by Andrew K. Miller | Feb 9, 2015 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
Project-based learning has essential components that make it unique to other models of instruction, such as public audience, voice and choice, driving questions, and teaching and assessing 21st-century skills. PBL requires that all of these components be present in a truly great “main-course project.”
Similarly, game-based learning has elements that make it unique, even in its many implementation methods. GBL can look like gamification, where game elements such as quests and incentives are used to make the unit of instruction into a game of sorts. GBL can also look like using games for instructional purposes, such as the popular Minecraft or even Angry Birds, to support student learning. Many educators may wonder how they can leverage GBL practices within a PBL project and combine them to form a powerful learning experience. It is possible, but only with careful combination and intentional implementation.
GBL to Teach 21st-Century Skills
An important component of a PBL project is teaching and assessing a 21st-century skill (or skills) within the project. This is frequently an area of growth for new PBL teachers, because it’s not often that we’re asked to do this in the classroom. GBL leverages using games in the classroom, and these games can be targeted to help scaffold collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. We all want our students to be risk takers, so introducing games that create a safe space to take those risks can support student learning a PBL project. While many games are individual in nature, many are also collaborative. Some games like Pandemic even require collaboration to solve problems together, rather than being competitive. Educators can select games aligned to one of the 4Cs to create low-stakes, fun opportunities to practice working together, communicating effectively, solving problems, and being innovative.
GBL as Content Lessons
You might use a game to teach students content, or have them practice with the content. Perhaps students are making recommendations to a senator about policies surrounding a local or national issue. In order to do that, they might play a specific iCivics game to support them in learning that content. There are already great games out there that can help students practice with the content or learn to apply it in a new situation. As educators plan a project and backwards-design the content and skills they want to teach, they can identify appropriate games that will scaffold the content. Remember, these games can be digital, board, or card games. If you, as an educator, want to make sure that the game will support learning, the best way to see for yourself is by playing it.
Games as Products of Learning
Many educators are leveraging games as products of student learning, whether as the content itself or as a demonstration of coding and programming skills. A game product can be a great choice as a demonstration of student knowledge. It’s important, though, that this choice fits the purpose of the project. Voice and choice aren’t arbitrary elements of a project — they align to the “why” captured in the project’s driving question. If making a game that wrestles with the content aligns to the purpose of the project, then it can be a great choice! In addition, a game could be a collaborative, team product, or an individual product. Paired with an excellent rubric, a game can align content and skills to learning outcomes and standards.
Games and Quests for Differentiation
Often in a gamified unit, students are given quests to accomplish that will help them learn content and skills. A PBL project might have some similar quests or mini games, and students may even have voice and choice regarding which ones they can or need to do. Through effective formative assessment practices, educators can help students select the most effective quests and games within a PBL project. Not every child may need to do the quest or game that you think he or she needs. Differentiation through quests and games is hinged on effective formative assessment.
Badges for Formative Assessment and Feedback
Badges alone will not create sustained engagement. However, there are some students who love to “collect,” and many of our students play games that support the gamer mindset. I know students who love to get the best armor on World of Warcraft or collect every single Pokémon possible. Badges can support this engagement. We also need to remember that not all of our students are collector types, so badges may not be the best tools for them.
If you do intend to use badges and incentives, ensure that the badges align to meaningful rewards, not just completion. Have badges that specifically address a 21st-century skill, giving or receiving feedback, or presenting to a public audience. These are all important aspects of project-based learning. Create badges that align to PBL best practices so that they support a better PBL culture and aren’t simply a way of saying, “Good job!”
Remember, there may be some elements of GBL that might take away from a PBL project. For instance, completely gamifying a unit could make it just a gamified unit and not PBL. Educators should use their professional judgment about when and where to leverage GBL elements in a PBL project, and they should be perfectly fine saying, “No, it doesn’t fit right now,” or “Yes, this can work!” Instead of trying to squeeze all aspects of GBL into PBL, find the right fit that will make your PBL project more engaging.
Have you blended game-based learning with project-based learning? What was your experience?
by Andrew K. Miller | Feb 2, 2015 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
We all struggle with homework and how to use it. In fact, many have said no to homework for good reason. It’s often just busywork, boring, or not clearly connected to the learning. Many times, students come home and can’t even articulate why they have a homework assignment. This is a problem of relevance. Worse yet, students receive hours of homework each night. They are required to read and take notes on material, produce papers, or more. This is what you might call “Do-It-Yourself School.” If you are assigning work where students are learning a large amount of completely new material on their own, then you are actually doing a disservice to your students.
