Investigating Students’ Inquiry Behaviors and Time Use in a Simulation-Supported Inquiry Learning Environment
International Conference on Educational Technology and Online Learning 2026, Bremen, Germany, 17 - 20 August 2026, (Summary Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Summary Text
- City: Bremen
- Country: Germany
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
This study aimed to examine students’ inquiry behaviors during the implementation of a “Human Pressure” activity developed within a simulation-supported guided inquiry learning environment. Specifically, the study examined: students’ performance at each inquiry stage, the time spent at each stage, the relationship between time and performance, and the relationship among performances across inquiry stages. The research was conducted as a case study. The participants consisted of 24 ninth-grade students. Data were obtained from log records of the learning process carried out by the students in a simulation-supported learning environment. Students’ inquiry performances were evaluated using an analytic rubric developed for each inquiry stage: Understanding the Task, Formulating a Hypothesis, Designing an Experiment, Data Collection (Use of Simulation), Data Analysis, and Drawing Conclusions. The rubric consisted of stage-specific criteria and yielded scores ranging from 0 to 4, with higher scores indicating better performance. The analyses were conducted using SPSS 29.0 and Microsoft Excel. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the distribution of performance and time variables, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between time and performance within each stage and the relationship between performance across stages.
The analysis results showed that students performed best in the Formulating a Hypothesis (M=3.83, SD=.565) and Understanding the Task (M=3.75, SD=.897) stages, followed by Drawing Conclusions (M=3.25, SD=.897), Data Analysis (M=3.00, SD=.522), and Designing an Experiment (M=2.94, SD=1.31), while their lowest performance was in the Data Collection (M=2.63, SD= .465) stage. It was determined that students spent the most time in the Designing an Experiment stage (M=224.33, SD=118.83). This was followed by the Drawing Conclusions (M=203.42, SD=70.14) and Formulating a Hypothesis (M=202.08, SD=100.88) stages. Students spent the least amount of time on the Data Collection stage (M=78.04, SD=17.38). It was found that there was no relationship between the time students spent on the Understanding the Task, Formulating a Hypothesis, Designing an Experiment, Data Collection, and Drawing Conclusions stages and their performance in those stages. However, in the Data Analysis stage, a significant, negative relationship was found between the time spent and performance (rho = −0.439, p = .032). The results of the Spearman correlation analysis revealed no statistically significant relationship among performance scores in the inquiry stages (p > 0.05).
The findings indicate that students demonstrated relatively high levels of inquiry performance overall; however, additional support may be needed in data collection, experimental design, and mathematical representation of relationships among variables. These findings suggest that spending more time on a particular inquiry stage does not necessarily result in higher performance. Individual differences in strategy use and cognitive processing may explain variations in time spent across stages. In this study, data were analyzed based on a single activity related to one topic. Future studies could analyze data from multiple inquiry activities conducted across different science topics to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of students’ inquiry behaviors over time.