What Does Project-based Learning Look Like?
1) Silja Kallenbach:
"...A unit on heart disease could include reading informational materials as well as
stories by heart disease patients; interviewing people whose lives have been touched
by heart disease and writing their stories; science lessons and demonstrations on
anatomy focusing on the circulatory system and viewing a videotape of open-heart
surgery; reading, comparing and writing a critical analysis of different studies on
causes of heart disease; learning to calculate percentages and read graphs using
information about the incidence of heart disease in different populations; learning
about healthy nutrition from publications and nutritionists; cooking a low-fat,
low-cholesterol meal; conducting a class debate about vegetarianism; designing a
healthy heart public awareness campaign; making heart shapes with different
materials; learning about the history of the heart shape, how it came to symbolize
romantic love in Western cultures and what organs other non-western cultures
associate with emotions; reading romantic literature and discussing the concept of
love."
2) Susan Gaer:
"One of the projects I have done is an internet cookbook. Most of my students
come from countries where there are no recipes. Knowing that this cuisine would be
lost to future generations, I persuaded my students to record them. Since where
there are no recipes there are also no standards for measuring, it soon became
apparent to me that we would have to cook these recipes together to get them
written down. Thus was born the cookbook project. Now a yearly event at our site.
I posted the project on the internet and asked if others would be interested. Soon
the class had recipes flowing in from all over the world. We have a desktop publishing
class at our school and they said that they would publish it for us. So now we sell
the cookbooks and make money to buy things for the school. The students sell the
cookbook and help decide on what will be purchased. I am excited by this type of
learning because it involves the students completely in the learning experience. In
fact , they seem to get so caught up in the learning that they forget they are
learning. Because they are so involved they seem to retain the knowledge longer.
One student was able to recount a recipe from 2 years prior because she learned
to use chopsticks that day. She didn't forget the recipe or the students who helped
her. I have never had a student remember the day they learned how to add fractions
or the day they learned the past tense. But this student learned how to use both those
things in the cookbook project and never forgot. That is why I am excited by this
kind of learning."
3) Susan Gaer:
"For the last year, I have helped out an adult ed economics teacher develop a small
business exploration project with her class. It was just a pilot and as such was only
given 4 weeks of time. During the pilot the students got into groups, chose a small
business idea that they might be interested in starting, researched it and presented
their findings to our local chamber of commerce. The structure had its problems but
it was bascially successful. The students were out of the text, interacting with the
community and learning something about starting a small business.
So now it is to be a semester course. I will co-teach this class with the instructor.
The first section will be computer literacy. Next there will be some goal exploration.
Then we will let students decide what businesses to research. We used to make
them work in groups but this time we decided that if they have a business that no one
else is interested in then they can do it solo. We hope that this will stimulate their
interest more.
They will have to research the business (not sure how to do this but I am sure we
can do it on the Internet.) They will have to research the consumer (again not sure
how we will do this.) They will have to find out how much financing they will need and
try to find places to get it. If there is time, they will write up their business plan and
try to actually get some financing. Last they will present their findings to the
chamber."
4) Heide Spruck Wrigley (from a message posted to the NLA electronic list last year
from El Paso, Texas, and re-posted on the MALTT list by David J. Rosen):
"Susan Gaer talked about the project based curriculum she is using with her ESL
students and asks what others are doing - I am working with a JOBS project in
Texas where teachers are developing projects with women enrolled in a GED program
(GED preparation is integrated into the curriculum rather than consisting mostly of
workbook practice.) Here are some of the projects the groups are discussing
- (1) a newsletter that addresses the myths
and realities of families on welfare -- based on
interviews of people in the street and fleshed out with
stories of the women in the program
- (2) a student-developed survey that tracks
women who have left the program and
documents where they are now and what
kind of difference participation in the
program has made in their lives;
- (3) a student-generated cookbook featuring
family recipes along with family stories that go along
with special meals and celebrations (while
developing and field testing the recipes -
students use their math skills for measuring ,
estimating, figuring out fat grams and other nutritional
values.)
The program will use a SCANS Plus framework to help students document the skills
they are using in these projects and evaluate their own participation in various
project components - project materials and assessment forms and comments will be
part of the students' portfolios and they will discuss how they can present their
contributions and highlight their skills in a job interview ...."
5) David Rosen:
"There are different kinds of project-based learning. Susan Gaer has given one, the
on-line cookbook project, which I would say is an example of product project-based
learning, where, from the start, one of the students' intentions was to create and
disseminate a useful product.
Another example of project-based learning is what I would call inquiry project-based
learning. An inquiry project begins with a question or problem, ideally one which, in the
normal course of things, has emerged from a student, and which other students feel is
interesting, important to them, and worth taking the time to get answers or solutions.
