As I have read through the past few assigned readings I have really come to appreciate the virtues of including PBL experiences in classrooms and have even felt as if I have been a bad teacher for not including more examples of them more frequently. I am presently teaching a Food Science course which is a course for students who are not typically strong in science. I would love to revamp and remodel the entire course so that it is composed of several in-depth PBL experiences that would both cover the curriculum expectations and promote the development of a series of basic skills. However I see this type of class having several hurdles to this type of learning experience several of which were discussed in the Scott and Thomson article – Is PBL Practical:
"(1) Students who struggle with comprehension of the basic skills struggle further with PBL because their foundations are not strong enough to support it. (2) ESOL and special education students struggle further, and despite our best attempts at putting these students in groups with ‘strong’ students to help, they still wind up frustrated. Frustrated students are not successful and they do not leave with more knowledge. Instead they are less motivated and crestfallen" (p. 9).
I do believe that I could develop certain activities that could be implemented early on in the projects that would allow for students to gain expertise and confidence in development of the necessary skills to be successful in a PBL situation. Especially for this type of student, explicit teaching of skills must be addressed. For example what does it mean to read with meaning? In this case guided questions could be provided when students read their textbook or online resources. What does it mean to analyze and choose relevant information from a website? Quite often these students only copy and paste and only rely on sources like Wikipedia or the first image they find in a Google image search. By providing students with a mixture of both reliable and unreliable sources and a series of questions, students could learn how to appreciate that everything that they read may not be true!! A concrete example of this may be having students research such a question as giving sugary foods to children increases their hyperactivity. By providing students with sources that contain opposing viewpoints, they can learn the skill of analyzing and drawing conclusions on their own. This type of skills development lesson plans could also be applied to ESOL students. By allowing students to be successful early on in the project, this could translate them into taking risks and going beyond their comfort levels when they are involved in more rich PBL experiences.
Such richer PBL experiences could involve the development of global PBL projects. As I was reading the Teacher’s Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet several ideas came to mind:
- Wouldn’t it be nice if students could grow up together, almost as a scaffolding experience, where they begin in middle school as ePals and then develop into collaborative learning groups in high school? This would require long term planning amongst a variety of teachers and I can only think of the benefits and long lasting positive relationships that would develop because of such a longitudinal project. This would mean a great deal of commitment and organization by a larger group of teachers but what a great learning experience that would stay with the students together. This type of project would force teachers from all grade levels to work together to develop projects that would meet standards across the grade levels and across different national curriculums.
- North America in the not so distant past was primarily a unilingual area where students may have only heard a foreign language in a movie or from people in airports. Now, I know that in many school systems the study of a second language is necessary for graduation requirements. This experience could be enriched by asking students not only to conjugate verbs but to communicate in real time with their peers in a second language…what a rewarding experience!!
- Global collaborative projects mean much more than just learning technology or environmental science with students from across the globe. Global PBL projects should also be a chance to include both Geography and current events lessons. I know from being a fan of the TV show Amazing Race how inept and ignorant some contestants can be about the different countries and cultures that they travel to. In order to properly and effectively communicate one must be respectful of who you are collaborating with. Learning about a country does not just mean learning its capital and listing its major exports but learning what a typical day would be like, how past history influences present day and what have been the past relationships between the countries. As well, students should be encouraged to keep up with current events because a natural disaster in one country may only be a news headline in another but could be a life and death situation in a different country.
- Students have become more aware of different cultures and countries but quite often they still think that there is only one way to solve a problem – their way. This viewpoint is often encouraged by the mainstream news outlets who often only give the North American perspective of a story. I know that news is covered very different by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) and the Cable News Network (CNN). Key to the success of global PBL projects is having students appreciate that the way they communicate or deal with a problem may not be the only way…the world is much more diverse than hamburgers, potato chips and High School Musical. Students could be shown different news reports for the same story from different global news outlet and then compare and contrast their content.
Establishing global PBL projects does mean overcoming many of the same challenges that are faced when implementing a classroom PBL project but I believe that the returns are even more rewarding.
References
Scott, K. & Thomson, S. (August, 2007). Is PBL practical? Learning and Leading with Technology. (8-9).
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