m-Orchestrate app for iPhone and iPad

The design of the m-Orchestrate learning system integrates mobile technology into the science curriculum, assessment, collaboration and inquiry-based pedagogy grounded in social constructivist theories with a more generic pedagogical structure as scaffolds for learners’ inquiry. The pedagogical structure is comprised of five elements: “engage, explore, analyze, explain and reflect” developed from the “inquiry-based learning model” in our earlier study, which will be employed in the design of inquiry phases in the m-Orchestrate-based learning. The use of these inquiry phases will serve for students’ achievement of knowledge integration through eliciting ideas, adding ideas, distinguishing among ideas and reflecting on ideas. In our system design, we modify the above five inquiry phases into “WeEngage, WeExplore, WeAnalyze, WeExplain, and WeReflect” to highlight the collaborative nature of the activities in m-Orchestrate.

The system is able to visit, review and modify the phases iteratively without being restricted to a fixed inquiry sequence. The core functions of each inquiry phase are the note that students can post in the forms of text, picture, video, drawing and concept map. Each phase also contains diverse plugins such as additional blocks with specific functions. To be specific, the functions in the five-phase student collaborative science inquiry are: (1) WeEngage: to allow students to brainstorm research problems, do pre-reflection and raise the group inquiry questions; (2) WeExplore: to allow students to make an inquiry plan with division of labor and collecting data; (3) WeAnalyze: to allow students to document and analyze data; (4) WeExplain: to allow students to demonstrate learning outcomes and group reports in a slideshow; (5) WeReflect: to allow students to make post-reflections on the entire collaborative inquiry learning process.