The Effects of Guided Inquiry Approach in a Web-based Learning Environment on the Achievement of Students with Different Cognitive Style

Many educationists advocate the use of Web-based learning (WBL) as a platform to deliver information. Although thousands of WBL environments have been developed, most of them are tutorial-based. A guided inquiry approach offers an alternative as it allows the users to explore the environment based on a given problem. This study investigated the effectiveness of two learning approaches in a WBL environment (guided inquiry, GIA and tutorial, TuA) on the achievement of students with different cognitive styles (field independent, FI and field dependent, FD). The findings revealed that: (1) the GIA group performed significantly better than the TuA group, (2) the FI students performed significantly better than the FD students, and (3) the FI students in the GIA group performed significantly better than the FI students in the TuA group. These findings suggest that guided inquiry has the potential to be an effective learning approach in a Web environment