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Iran is considered an emerging destination that remains largely under-toured, even as the recent lifting of strict economic sanctions and new international agreements is making it easier to obtain a visa-on-arrival. The Facebook page “See You in Iran” is used to promote the destination and communicate the “real” image of Iran (with numerous updates daily), with semblances of authenticity portrayed through user-generated content (UGC). UGC allows people to post and explore new places, and to interact with those who have just visited. This chapter assesses UGC using an interpretative framework: authentic inquiry (the need for unknown insight into a new awareness), authentic encounter (through relationships, connections, communitas, and belonging), and authentic production (based on feelings, emotions, and sensations).

This paper aims to examine the impact of using digitized objects for inquiry with middle-school classrooms. Research analyzed critical thinking processes and student engagement during collaborative investigations with 3D models of authentic objects.

Digitized objects were 3D scans of fossils from the paleontology collection at the Natural History Museum of Utah implemented as 3D prints and 3D virtual models. Verbal protocol analysis examined critical thinking processes during collaborative student learning. Engagement was assessed via student feedback and a classroom observation protocol.

The findings demonstrated that digitized objects facilitated key critical thinking processes, particularly observation, problem finding, elaboration and evaluation. Student feedback was very positive and focused on strong interest in 3D technologies and the ability to engage in authentic exploration. Observations showed very high levels of on-task engagement.

Additional research is necessary to determine if findings generalize across varied learner populations, including broader age ranges and socioeconomic samples, to activities implemented as fully online experiences and to digitized objects from varied domains.

Findings demonstrate digitized objects are effective methods to engage students in critical thinking and to promote engagement with authentic objects during classroom learning. Results demonstrate strong potential of new technologies to leverage the educational impact of digitized objects from local collections, setting the stage for expanded educational outreach by museums and libraries.

There are many beliefs about how additional languages are learned, several of which have informed some of the most tenacious pedagogical constructs. In this chapter, additional language teachers working with additional language students in high schools are asked to challenge some widely accepted beliefs about language learning and methods of teaching language, and consider a technique that better aligns with constructivist theories of learning and the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach. This chapter includes a brief discussion on IBL, its constructivist roots, and its many permutations. It also explores some constructivist-based additional language teaching approaches and discusses to what extent they align with IBL. Also provided is a six-step inquiry language-learning process, specifically designed to teach additional languages, with discussion on how each stage builds upon the other, optimizing language learning. In addition, a series of lessons are described which show how the inquiry language-learning process can be employed to teach additional languages to students who are not yet fully proficient in the school’s language of instruction. The chapter concludes with a discussion on some of the challenges of using IBL with additional language students, citing some of the psychological, cultural, and cognitive needs often present in these students. The chapter ends with a call for further research into the use of IBL to teach additional languages.

History teachers are continually seeking new ways in which they can actively involve their students and allow them to think more creatively. Creating local history projects allows students to look beyond the information on the pages of their text and forces them to look deeper into the history of their local environment. Properly constructed community and local history projects assist students in “actually doing history” and engage them in authentic activities directly related to the study of history. As educators, we need to utilize the communities in which we live, because they offer a wealth of opportunities for learning and continue to be one of the least tapped resources for social studies teaching (Martorella, 1998). Presented in this paper are methods and resources that can be used when conducting local histories in the K-12 classrooms in a manner encouraging students to engage in historical inquiry in authentic and meaningful ways.

The serendipitous beginning and organic evolvement of the Dragon Research Collaborative (DRC) allowed us the freedom to approach the learning environment differently than we had in prior, more traditional projects or courses. We embrace that freedom in the project’s structure. For us, dragons are the catalyst for construction of an educational environment that encompasses science, social science, the humanities, and the fine arts, but not solely within a school context. The partners that have joined with us, museums, businesses, and other higher education staff and faculty, are integral to establishing the real-world authenticity of the DRC. We share here the strategies and tools we have found useful in creating synergistic, multidisciplinary learning opportunities. The DRC model’s strength lies in several characteristics: a collaborative, caring environment, knowledge construction that is student-driven, and a robust partner network.

Prior research has shown the effectiveness of inquiry education in increasing content knowledge and motivation. Improving learners’ epistemologies is an additional component that should be examined when considering inquiry effectiveness. The basis for students’ participation in inquiry-based science education (IBSE) is to emulate the scientific process in classroom learning – and, by extension, to alter their scientific epistemologies. In this chapter, we discuss the challenges associated with the construction and assessment of IBSE. First, despite it being a common underlying theoretical framework of inquiry units, assessments of learning outcomes rarely reflect a consideration of students’ changing epistemologies. Second, we examine whether inquiry practices in the classroom are constructed to alter students’ epistemologies. We integrate preliminary research findings from a week-long, researcher-taught ecology inquiry unit with urban adolescents, reporting on posttest assessments of students’ thoughts on sources of knowledge, their ecology content knowledge, and their understanding of the nature of science. While we expected this unit to foster learner epistemology, our results did not confirm our expectations. In fact, students who participated in the inquiry unit were outperformed by a comparison group matched on age and ethnicity in several unexpected areas relevant to learner epistemology. This chapter explores explanations of unexpected findings and recommendations for the future assessment and practice of inquiry couched in challenges associated with current challenges to instructing and assessing learner epistemology.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research within the multidisciplinary programs. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions within multidisciplinary programs. The chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where students learn “how-to-learn” – where increasingly higher levels of self-directed learning is fostered – and where students grow in the three key areas of learning: cognitively, emotionally, and socially. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL, if designed and implemented properly, can be an important approach to enhancing and transforming teaching and learning.