Since I teach environmental science, I used the concept of making cattle farming (fascinating, I know!) a sustainable enterprise as the main problem, and participants went through all of the steps I would have students do in order to solve the problem. The purpose of the session was not to have participants actually solve the problem, but to experience the process of PBL. If you would like a link directly to the presentation itself (so you can access all of the documents linked within the presentation), click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to fire away in the comments.
I recently had the privilege of being a session facilitator at the IntegratED conference in much-warmer-than-here-in-Illinois city of Portland, Oregon last week. As a facilitator, we are challenged with making our sessions interactive rather than sit-and-get, which I really enjoy. That's why in my session on getting started with problem-based learning I decided to have participants actually do a problem-based lesson in the two hours I had allotted to me just so they could see the process in action - and experience what their students would be experiencing when they were brain-deep in solving problems. Since I teach environmental science, I used the concept of making cattle farming (fascinating, I know!) a sustainable enterprise as the main problem, and participants went through all of the steps I would have students do in order to solve the problem. The purpose of the session was not to have participants actually solve the problem, but to experience the process of PBL. If you would like a link directly to the presentation itself (so you can access all of the documents linked within the presentation), click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to fire away in the comments. I'm starting to get back into doing PBL units again with my Biology students. This year in our Ecology unit we decided to start them on their path to PBL-goodness with a "practice problem" to get them used to the PBL process we use. This two-day mini-PBL activity will be a prelude to a much larger and lengthier problem we will ask them to solve next week regarding road salt and prairie restoration along Illinois roadways. (We have an actual ecologist consulting on this problem with us! We're nerding out! Expect the nerding out to spill over into an all-out blog post soon!)
Anyway, our practice problem deals with the snakehead fish. If you don't know what that is, it is an invasive species from Asia & Africa that is pretty much a frankenfish. It eats almost everything in its spare time when it's not reproducing. In other words, it's one of the most student-engaging invasive species to ever untangle a food web. You can check out our plan here. Last year I used the snakehead fish to hook students into some of our Ecology objectives; all we did was revise that original plan a bit (since students did find it so interesting last year) and turned it into a problem to solve instead of something to read and watch to prepare them to do more reading and watching. We wanted them talking and discussing and thinking and solving after the reading and watching. Judging by all the excited and on-task chatter in the room (I had to veto a solution involving assault rifles, it was getting that "engaged"), I'd say our practice problem is giving students the thinking and problem-solving practice they need. One key, I think, was choosing the right organism with the perfect amount of freak-out factor--an advantage of teaching biology is that "gross" usually translates into engagement. The other key, of course, is choosing the right problem for the students in front of you. Yesterday I spent another wonderful day with the staff of Leyden High School District #212 at their Digital Evolution Summit. I spent the morning talking about my forays into problem-based learning, with an emphasis on how PBL can be implemented in math and science classrooms. I had two wonderful groups of math and science teachers, and both of these groups brought up some very good questions about using problem-based learning in their classrooms. One main concern raised by both groups was this--how can you be sure that students are learning all of the content that you need them to learn using this method? What I have learned about PBL and content is this--while you can plan for students to discover the content you want them to learn when crafting the original problem, sometimes students take the problem in ways you never expected. And you should let students take it there, as long as they are engaged and are learning--because PBL is really more about teaching students how to learn much more than teaching students content, in my opinion. Also, if you plan on using PBL as a consistent method of instruction, you're going to have to sacrifice some of the "nice-to-know" parts of your content, and focus mainly on what you want students to walk out of your room remembering forever and ever--the "need to knows." I think teachers have to start thinking about instruction and content differently when using PBL--they have to let the learning determine the content they teach, rather than the content determining the lesson plan for the day. In other words, they have to first determine what they really want students to learn (problem-solving, critical thinking skills), and then choose content that will help students do that learning. Another great point that was brought up was this--what if students are discovering and learning the content on their own, but they