Challenges and issues in designing inquiry on the Web

TLDR

Designing inquiry experiences online poses significant challenges for instructional designers due to the complex, ill‑structured nature of the web environment, despite its potential benefits. The study aims to discuss major issues in designing web‑based inquiry and to provide guidance for instructional designers across all phases of the design process. The authors examined three teacher professional development cases, identifying six key issues—balancing system guidance and human facilitation, visualizing the inquiry process, motivating learners with appropriate questions, engaging learners in varied activities, scaffolding the process, and coordinating resources, tools, and community. The paper details each issue and offers practical strategies for instructional designers to address them, thereby improving online inquiry learning experiences.

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this study is to discuss major issues in designing inquiries on the web. Instructional designers face a lot of difficulties and challenges to deal with in the course of designing inquiry experiences for learners in the online environment, a complex and ill‐structured learning environment. Facilitating inquiry or using an inquiry‐based learning approach on the web has both advantages and disadvantages. Instructional designers need to acknowledge the design issues arising in each and every phase of the design process. Utilising appropriate design strategies, instructional designers can provide positive learning experiences for their online learners. For this purpose, three representative cases in the context of teacher professional development were examined and six major issues were identified as follows: (1) seeking a balance between a system‐generated guide and human facilitator, (2) visual representation of the inquiry process, (3) motivating learners with the right question, (4) engaging learners in various learning activities, (5) guiding the inquiry process with various scaffolds, and (6) maximising learning by coordinating resources, tools and the community of inquiry. This study explains each issue in great detail and provides possible guides for instructional designers to handle the issue.