On line Forums as a `Rescue Net' in an Open Inquiry Process

The Biomind program is a new open inquiry program for Israeli biology high school students. The Biomind program is facilitated by diverse activities of asynchronous on-line forums for teachers and students. This research aims to analyse the discussions that occurred over a period of three years in these forums, in order to obtain a picture of the benefits that virtual discussions hold for the implementation of the open inquiry program. The results presented in this article indicate that students required assistance mainly with searching scientific information, finding experimental techniques and procedures, and phrasing inquiry questions. The three most frequent areas that were discussed in the teachers' forum were technical and procedural aspects of experimentation, bureaucracy and phenomenon identification. In addition, issues such as inferring and discussing, logical progression of the inquiry process, scientific writing, teacher-student interaction, reflective thinking, affective points of view, and forum administration were raised in the forum discourses. The forum discourses create a learning community that contributes to the implementation of the Biomind program, and pinpoint the aspects that should be taken into consideration in the future.