Inquiry is a basic dimensoin of science.

Inquiry based learning should normally include active participation on behalf of the learners. That is why it is expected to be more exciting and interesting.

It sure has to do with identifying the appropriate question-topic for inquiry, linking it to the learners experience and general field of study.

Good luck. It will sure be interesting. Keep us informed about the outcomes.

Keys, C. W., & Bryan, L. A. (2001). Co‐constructing inquiry‐based science with teachers: Essential research for lasting reform. Journal of research in science teaching, 38(6), 631-645.

dear prof Rustaman, in our hand s this-these IBL approach(es) are not tirvial tasks. After 20. years trying to do activities of this type, we have the sensation that it works only toma part of the stundents. We assume that about 20 to 30 % of the students really benefit from them. Anyway, the efficacy is higher than the traditional approaches ....

My perception from both the literature and my experiences with practice is that teachers inherently enjoy IBL. The issue is therefore not motivating teachers to enjoy it. Once they try it, they tend to be seduced by its creative potential, the experiential lens it offers on their teaching, and they get spontaneously stimulated by the learners' reaction. The real hurdles are getting teachers to try it; here there are three obstacles: (i) Our fear of the unknown as teachers and our reluctance to try new approaches. I would say that as a field we are really behind in terms of management of change. (ii) Our reluctance to relinquish control. As a profession we have issues with control and tend to equate competency with control. It is extremely hard to get in-service teachers to even consider letting go an leaving the learner in control. (ii) The third obstacle is that IBL, though it seems free flowing and student led, requires an awful lot of design, planning and hard work on the part of the teacher in order to make the 'experience of freedom' work for the learner. It looks design-less but is in fact design packed. This represents an enormous amount of work and many teachers simply do not have the time to do this, particularly in a climate of dwindling resources and high staff turnover.

I do agree with you, but not many teachers like to work hard, they often think that teaching with IBL is time consuming and they don't want to do so. I do agree too that once the teachers try and satisfy with the results, they will continue to interactive with IBL. I am very impressed with levels of inquiry introduced by Carl Wenning. What do you know about his work lately.

the points raised by prof. Fovet are really important. The question that we learning (teachers learn also a lot from these activities) is real and I have been learning a lot of basic biochemistry by performing inquiry based learning activities with undergraduate students. The major problems that we have sistematically faced are two: a) the 40-50% students that normally follow the 20-30% students activelly engaged in the activities (i.e., apparently they try to imitate them) and b) the students that apparently do not do anything spontaneously (about 20-40% depending on the student levels/course or semeter). The question here what could we do to increase the proportion of "imitators" and "non-participants" to become actively engaged?????

My experience using IBL showed that, it improves the learning and teaching skills of students and lecturers respectively. However, the end results which is based on the number of students that passed the course is actually very low.