This week for EDIT 7500 we had readings on Project Based Learning which were intriguing. The idea behind Project Based Learning (PBL) is that giving students projects as oppossed to standard classroom time can help them cultivate a deeper understanding of not only topics, but practical problem solving techniques that they could use beyond the classroom.
I should say that these readings did not stress the applications beyond life in the classroom, but that is what I thought of immediately.
Many different options were proposed for doing projects, but I was most drawn to two types. The first, that has little application to my present teaching scenario, is to do a project that ties in with something happening in the community. Projects under this heading could be anything from developing a petition for city council, designing a play ground, helping with a city beautification project, and any other action which can get a student involved with the greater world around them. In getting students involved with out-of-the-classroom activities-that are still relevant to their classwork- they will learn a more personal and hands-on lesson than what general curriculum will allow. Such projects will also help create responsible citizens, which I consider a primary goal of education.
The other type of projects that PBL calls for are research projects. This has numerous application to my field, history. These projects typically start by teachers providing students with a question and them finding their own way of answering that within the confines of a research project. As with the Civic option previously mentioned, guidelines are particularly important for the research project. Students need to know to what extent they need to answer the question, the nature of their answer (paper, display, performance, presentation), and they need to be bound by the subject matter of the course. In the same vein that the Civic project teaches a student practical aspects of civic responsibility, the research project can provide students with the tools they will need at various levels, collegiate and professional.
There are shared characteristics of the two types that PBL really emphasizes. The first is that these project should be group based. I agree to a certain extent because group projects can foster social skills and teach students lessons about teamwork. However, the lesson I often learned from teamwork on group projects was that you cannot depend on people to do all of their work. A bit cynical sure, but that lesson was very practical in the real world when I had goals set in my profession. I knew never to take on anything I could not finish by myself and that lesson has served me well. PBL obviously wants to encourage other lessons from groupwork, which I would hope may be the case in many projects. However, from my personal experience groupwork can lead to harsher lessons than a teacher might intend. That being said, I would certainly assign a group project in High School or grade school as these offer social opportunities for students that operate in a closer social environment. Therefore, the project could be more fun for them and by extension allow for involved interaction with the subject matter.
For College, I would not do a group project. College students in a class are often very disconnected from one another (unlike students who share a dorm or are on a team together). Every college group project I have done has not resulted in cooperation and teamwork, but rather each person splitting up a piece of the project and then meeting up shortly before the due date to paste it all together. That, in my mind, misses the point of PBL.
In college, I would assign a research project on an individual basis, likely a paper, but give the students some flexibility when it came to the topic. The best example of this from my perspective came in my British History course in undergrad when our Professor handed each of us a picture of some topic from the class. He said we had to write a paper based off of something in or related to that picture. I was given a picture of the Crystal Palace at the World's Fair in London which stood for the height of industrial achievement. I decided to do my paper on the Liverpool-Manchester Railway as it was one of the first in England and study how impactful it was on England's industrialism. The project gave me my first taste of college-level history work and because it was on a topic of my choosing I was more enthused to do the work and involve myself with the material. The professor won out as well because by bounding my work within the confines of a related course topic, he assured I would work on something course relevant.
The final aspect of PBL I am going to discuss presently is the need for Projects, both Civic and Research, to be presented to a non-classroom audience. By subjecting the completion and execution of the project to review of someone outside the classroom, you force a student to evaluate what they think is acceptable to present to others, as opposed to what they think is acceptable in order to earn a certain grade (that may not be an A). I like this idea because it gets students used to doing work that has merits/consequences outside of the classroom structure as well as giving them a practical deadline outside of the teacher-student relationship. Students know they have to have something they would be proud of presenting ready by a certain date. Doing projects with this guideline can only help.
I certainly have felt the pressure to succeed on projects and papers I had to present to others. Consequently, in my classroom I intend to almost always give some form of course-related research project. When I can I would like to have my students present said project to others. These readings were very helpful and made me think a great deal more on projects than I ever had before.
As far as my own project, I have designed a website which I will likely post on the next blog. For now I just have a brief blurb on what is and ten links to lesson plans on Nazi Germany (my field of study). Hopefully I can turn this website into a model of my potential flipped classroom idea. Only time will tell.
Until next time,
Derrick
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