The Probability Inquiry Environment: A Collaborative, Inquiry-based Simulation Environment

Recent perspectives on learning encourage educators interested in technology based learning environments to reconsider their basic assumptions about teaching as "transmitting correct information." Instead we view the teaching and learning enterprise as helping students construct knowledge from domain relevant experiences. In this paper we report on the Probability Inquiry Environment (PIE), which facilitates the development of probabilistic reasoning by making available collaborative inquiry activities and student-controlled simulations. These activities guide middle school students toward a deeper understanding of probability, a domain that is becoming increasingly important in the K-12 mathematics curricula of the United States but which is notoriously difficult to learn.