are inaccurate in their understanding? The key here is catching these misunderstandings early, and then taking steps to correct them. In PBL, you can't always leave students on their own to do research and generate solutions to the problem--formative assessment at the end of each period (and walking around listening to their learning conversations during the period) is a critical step. I administered progress checks quite often on the I can statements (objectives) students were responsible for learning, and if any misunderstandings reared their ugly heads, then I planned some remediation strategies for the next day. For example, when I was doing my PBL genetics unit, I had some interesting yet inaccurate interpretations about how traits were inherited after students had gone through the online activities designed to teach them the basics of heredity. Because I had given them a progress check after they did the activities, I realized where students were going wrong, and then designed some stations for them to do to get back on the right path. In PBL, formative assessment is a critical step to check and see if students have an accurate understanding of the science or math concepts before they apply those concepts in generating a solution to the problem. The biggest concern that was raised was the fact that students are not "trained" to learn in the way that PBL calls for--for the learner to do the work of learning. One of the main reasons I like PBL is that it places the "burden of proof" for learning on the student; however, this is the main reason why some students don't like PBL, and why some students will experience frustration with learning to learn on their own. This frustration comes from the fact that PBL doesn't smooth out the learning bumps in the road for them. PBL allows students to set off on wrong paths, make mistakes, and re-route themselves in another direction. It also allows students to experience the real-life phenomenon of not being able to find the "right" answer--because if the problem is set up in an ill-structured, messy manner, then there won't be just one right answer. For students that are used to being able to look up answers in the back of a text or on the internet, PBL can be a very uncomfortable experience with the cognitive dissonance reaching raging levels at times. So, how do you deal with this student frustration? I try and give students a heads-up about the frustration by telling them before the unit begins that, yes, they might get irritated or annoyed when I just ask them questions rather than giving them the answer, and that they may get frustrated when they find out the research they've been doing is going in the wrong direction. I also tell them that it's OK--and if they start feeling as if they are going to have an outburst (which has happened), they should come to me, and we will see if we can ease that frustration. In other words, I try to give them a safe place to go when it all gets too much for them, when it starts going well beyond the norms of the factory-model system within which they are used to operating. Really, it's about telling students how PBL is going to be a different experience for them up-front, and giving them somewhere to go when frustration arises. Interestingly enough, the students that are prone to experiencing these frustrations with PBL are the students whom we traditionally label as "high achieving" or the "smart kids" in our room. As you can see, there were some fantastic points raised about implementing PBL in the classroom during my sessions, and I think these are issues that every teacher who wants to try PBL should be thinking about ahead of time. You can check out my presentation below, and if you have any other issues or comments about putting PBL into practice in classrooms, please feel free to share. Recently I have gotten a lot of feedback on my previous PBL posts, mainly asking me how I develop my PBL ideas. So, I thought it might be a good idea to let everyone take a peek at the process I use to write my PBLs. Just be warned that I haven't yet perfected the art of crafting a PBL yet, but hopefully some of this will help you in any PBL writing you may do.
If you have any other great ways you come up with PBL activities, please feel free to share. I wrote about my latest incarnation of PBL in a previous post; you can also check out the description and requirements here. In sum, students had to engineer a device to remove excessive amounts of carbon dioxide from inside a typical one-story three-bedroom house. In order to design this device, they had to research (and learn on their own) how the processes of cell respiration and photosynthesis worked and how they are connected. To present their device and demonstrate understanding of basic bioenergetics concepts, students had to make a Voicethread in a "Common Craft-esque" format. Below are two examples of two different designs (keeping in mind my students are relatively new to the design process and that this is the first time most of them have ever used Voicethread): Instead of showing each team's Voicethread one at a time to the entire class and boring myself and everyone else to the point of mental breakdown, I had them present their Voicethreads to each other (an idea I got from our PBL trainer, Kathy Schmidt), scoring each other based on the presentation rubric. Each team had to show their presentation to at least 2 other teams and have it scored by them, and then they had to view at least 2 other presentations to do some scoring.