It ends not in a product, but in some answers, some points of view, and more questions. These, of course can be documented and
published in print, or electronically, on line.
For example, one day a student brings her pay stub to class to get help interpreting it.
She tells her teacher she's willing to have it used as an example if her name is blocked
out. The teacher puts it on the overhead projector. The pay stub has deductions taken
out for health benefits, social security, and something else which isn't clear to anyone.
It refers to "net" and "gross" pay. It generates a lot of questions:
1. "What is the difference between 'net' and 'gross' pay?"
2. "Why is so much taken out for health benefits?" (Someone adds, "and the employer
has to pay for health benefits, too.")
3. "What is FICA?" (Then, when this is explained, someone asks, " Will this be enough
money for retirement?")
4. Someone asks, apparently veering off into a new subject, "How do they decide how
much to pay you?"
5. Someone else, adds, "Yeah, and who decides?"
6. And someone else, "And how can I get them to pay me more?"
Everyone laughs at that one, but the teacher takes these questions seriously. The next
day she brings the same questions back to the class, in writing. They read them over,
discuss them again; and other, related questions emerge. She says they can get the
answers to these questions, but first they have to decide which ones seem to be most
important to the class. The class decides on:
1. "Who decides how much to pay me, how do
they decide, and how can I get paid more?" and
2. "Exactly what are they taking out of my
paycheck and what does it go for?"
Everyone in the class is working, or has recently worked, and everyone is very interested
in these questions.Together they discuss how to get answers, how to research these
questions themselves. Since the questions are very particular to each student's
situation, they decide that each person has to investigate his or her own case. But they
also decide to share the results of their information to see if there are any patterns in
what they find out.
Together they discuss who might have the answers to question 1: shop steward/union
rep, supervisor, personnel department, co-workers are all possibilities. Together they
generate a good list of questions for each person to start from, a kind of interview
format. Then, over a two-week period, they carry out their interviews.
In class, the interview format questions are written on an overhead (in a high tech class,
on a computer with an LCD overhead display) and the students each tell what answers
they receive. The results are printed, photocopied and given to each student to think
about, to see if they can see patterns.
In the next class they discuss patterns: almost everyone has an annual "performance
review" at work done by a supervisor or manager. Many students found out about
"cost of living" increases. Some students found out they had more benefits than
they knew about, and that the company considered benefits an important part of the
whole pay package (salary or wages and benefits). One student learned that although
the amount taken out for FICA differed from student to student the percentage was
always the same. (The teacher noted this for next week's math lesson on percentages.)
What one student said he has found out, another student or the teacher is not sure is
correct. The teacher puts a question marks next to it, indicating that it needs further
research, verification. The teacher (or a small group of students where possible) types
up the questions, sub-questions, and the answers students found, puts them in hypertext
language (html) and adds this text to the literacy program's inquiry maps on
"Employability" on the program's web page on the World Wide Web. The web page
already has such questions (and some answers) relating to: how to know what jobs are
out there, how to know what education/training is required for a job, how to find a job,
how to interview for a job, how to change jobs. Some of the questions and answers
branch to other questions, and other answers on other inquiry maps, on other web pages.
These inquiry maps are usually incomplete, with some questions left for others to
pursue. There are enough questions and answers to make them interesting, but many
are left unanswered to stimulate further questions, further research. Sometimes a
question leads to one answer. In some cases a question leads not to an answer, but to a
debate -- a transcript of a forum where students, from across the world, have wrestled with the question and come up
with different answers, different points of view. One inquiry map leads to others.
The questions above lead to a question about health benefits. This leads to a question
about health conditions at work. This leads to a question about indoor air
quality and how it is measured and so on."
PART II
(The second part of this article is taken from the author's postings in July, 1995 on
the MALTT Electronic list, sponsored by the Massachusetts Adult Literacy and
Technology Team.)
How Can Learning Projects Continue to Generate New Learning for Each New Set of
Learners?
Project-based learning may be learner-centered, collaborative, and inquiry-oriented;
the students may create a learning product and learn a lot from making it; however,
the product itself may not be learner-centered, inquiry-oriented and may not enage
those who see it in new learning which means something to them. Too often the product
is simply a presentation of what was learned. I want to explore how learning
experiences can continue to be ongoing, generative learning projects, so that each
new group of students is stimulated, challenged, and engaged, and can see ways not
only to benefit from what other students learned but to further develop the learning
product themselves.
Recently I heard an East African musician describe the difference, as he saw it,
between Western and African music. In Western (classical) music, he said, there are
too many notes. A composer plans a piece for a certain number of musicians and for
certain instruments. Because of the density of the notes and because it is planned,
there is no room for others to join in. In African music, there are planned rhythms and
instruments, but there is always room for other rhythms and instruments, for new
layers to be laid on top of the existing layers of rhythm. There is always space for
others to join in, to play music, too.
