Inq-ITS Online Labs for High School Physics and Physical Science

During Phase I in 2018, the team prototyped four self-scoring labs that integrated mathematics practices with other science inquiry practices. Each lab featured a testable question where students hypothesized about the mathematical relationships between variables, and tools to graph, model, and analyze data to draw conclusions. Researchers surveyed 185 grade 9 students and found the prototype operated as intended. Students reported learning from teachers' feedback, driven by alerts of when they struggled. Teachers reported that the technology increased awareness of which students were having difficulty and how they struggled.

In Phase II, the team expanded the product to 20 labs and expanded its capacity to assess how students integrate "using mathematics" practices. Specifically, the team developed new algorithms to auto-score how students make predictions with mathematics, built new lab activities, integrated new the assessments into the teacher alerting dashboard, and completed iterative research to inform refinements.

A pre-post pilot study was conducted at the end of Phase II with 4 educators and 236 students. Results demonstrated the usability and feasibility of the labs, as implementation occurred as planned. Results also demonstrated that students improved from pre- to post- test at graphing and making predictions with mathematical models with prompts from educators. A randomized controlled trial that had been planned was not able to be employed at the conclusion of Phase II due to challenges causes by the COVID19 pandemic.