Abstract
Effectively educating students for employment in STEM fields (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) is a concern for science educators worldwide. The perspective that science learning is most effective when it is based on student inquiry has had great influence on practitioners’ reform efforts in both the USA and in Europe.
Inquiry consists of exploring a domain by searching for data by designing experiments, evaluating outcome data and reasoning about what may have brought these data about so as to fit the results with prior theories or to build new understandings. This virtual presentation summarizes the instructional activities of two science educators who have been incorporating biotechnology inquiry activities into classroom science teaching and learning on two continents.
The connection between these efforts is commitment to inquiry-based teaching and learning and the desire to effectively prepare students for employment in biotechnology-related fields. In the first part of the presentation we will illustrate how learners with diverse abilities and experiences can engage in inquiry at a variety of levels.
Next, we will show how we used different levels of inquiry to teach concepts and processes of biotechnology by way of inquiry based science education (IBSE). The authors conclude this virtual presentation by describing their own instructional design decisions for blended-learning to teach processes of biotechnology with hands-on investigation combined with the use of existing software tools: animations, simulations, virtual laboratories and, on-line databases for bioinformatics.