The characteristics of gifted students' ecology inquiries in ubiquitous learning activities

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences on science inquiry competence and meta-cognitive strategies between the gifted and the average students in ubiquitous ecology learning activities. The participants were 27 gifted students and 63 average students from 4–5th grades. Two major instruments were developed for this investigation. The first was the criterion variable, Science Inquiry Literacy Assessment (SILA); the second was a questionnaire which consisted of three rating scales for ubiquitous ecology inquiry. All participants were required to respond to these two instruments after 8 weeks of inquiry. The results revealed that the gifted students performed significantly better than the average students in SILA and perceived usefulness of the mobile devices. The preliminary validities of perceived usefulness ratings also looked more promising for the gifted students than those for the average students. The meta-cognitive strategies for learning progress between two ability groups was not significant different.

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