OurQuestions

The OurQuestions project researched educational uses of the web.

It asked:

1. How are schools - recently connected to the Internet - to make effective and innovative use of the World Wide Web?

2. Through new technology, how can we best facilitate opportunities for children to discuss ideas and concepts with others? Can we share these amongst children in different cultures and, if so, does it appear that anyone benefits from this?

3. How can classroom communities of inquiry - if enhanced by resources from the World Wide Web - be used to enhance the learning of subject-specific ideas? What kinds of resources (curricular and extra-curricular material) are needed and most useful?

The pilot study in 1996-7 involved secondary school students in England, Australia and Canada. The research investigated how students could use web-based forums to explore their own mathematical and philosophical questions. The team included Lyn English in Queensland, Donald Cudmore in Toronto, and James Aczel in Oxford, and was funded by Hamilton Trust, ?WhatIf!, and Oxford University's Department of Educational Studies.

The students contributed questions to an international web-based survey. They aksed questions such as who is the
most popular member of the Spice Girls, whether smoking should be banned, and whether students support the death penalty, the monarchy and their current government. Each student from each country then completed the survey. Next, they used the raw data from the survey to pose problems for each other to solve. These problems were posted on the web. Different students attempted these problems and afterwards completed a "critique form" that asked their opinion of the problem as a problem. Students could then revise their own problems, and post them again.

Lyn English said at the time “We allowed them to create the problems themselves because we are moving away from stereotyped textbook-created problems — which are pretty boring and unrealistic — to student-generated problems which are real-world, meaningful, interesting and cross-cultural. ... We are encouraging the kids to be divergent thinkers, to look at maths more philosophically, to critically analyse what they do and, to increase their enthusiasm, interest and selfconfidence
in maths and engender cross-cultural communications and interactions among students.”

Key technological aspects of the work included the early use of easy-to-use (and easy-to-make) web-based asynchronous text-based forums, an online critique form, an online survey, and a web-page maker for teachers.

Two papers came out of this pilot work:

English, Lyn D., Donald Cudmore, and Dominic Tilley (1998) "Problem Posing and Critiquing: How It Can Happen in Your Classroom, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, October, 124–29

Cudmore, Donald H., & English, Lyn D. (1998). Using Intranets to Foster Statistical Problem Posing by Secondary Mathematics Students. Session 23.63 AERA Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA

Cudmore & English (1998) - Word document (380k)

The technology also supported the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME) Working Group on Classroom Research in 1997. This working group considered research issues, practicalities and opportunities when the web is used in the classroom.

In 1998, Lyn English won a large grant from the Australian Research Council to build on this pilot study over three years and involving seven schools in Australia, the UK and Canada. Kathy Charles worked extensively on this study.