The effect of doing mathematic lesson homework with discussing at EBA (Education Information Network) platform on 7th grade students' inquiry skills

This study aims to examine the effect of doing mathematics homework by discussing on the Education Information Network (EBA) platform on the inquiry skills of 7th-grade students. In the research, a quasi-experimental design with the pretest-posttest control group, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The study was carried out for 6 weeks in a public secondary school in the Buca district of İzmir province in the second term of the 2021-2022 academic year. The study consisted of 48 seventh-grade students, 24 of whom were in the experimental group and 24 in the control group. "Inquiry Skills Scale (Sorgulama Becerileri Ölçeği)" (Aldan Karademir, 2013) was applied to the experimental and control groups at the beginning and end of the study. As an experimental procedure, open-ended and single-question homework assignments were sent to the experimental group once a week via EBA. Homework sent from EBA has been prepared in an open-ended format to prevent students from answering multiple-choice tests only by choosing and to create a discussion environment by making them think. When the students completed their homework and uploaded it to the platform, they could see each other's answers. When the experimental group students uploaded their homework on the EBA platform, they were directed with questions to make them think about their answers and their friends' answers. On the last day of the week, when the answers for each homework are uploaded, a discussion environment was created by asking the following questions: "Have you reread your answers?", "Have you read your friends' answers?", "Have you checked the correctness or inaccuracy of your answers and contacted your friends about this?", "Have you read your friends' solutions and found different ways?" Have you thought about it?", "Have you asked what you did not understand about the answers and expressed them with your ideas?". On the other hand, no homework was prepared, and no discussion environment was created for the control group; only the assignments in the textbook were given to the students in the control group. At the end of the study, the "Inquiry Skills Scale" was applied again. The data obtained during this research is analyzed with the statistical package program (SPSS 22). In line with the findings obtained in the study, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference in favor of the experimental group between the averages of inquiry skills of the experimental group students who did their homework by discussing on the EBA platform and the averages of the control group students. This result was interpreted as doing the homework by discussing on the EBA platform improves the inquiry skill levels of the students. In the study, the homework given to the students on the EBA platform was carried out by first having the students do the homework individually and then discuss it, and it is thought that the online environment is effective because it allows the students to see the answers of their friends and think about the answers. However, in further systematic research, it can be revealed in more detail whether students examine all the answers and whether they focus on the answers of specific people. In addition, further research can be conducted on the effects and productivity of using homework given in a technology-free classroom environment or online platforms with different infrastructure instead of EBA environment on students' inquiry skills. Keywords: Inquiry Skills, Math Homework, EBA (Educational Information Network).