Inquiry Based Learning

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Teaching the Management and Marketing class taught me a truly hands on experience of inquiry based learning. The students move through the various modules by completing a set of complicated tasks. These are team based tasks where each team competes against each other to win the task. It has been interesting to watch the high level of student engagement and involvement with these tasks. I have seen English Language Learners succeed in this class environment as they are able to relate to the real world challenges that are presented to them.

Many of the students struggle with lack of structure and support as they are only given a very basic outline of the task. I have also struggled with this approach as it requires a hands-off and less is more attitude. The students are not given direction or structure. Instead the students are challenged to be creative and find their own solutions using the tools provided. Each time the students tackle one of these challenges I am surprised and impressed with the level of engagement and the final output.

The students always seem to flounder at the start of the task and they become frustrated and stressed out as they don’t know where to start the project. Yet, by the end each group always creates a wonderfully unique solution to solve the problem. This class is so much fun to teach as every day is new and exciting. Most recently the students had to create a e-commerce website to sell TIS spirit clothing for the school. Without a website tutorial the students managed to create dynamic and functioning ecommerce websites.