Inquiry Oriented Learning (IOL) approach to teaching

Les Kirkup, (Associate Professor of the University of Technology Sydney and ALTC National Teaching Fellow) is the project leader for IOL - an inquiry-oriented way of learning.

Les recently presented his project at an Ako Aotearoa event, held on Friday 1 June in conjunction with The University of Waikato.

Ruth Peterson also met with several groups at The University of Waikato during the course of the day. This included lunch with TTEA winner Alison Campbell (Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning, Department of Biological Sciences), Richard Coll (Pro Vice-Chancellor Teaching and Learning and Unit Director, Faculty of Science & Engineering's Co-operative Education Unit) and Les Kirkup.

Later in the afternoon Les Kirkup presented to twenty two staff on Changing practice towards inquiry-oriented learning :
 

how do we make it happen? He explains that IOL activities enable students to:

• engage with questions that have no predetermined answer;
• develop and implement approaches to address those questions;
• work to refine their approaches in order to enhance their methods/the quality of the data;
• gather evidence, and;
• formulate and communicate explanations/conclusions based on that evidence.

The importance of this presentation was outlined in a quote Les shared, by Boud, Dunn and Hegarty-Hazel (1989): '……our institutions of higher education will fail to provide a scientific education unless students come to learn something about the goals (and values) of trained scientists, the methods and procedures they use, and the ways in which they communicate their results.'

Ako Aotearoa shares this sentiment for students in all fields.