Students should not be required to be their own teachers outside of class (the keyword here is “required”). Instead, homework needs to be designed for intentional purposes that support student learning. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, in their book Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, articulate many of the points that I try to make here. When we focus on some of these examples and principles below, we can actually make homework a useful tool for learning, where students see the relevance and engage in it.
When Students Are Ready
We often assign homework when students are not ready for it. We’ve all been in a situation when we run out of time in a lesson, and mistakenly assign the rest of the work as homework. This is the wrong way, as it becomes DIY School. Instead, teachers need to know, through formative assessment, whether or not their students are ready for the homework. This could mean that not all of your students will get homework that night. Some students may not be ready, while others will be. While every student will get to that homework, they won’t all get there at the same time. For those not ready, the assignment would be an unproductive struggle. When students are ready, meaning that they have the skills and background knowledge, that homework will be successful. Practice doesn’t make perfect — it makes permanent! If students do not have requisite skills or knowledge to complete the homework assignment, then they will make permanent errors that are harder to unlearn. Focus on assigning homework when students are ready.
Choice
In addition to assigning homework when students are ready, you could let students pick the assignment they want to do. Allowing voice and choice in homework assignments can increase engagement. Through reflection, students can self-identify content or skills they want to build or work on, and then choose the appropriate homework assignment. When they own the process of learning, then even homework can feel meaningful to them.
Limited Time
This is key! Students should not be assigned hours upon hours of homework. Homework time should be limited. Many argue over exact time, from ten minutes to an hour. This all depends on the age and grade level of the student. Although older students may be able to handle hours of homework, it doesn’t mean they should do hours of homework. Teachers also need to have collaborative conversations about the shared workload for students and limit that workload appropriately. We have students that are actively involved in extracurricular activities, family duties, and the like. We need to be responsive to this, which means that time devoted to homework will be different everywhere.
Spiral Review
Learning and standards often spiral themselves in the learning and instructional year. Something that was learned earlier in the year or unit can be reviewed through homework to remind students of what they should have learned or help teachers identify what may have been lost. Just make sure the homework is based on something already learned, and that you know the student already learned it from you.
Application
If students are ready to apply their learning in an appropriate new context, then homework can be used for that as well. Again, the teacher needs to know that students understand the content and have the skills to apply themselves to the material. When this is done appropriately, students are stretching their thinking and feeling success in the learning process.
Fluency Building
There are some skills that students should practice to build their fluency. Homework assignments to build this fluency can help reinforce skills that students have already learned. Again, practice makes permanent, so fluency-building homework should be assigned only when teachers know that students have the needed skills.
Extension
We all have students who are ready for assignments that will allow them to be creative or take the learning to a new level. Extension assignments are also a great way to differentiate. Teachers need to know where their students are through assessment, and allow the students ready for an extension assignment to give it a try.
Homework as Formative Assessment
Remember that homework itself can and should serve as a formative assessment of learning. It can be a useful check for understanding, which means that it doesn’t need to be graded. This view of homework can help tell the story of the student’s learning and also inform you how to adjust instruction to ensure success for all students.
You can of course choose not to assign homework, but you can also have homework as a meaningful and useful part of your instruction. And you don’t have to assign it all the time. If homework isn’t working for you, reexamine and reflect upon your implementation. Do you assign it too early in the instructional cycle? Does it not focus on spiral review, fluency, and the like? Do students have choice in their homework? These are just some reflective questions to consider. Remember, homework shouldn’t be assigned when you want it, but rather when students are ready for it.
by Andrew K. Miller | Jan 30, 2015 | ASCD, Blog
This post originally appeared on InService, the ASCD community blog. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization with 160,000 members in 148 countries, including professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.
View Original >
With all the push for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education, I think sometimes what we really want out of STEM education gets lost. STEM education came out of the need for more students in the fields of STEM. As scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, we want more students to find passions in these content areas and ultimately become leaders in the field. However, we can often get too focused on the content. We must remember that the pillar of STEM education isn’t just the content but also the mindsets behind it. 21st century skills are a critical component to STEM education. We want students who think critically, creatively, and collaboratively within the content areas of STEM. You can’t have one without the other. In fact, one of the critical mindsets that STEM education can foster is using failure as an opportunity to grow and learn.
Design Challenges
One of the key components of STEM education is design challenges. With these design challenges, students might work individually and in teams to solve problems ranging from robotic challenges to bridge designing to physics puzzles. By default, students will try out ideas that do not work completely. This is where great learning can occur. Because a STEM design challenge is set up with multiple opportunities to test ideas in a safe way, failure is viewed as an opportunity to learn. The design process takes time and therefore provides multiple opportunities to try and fail. In other academic environments, students often only get one shot at an assignment, which creates a fear of failure. With STEM design challenges, there is safety in failure.
