improves students’ conceptual comprehension, higher-order thinking abilities, and interpersonal skills. Mobile technology (mIBL) promotes active learning, facilitates access to learning materials, and enhances IBL in terms of mobility and rapid feedback. This study assesses the 9th grade students’ awareness of 4Cs skills (Collaboration, Communication, Critical thinking and problem solving, and Creativity) after participating in mobile-technology-supported inquiry-based Teaching Learning Sequence (TLS). Additionally, the study investigates the qualities/characteristics students cite before and after the TLS in relation to these skills. The results of a questionnaire administered to students indicate that their awareness of these skills has increased as a result of the TLS. Specifically, the TLS seems to have a greater impact on Collaboration and Communication than on Critical thinking and problem solving, and Creativity. An additional qualitative investigation of students’ written answers to explanatory open-ended questions before and after the entire procedure found intriguing data confirming their shift in 4Cs awareness.

STEM education promotes scientific inquiry and engineering design, including mathematics, incorporating appropriate technologies. Portable technologies motivate active learning of students and enable accessing to learn resources, facilitating cross-disciplinary designing tasks. This chapter initially presents theoretical approaches of STEM education, mobile learning, and inquiry-based learning, and then it describes an inquiry-based short-term intervention that took advantage of portable digital devices in a STEM class. The aim of the intervention was to study its affection on students' motivation about physics. Results indicate that students who participated in the activity had higher motivation scores than their classmates who attended lessons with conventional teaching methods. The findings also show that the students involved in a guided inquiry-based process became more profoundly engaged in STEM than their classmates who followed a structured inquiry process. Other factors, such as grade point average (GPA) and gender, did not seem to affect student motivation.

Our research focuses on inquiry-based simulations that promote scientific process skills. An inquiry continuum was constructed, regarding the number of available variables (complexity of the problem). Students’ actions when using the simulations are recorded in log files. Clicks are divided into four categories, namely, settings, handling, phenomenon, and plot. Log files are analyzed in order to find out which are the factors that affect these actions (clicks), whether the actions contribute to the solution of the problem, and if students do gain scientific process skills through the activity. The results showed that the total number and the number of each type of actions are relevant to the complexity of the problem and the guidance provided by the worksheets. This kind of activities helped our students to gain procedural skills, leading them to adopt scientific strategies for solving the problems. Also, in the log files, there were explorative clicks that reveal how students respond when a new variable, new phenomenon, or new strategy is introduced.

The aim of this paper is on how to prepare undergraduate science students to be able to develop inquiry-based activities. A course was designed where the development of inquiry based activities following the Hegarty-Hazel inquiry continuum model was used to design inquiry based experiments. A virtual (simulated) lab was opted as the appropriate “vehicle” since it provides unlimited access to laboratory settings, even from home where students rethink and refine their design. The course follows the design, development, practice, reflection and discussion of experimental activities. Different kinds of results are discussed to find out how the undergraduate science students evaluate the “vehicle” they have and how they perceive the inquiry continuum model.

An innovative inquiry-oriented teaching-learning sequence (TLS) has been developed aiming at introducing secondary education students in Greece to inquiry as well as to a comprehensive treatment of thermal conductivity in materials. The focus of the paper is the iterative evolution of this TLS following cycles of iterative evolution from an initial TLS1 towards TLS2 and subsequently to TLS3. The social and educational reasons for selecting conductivity as a content and introducing inquiry as pedagogical strategy to a traditional context are discussed. Design principles, content, and selection of a strategy for gradual implementation of an integrative inquiry in the TLSs are outlined. Multiple sources of data from students and teachers were used for evidence-based modifications of the content and activities of these TLS. Their selective presentation is based on a reflective ex post facto approach focusing on the analysis of relevant data. Improved results following TLS2 and TLS3 in relation to TLS1 support the effectiveness of modifications. The product of this work is twofold: a well-documented TLS on thermal conductivity and a model for gradual introduction of innovative inquiry-oriented TLS in traditional contexts.