ADA for IBL: Lessons Learned in Aligning Learning Design and Analytics for Inquiry-Based Learning Orchestration

Orchestrating technology-enhanced learning is a difficult task, especially in demanding pedagogical approaches like inquiry-based learning (IBL). To foster effective teacher adoption, both the complexity of designing IBL activities and the uncertainty about the student learning path during enactment need to be addressed. Previous research suggests that aligning learning design and learning analytics can be an effective way to provide such orchestration support. This paper reports on a design-based research (DBR) project to explore teachers’ orchestration needs in Go-Lab (a technological ecosystem for IBL used by thousands of primary and secondary school teachers around the world), and on how solutions that align learning design and analytics can fulfill such needs. The analysis of data from multiple events (including surveys, case studies, workshops with teachers, and platform usage analyses) led to a catalogue of IBL orchestration needs that can be tackled by aligning learning design and analytics, as well as a list of guidelines for technology development aiming to support IBL orchestration. These two contributions can support the creation of future learning analytics–enhanced IBL environments that are both pedagogically grounded and usable by teachers in authentic settings.