Deeper Learning through Failure
When we “fail forward” we ask more questions—that is, we move forward and delve deeper into the inquiry process. For example, when students first design a bridge and it crashes to the ground due to weight issues, they will inevitably ask, “Why did this happen?” “How much weight did it hold?” “What new idea might I try out?” These questions require students to not just know that the idea wasn’t quite on track but also to understand why it wasn’t on track. These failures in STEM design challenges foster deeper learning through questioning. Students will then need to seek out further instructional resources from experts in the field, books and online readings, and their teacher. Failure fosters more learning; it doesn’t hinder it.
Failure in the Real World
We know that students learn more when they see how their learning connects to the real world. Often in STEM education, we partner with experts in the field to learn from them. Sometimes these experts aid in a design challenge or provide feedback and information on an assignment. For these STEM experts, failure is a natural part of their work. They are constantly failing and innovating. By working with STEM experts in the real world, our students can experience this type of failure and discover that it is just a natural part of both learning and life.
When we consider the components of the ASCD Whole Child Approach, we can see a clear and strong connection between STEM education and the safe, engaged, and challenged tenets. Students who recognize failure as an opportunity to learn experience a safe place to learn. They are engaged because failure opens up multiple paths and opportunities to learn in real-world contexts. And finally, they are challenged because STEM design challenges require complex thinking and problem solving.
by Andrew K. Miller | Dec 15, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
A public audience is a crucial component not only for a PBL project, but also for authentic and relevant learning. We know that the quality of student work increases when we have students share their work with an audience outside of the classroom. We also know that it can help keep students accountable in getting the work done. While it’s powerful to bring in the experts at the end of a unit or project, having them there along the way is helpful in providing authentic feedback. Of course, bringing an outside audience into your classroom can be a challenge — not to mention finding them first. Edutopia recently updated its Building Community Partnerships resource roundup, which includes some great videos, blogs, and ideas on how to connect with members of the community in different ways. Here are some further strategies you might consider.
Just Ask
I know it may seem simple, but just ask! Sometimes there is a strange fear associated with asking. Yes, it can be a little awkward to reach out and connect with someone outside of the classroom, but we need to be willing to take the risk. The worst answer you’ll get is, “No.” The best answer could be, “Sure, and let me bring in 20 of my colleagues!” You never know what the possibilities might be. In fact, many businesses and organizations require that their members spend time doing community service or even specifically volunteering in a school. Start early — the sooner you think you might need an audience, the sooner you should contact that potential audience member.
Ask Parents About Their Work and Lives
Parents are critical partners in learning, and they are also experts in their own right. One strategy I have employed is to send a quick survey home to parents asking them, “What do you do in your work or career?” and “What are some of your hobbies or other areas of expertise?” This gives me a list of parents that have at least two areas of expertise I can address. In fact, the more teachers in my building who ask, the more experts I have on my list. I encourage you to build a comprehensive list at the grade or school level. This list can be organized and curated by a teacher leader or even a parent community liaison.
Be Specific
Instead of asking parents or community members if they can come in on a certain day, be more specific. Tell parents and experts exactly what you would like them to do. Do you want them to provide feedback? Do you want them to ask questions to probe student thinking? Both? Either way, having very specific tasks and objectives for these community partners is crucial to making their connection not only more valuable, but also more meaningful. Provide a rubric or give them questions or prompts to drive feedback. Don’t forget to give them a context for the visit. Also, offer time slots to make it more possible for a visit to occur. It’s much easier to find an hour or two, rather than a full day. Instead of asking, “Can you come on Friday the 8th?” say, “I have six 30-minute time slots where I’d like to have students receive feedback. Are you available for any of these times?”
Use Technology
Technology can be used to make the walls of the classroom and school more permeable by way of virtual visits and meetings. Use message boards and blogs to get feedback as formative assessment from experts. Record videos from experts and from students, and exchange asynchronously if you are having trouble scheduling synchronous time. Skype is another tool that you can use to get experts into your classroom virtually. If you aren’t able to visit the expert or parent at their workplace, then consider a virtual field trip. Even with minimal technology, teachers can connect with people outside of the classroom.
Have Experts Ask Their Colleagues
In your request to experts and parents, ask them to ask their colleagues at work. When one teacher was looking for a subject matter expert to support a wing design project, he asked his colleagues and got around 20 volunteers. Parents and experts have amazing connections through their friends, spouses, relatives, and colleagues. If you try this, you could build a network of audience members that you never thought possible.