I see this as a useful metaphor for generative learning projects. While planned, they
must be unfinished works. There must be space left for others' questions, others'
points of view, and their departures into new areas of questioning. The learning
products must be untrimmed inquiry maps, not tidy units or modules.
What is an Inquiry Map?
An inquiry map is a learning tool. It includes text and may include drawings, illustrations
or photographs. A digital inquiry map may also include sound, full-motion video, and
hypertext features such as pronounced words, or windows which can be opened to
display definitions of words, or illustrations.
What Does an Inquiry Map look like?
An inquiry map could look like a simple, one-page brochure or pamphlet, a comic book,
a three-ring binder, or it could be a more expensive and high-tech interactive
videodisc or laserdisc, or a homepage (and connecting pages) on the World Wide Web.
An inquiry map could even be a set of questions and information organized like
a treasure hunt.
Let me give some examples, starting with simple, low-cost, and familiar ones:
A well-designed information brochure could be a kind of inquiry map. For example, a
health brochure on alcohol use/abuse could begin with a true/false quiz about
alcoholism. Then it could pose some common questions. It could answer some of them
simply, directly and factually; with others -- those where there are differing points of
view -- it could point out some of the different ways one could look at the question.
Some questions deliberately could be left unanswered. At the end there could be a
short list of other resources: organizations, phone numbers, other pamphlets and books
on the subject. A group of students could produce such a brochure. They could
deliberately set out to engage the readers, and leave space for them to take it further,
deeper, or off into a new, related area of inquiry.
A videotape could be part of an inquiry map. It could include a debate about an issue.
For example, students could debate whether or not alcoholism is a disease influenced
by genetics or an unfortunate strategy to cope with difficult personal problems.
Students could present their arguments on the tape, and the debate or discussion
could be carried forward by another class which views the videotape first, then has a
discussion or debate of its own, which could also be recorded.
Each year the National Issues Forums (NIF), for example, prepares written and
videotaped materials which focus on a national issue such as racism, abortion, the drug
problem, immigration, and others. They present different points of view on the problem
to stimulate discussion for study circles. NIF materials could be a starting point for
inquiry maps, particularly if participants were encouraged to write their own points of
view and add them to the NIF materials for the next group as articles, letters to the
editor, transcripts of their discussions, or results of their own , original research.
One medium with great potential for inquiry maps is, unfortunately, not yet readily
accessible to all adult learners; however, I believe it soon will be available in many
homes and learning centers within five years. It is the World Wide Web. In particular,
the possibilities of using hypertext (html) to allow infinite, seemless branching from
anywhere within text, and the capacity to add sound, images and even full-motion video,
make a rich medium for participatory, generative curriculum development. The web
page is the perfect inquiry map, the perfect vehicle for student-centered, participatory
ongoing curriculum development, a medium where it should be easy to pick up where one
group of students left off and build from there, from one's own set of questions
sparked by other students' questions and research. And like African music, there is
always room for new players to add their own questions and their own research on the
answers.
Who are Inquiry Maps Intended For?
Students and teachers build or add to inquiry maps. Inquiry map users may also be
builders at the same time. Inquiry maps can be made for a particular audience or
not. For example, an inquiry map could be built for junior high schoolers, adults
pursuing English as another language, teachers, plumbers, antique restorers, auto
mechanics, or adult learners studying for the GED test in Spanish.
What are the Different Kinds of Inquiry Maps?
Inquiry maps can be:
1) Edited or Unedited
An unedited inquiry map might be produced by a group of students for their own use,
This might then become a product or the beginning of a product which is edited so
that others could use it, too. Editing inquiry maps will be discusssed more later.
2) Inquiry-oriented (built and used by one learner or one group of learners) or
Product-oriented (built and used by many successive groups of learners).
A product-oriented inquiry map would usually be edited, and fairly complete. It would
be intended for use and possibly further building by unknown other learners, and
would be distributed.
3) Inexpensive print materials or high-cost, high-tech digital products
4) Finished, or Unfinished
A finished inquiry map is one to which nothing further is to be added. It may be
finished because the class is done with it and no one wants to make it into a product,
or it may be a finished, edited product, used but no longer being built. It is possible to
have a widely-used, product-oriented inquiry map which is, however, deliberately
never finished.
How are Inquiry Maps Different from.....
Web Pages?
A web page can be designed as an inquiry map, but not all web pages are necessarily
inquiry maps.
Brochures or pamphlets?
Usually brochures are not inquiry maps. However, they can be. For example, imagine a
one-page health information brochure on stress. It is organized by questions, not
topics, such as: