The Efficacy of Inquiry-based Learning in Undergraduate Physiology

• Main Authors: James DePaepe, Tracy Campion
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Portland State University 2012-01-01
• Series: Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
• Online Access: http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25293

Lecture, where learning is passive, remains a prevalent instructional method of teaching content. Contextualized approaches like Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) where students are more actively engaged remains less common. For 25 years the literature has supported contextualized approaches. Nevertheless, recent papers have claimed IBL to be an unguided approach that has produced content knowledge deficits. Therefore, we tested whether undergraduate physiology content could be learned using IBL. Four groups of undergraduates (mean ages=23, N=60) took a ten-week physiology course using IBL. A content valid pretest and posttest measured content knowledge. A one-way ANOVA indicated no significant differences within or between groups on the pretest (F=.231) or between the groups on the posttest (F=.119). After collapsing the groups into pre and post, a paired Ttest indicated a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores T (32)= -7.61, P>.0001. The data clearly demonstrated significant content knowledge gains and higher than average student satisfaction.