Title: Scientific Inquiry Skills : The University of Melbourne

URL: http://scientificinquiry.meu.unimelb.edu.au/

Description: One of the challenges facing higher education in Australia is identifying the best way towards developing skilled bioscience graduates for a competitive workforce. International commentators claim that widespread adoption of teaching innovation during the early years of bioscience degrees will have a major impact1-4. However, the extent to which bioscience educators in Australia explicitly teach scientific inquiry skills to their students, and the pedagogies they use to achieve this is presently unknown. The project sought to clarify this situation and has: Consulted 42 educators across eleven bioscience disciplines and from a broad range of Australian universities Identified cases where educators considered they were intentionally teaching scientific inquiry Investigated the role of educational technologies in supporting the development of scientific inquiry skills Identified strategies used by educators to evaluate learning Determined educators’ perceptions of the nature of scientific inquiry, and compared them to reported views of contemporary scientists The key findings of the project have been published in a handbook Teaching scientific inquiry skills: A handbook for bioscience educators in Australian universities. The handbook provides: A snapshot of current practice to teach scientific inquiry Descriptions of 26 cases where scientific inquiry skills are explicitly taught Detailed learning designs of six cases of innovative practice Resources to assist educators to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching practice.

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