That was one of the best activities that has ever occurred in my classroom. Kathy, if I ever see you again, be prepared for a high-five from yours truly. I know the phrase "assessment is a discussion" has been a buzzphrase that's been used ad naseum, but as I sat back and listened to my students discussing their presentations with each other, the truth behind that phrase came crashing into my ears. To hear students discussing what could have made a presentation a 5, explaining why they gave a team's understanding of photosynthesis and cell respiration a 3, and giving each other feedback on how a presentation could have been made more professional was educational music to my ears. It was also helping them practice needed evaluation skills, being able to recognize what quality is and what it is not--an added bonus of students having discussions with other students. Assessment really is a discussion, but it doesn't always have to take place between a teacher and a student. Students can and should assess each other, having discussions around the evidence of understanding they create that help themselves improve their own learning. If students aren't participating in and evaluating their own learning, there won't be much improvement. And by "participating in" I don't mean filling out one mind-numbing worksheet after another; I mean true engagement with the learning process. And discussions are a great way to engage students, especially about the quality of student work. I also had a discussion with each of my class periods about the entire assignment as a part of the "debriefing" step of the PBL process--what they found difficult, what they liked, what other challenges they faced, etc. There was one "challenge" that was brought up in every period, and that was the fact that there wasn't already a device made to remove carbon dioxide from a home of that size that they could reference. My students told me they were extremely uncomfortable with the fact that there was no way to check and see if they were "right." I had to remind them that school--and life--isn't about right answers. It's about what you can do with the information you gather--and, when designing or trying something new, there is a whole lot of uncertainty you have to face. Just like dealing with failure, having confidence and moving forward in the face of uncertainty is an essential skill needed for life inside and outside of school. Later in the discussion, I pointed out to them that if there had already been such a device on the market their creativity would have been stifled from the outset. They all got to experience each other's creativity when they presented their Voicethreads to each other, with exclamations of "Wow! I never would have thought of that!" and "I wish I had that in my design--it would have made it better." I did point out to them later in our class discussion that if I hadn't been such a jerk (a term we use lovingly in our classroom) in the problem design, assigning them something that hasn't yet been invented, they wouldn't have seen all of the creativity that existed in their classmates, as shown in their presentations. As one student put it, "Mrs. E, I see now why you were a jerk. If there had been a device like this made already, we all just would have copied it." Exactly. Learning isn't copying, whether it be from the internet, a textbook, or the words out of a teacher's mouth. It's having students do the creating, applying, discussing, and evaluating, and assessing....and, above all, having students practice using their own brains instead of repeating what came out of someone else's. I recently wrote about my last attempt at a PBL unit for my Biology classes. I learned a lot from that experience, but mainly I learned that I need to do it again to truly learn how to adapt the PBL process for my students' needs and abilities--because it empowers students to become learners and thinkers. It literally turns their learning switches from the "off" to the "on" position. Plus, I'm a perfectionist/Type A personality to the core, and I have a compulsive need to try this again (and again and again) to see if I can improve the process.
