My Pocket Technology: Introducing a Mobile Assisted Inquiry Learning Environment (MAILE) to Promote Inquiries among Secondary Students

This paper introduces the Mobile Assisted Inquiry Learning Environment (MAILE), an Experimental Instructional Strategy (EIS) which employs an inquiry-based learning approach to guide secondary school students to learn environmental science in an engaging way supported by mobile phones. The students are situated in both the real world and the virtual world to extend their learning experiences. The effectiveness of this innovative approach is determined by comparing the learning effectiveness of an Experimental Group (EG) exposed to the experimental strategy and a Control Group (CG) taught the same content using the pedagogy prescribed by the state curriculum. The results show significant positive results in favor of the EG in multiple dimensions of cognitive learning prescribed by Bloom's Taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension and Application.