Using the Inquiry Model for Effective Research

This unit is designed to provide you with the skills, knowledge and resources  to conduct powerful inquiry based investigations. As you will see there are many similarities between science inquiry, HASS inquiry and the information literacy process - we use aspects from both to provide the framework that you will follow over the semester.  
You will develop a strong foundation that can then be applied to future inquiry-based tasks, not only in your academic course, but as a framework for the development of information literacy competencies in your future students. These competencies have significant and strong links to many of the outcomes from the Australian Curriculum.

Inquiry Method 

Empirical inquiry includes 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' methods which are the types of tangible data assessed using the evidence of our senses. While these kinds of data collection methods are not the only way in which we 'know' things, they are useful for testing research hunches or hypotheses in a variety of fields.
Inquiry methods are most often used for two major purposes:
(1)  To establish "facts" or recurring regularities in the environment.
Examples of facts include:
  • The incidence of violence on high school campuses.
  • The number of shark sightings on the WA coast.
(2)  To test, (and more surreptitiously) establish, causal explanations for established facts. Most theories address explanations for factual material. Explanations typically assert causal relationships among variables of interest. 
For example:
  • Students who engage in explosive violence on high school campus have been bullied at that school.
  • Science professionals have greater access to the Internet at work than other workers do.

Inquiry in Action

How do Scientists and researchers capture the numbers of different organisms in the ocean and sea when they do surveys? This seems like an impossible ​task. In the clip below Professor Carolyn Hogg discusses how they completed wildlife surveys in the Southern Ocean and around Antarctica Peninsula.