Now, I’m not saying that these strategies will bring every expert or parent that you ask into your classroom, but it can’t hurt to try. In fact, you should be excited even if you get just a few people to support your work. It’s generous of anyone to donate his or her time to support student learning.
What are some of your strategies to bring outside experts and parents into the classroom?
by Andrew K. Miller | Nov 5, 2014 | ASCD, Blog
This post originally appeared on ASCD Express, a regular ASCD Publication focused on critical topics in education. This article appeared in Vol 10. Issue 4, the focus topic being managing messy learning. View Original >
Project-based learning (PBL) can be messy by nature, but, then again, isn’t all learning? PBL is a student-centered practice. Because it allows for voice and choice for students in not only what they produce but also how they spend their time, the learning is not as structured as many educators are comfortable with. However, PBL can still be focused if educators pair content standards with a menu of choices for demonstrating understanding of those standards, rather than allowing students to do projects on whatever they find interesting.
Even when students are given a menu of choices, though, teachers must closely consider and anticipate PBL management to ensure that students are engaged in learning important content and skills. As you plan projects, consider what students need to know to be successful with the project; how you will help them develop the skills to self-manage and collaborate throughout the project; how you will use formative assessments and benchmarks to check student progress throughout the project; and finally, how you will provide ongoing feedback and opportunities for students to reflect on their progress throughout the project.
Need-to-Know List
When teachers first launch a project, they should ask students what they need to know to successfully complete the project. The students should then collectively compile a list of the questions they will ultimately need to answer throughout the project. These questions might be closely aligned to content—for example, “What are the important beliefs of Islam?”—or they might be process based—for example, “When are experts coming in to see our work?” This list of questions not only helps guide students in their learning but also helps the teacher plan appropriate scaffolds and lessons to make sure students are getting what they need to complete the project. Because this list may not initially be comprehensive, it is imperative that the teacher returns to the list throughout the project to allow students the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned and ask new questions. The need-to-know list can help focus the inquiry and turn the inquiry process over to students.
Tools for Scaffolding Self-Management and Collaboration
Two skills—self-management and collaboration—play key roles in successful PBL. Students must learn to both self-manage (independently manage their time and tasks) and collaborate (work cooperatively with others). Teachers can use a variety of tools to help students learn to acquire both of these skills. Physical tools, such as time-management logs and task lists, which are cocreated with students, can help break down the project’s process so that students can learn to manage their workloads on their own. Other physical tools, such as learning logs and team contracts, can be used to foster collaboration among students and teach them how to communicate with one another and hold one another accountable for various responsibilities. Rubrics can also be used to articulate the quality indicators of effective collaboration (the Buck Institute for Education has some sample rubrics for K–12 collaboration).
In addition to providing students with these physical tools, teachers need to explain the concepts of self-management and collaboration and encourage students to work toward acquiring these skills. When it comes to self-management and collaboration, we can’t expect all students to come to us with the necessary skills to work effectively independently and in teams. If we implement scaffolding techniques to teach and encourage these important skills, we set the stage for a great project and build classroom culture along the way.
Formative Assessments and Benchmarks
One PBL myth is that students are given complete control of their learning. On the contrary, it is crucial that teachers are very aware of exactly where students are in the learning process. Formative assessments and benchmarks are key in PBL to not only ensure that students are held accountable but also to ensure that we, as educators, know what students know or don’t know and are able to adjust instruction as needed. Educators should create and implement formative assessments that are aligned with content and skills learning and the product-creation process. Checking for Understanding by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey is a great book to help you think about a variety of ways to formatively assess.
Be prepared to give students timely, specific feedback on formative assessments and benchmarks and teach them how to self-assess and give feedback to peers. The Educational Leadership article “Feedback That Fits,” by Sue Brookhart, discusses high-quality feedback and offers guidance for determining the appropriate timing, amount, and mode of delivery.
Get Out of the Way
PBL is powerful because it empowers students to be self-directed, lifelong learners. Giving students space can be quite challenging for many educators. I remember when engagement and on-task time looked like students sitting in rows being silent. We know that this is not the case for PBL. During this “messy middle” of PBL, teachers need to gauge whether or not they need to intervene in the collaboration and learning process. If we want our students to be problem solvers, then they need to have the space to solve those problems. These skills can be built with a balance of both hands-on and hands-off approaches—that is, learning when to step in, when to back off, and when to simply give the students the tools they need to take control of their own project, whether collaborating with others or self-managing. As educators, we do a disservice to our students if we solve all of their problems for them. Sometimes it is necessary to be present in the learning process but out of the way so that students can learn to learn.
Recent Comments