Designing and Implementation of Web-Enhanced Inquiry Learning for Literacy in Science Platform for Post COVID-19 Education

Abstract

Teaching and learning for school science became more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic as regular science classes were offered online in real-time remote, synchronized, asynchronized, and hybrid learning modes. In science education, students often cannot collect the real-time data necessary for inquiry in science classrooms. During the COVID-19 outbreak, web-based or e-learning platforms play a significant role in science education during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To overcome the outbreak limitation, teachers and students were required to transform their teaching and learning to be online with and without the available online platforms, enabling both teachers and learners to easily different learning sources and make teaching and learning work efficient and effective. Therefore, this study proposed a prototype of a Web-enhanced Inquiry Learning for Literacy in Science (WILL-S) platform aiming to provide innovative and flexible teaching to enhance the science competencies of middle school students. This web platform allows teachers and students to maximize their teaching practices and learning processes in science. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed platform was carried out with eight in-service science teachers and 221 middle school students from eight different secondary schools located in northeastern Thailand to estimate their acceptance of the proposed platform from teachers' and students' perspectives. The preliminary result was the positive acceptability of the teachers and students.