This study investigated how students’ views of learning influence the quality of inquiry processes and artifacts in inquiry-based learning. It focused on whether students approach learning as knowledge acquisition or as knowledge construction. Participants included 35 high school students enrolled in an online inquiry program. The study analyzed the relationships among rubric assessments of students’ inquiry processes and artifacts, and their self-set activity goals, which revealed a clear pattern. Students who viewed the task not merely as an opportunity to acquire or transmit knowledge but also as a chance to co-construct knowledge through social interaction with others tended to produce higher-quality inquiry work. Similarly, students who aimed to develop deeper responses to the inquiry questions rather than settling for surface-level responses demonstrated stronger inquiry processes. Although the students learned in the same environment and addressed the same inquiry tasks, the quality of their inquiry work varied significantly. The findings suggest that the goals students hold, particularly those emphasizing social interaction and the pursuit of deeper explanations, play an important role in shaping the quality of their inquiry processes. These results highlight the potential value of instructional support that helps students embed social interaction into their learning goals and attend to the depth of the answers they seek. Such support may contribute to improving the overall quality of inquiry-based learning.