For this round of PBL, I decided to let my students become engineers, designing a household device to remove excess carbon dioxide from the air. Why? In the name of teaching the connections between photosynthesis and cell respiration. I want students to apply their knowledge of these two processes, not just repeat back what they know. Unfortunately, that happened too many times in their last set of PBL presentations. They listed the cause of the little girl's death they were trying to solve, then they separately listed all sorts of science about membrane transport....they knew and owned the knowledge of membrane transport in their own words, but it seemed they could not use it to explain the cause of the little girl's death. The limited attempts that I saw were very general in nature ("The little girl died of rotenone poisoning, which meant she wasn't making ATP, and all of her symptoms were because she wasn't making ATP"). My students obviously need more practice at being able to use and apply the science knowledge they have come to own; however, those types of thinking skills don't just happen overnight. And they don't just happen with one PBL unit--which is why I have a few more planned. But back to my student engineers. I introduced the problem using this clip from the movie Apollo 13. We then went through the steps you see on this page of my class website, developing our problem statements, forming our know/need to know list, doing independent research and filling in the class research summary, asking questions, answering them, and asking more questions. As a matter of fact, what impressed me the most about this foray into PBL is that my students were asking me many more questions than I was asking them--which secretly delighted me, but did not delight my students when I wondered aloud if there were a wonderful tool on the internet where they could type in words and get back a list of links to web pages ; a place that, perhaps, begins with the letter "G" and ends with "oogle." I also tried to link the learning back to our ecology unit and link it forward to the cell respiration and photosynthesis goodness they would be studying. But that's what I'm finding tough to do with PBL--making sure they have the base knowledge (the Level 4 understanding, in my standards-based scoring terminology) of cell respiration and photosynthesis they need in order to use/apply that knowledge without me doing any up-front knowledge dispensation. I have come to find out that the crafting of the original problem is crucial--that it must be designed so that students really do need to know the science in order to successfully provide a viable solution. After the problem has been designed with this in mind, the next step is providing students with the opportunities to acquire that knowledge and work with it so they can truly own it. This is where Juno comes in. I've written before about how it can be used to create your own online textbook, and that's what I've continued to do with it. However, since I've been shifting towards doing more and more PBL units, it has become instrumental in having students come to a Level 4 understanding of the science concepts. What I do is write a reading (aligned to the I can statements for the unit) where students, at certain intervals in the reading, answer questions I write specifically to help them get to a level 4. And, after grading their last set of progress checks, it seems to be working. What's so exciting about this is that I never talked at length about any photosynthesis or cell respiration concepts. I looked at the answers to their questions from the reading (which are nicely organized in Juno for me) in order to see where the stumblings and misunderstandings where, and those became the focus of my daily journal questions. Students and I would discuss these questions, revise their understandings by revising their answers to their Juno questions, and then the PBL learning goodness would continue. It seems to have paid off, because, looking at their last set of progress checks (my new name for tests), they are doing fabulously. Do some of them still need to fix their knowledge? Absolutely; and that's what we will be doing after we return from break. But what really struck me during this PBL unit is how much my students never cease to amaze me. They don't realize it, but they learned all on their own the basics of what is traditionally pretty tough stuff for early high schoolers (because it is so steeped in scary biochemistry and it cannot be concretely modeled for them before their very eyes). My job was just to provide the setup and support for learning rather than the learning itself. When I used to teach photosynthesis and cellular respiration in the traditional way, all I got were a lot of blank looks, gratuitous head nods to my "Does everybody get it?" questions so I would just move along, and too many "I have no idea" answers on my quizzes and tests. But now, with me out of the way of their learning, they can truly be amazing learners in their own right--because I suspect they are realizing they can do more on their own than they thought they could. I can see them slowly building their own confidence in their own abilities, something that has been stripped from them in the past. They have been traditionally been disempowered to do their own learning, relying on the teacher's understanding of concepts rather than creating their own. But not with PBL. PBL allows them to construct their own knowledge, build their own meanings--making the knowledge and the process of learning theirs, not someone else's. Is this happening for all students? Nope. I still have some young people that are refusing to be as amazing as they could be, but that's alright--I can't expect every student to accept what is for them a drastic shift in how school is done. But you had better believe I am going to keep trying to make them see that they have to do the learning; if I do it for them, the learning will never be owned by them. The other PBL skill I need to keep trying to master is having students apply the knowledge of the science concepts to the solution of the problem. For my next PBL Unit (which is going to be about DNA & protein synthesis), I think I will need to include more of those application questions in the Juno activities that I write (what I call Level 5 questions). These questions could be about their problem (interpreting an electrophoresis gel at issue in a court trial), or they could just be ACT-type questions where they are given new information and must use what they have learned about DNA and protein synthesis in order to answer the question. In either case, I will have to closely monitor their answers as they progress through the Juno activities, and focus their daily questions on the thinking issues that arise when they are working on those Level 5 questions. I'm still no expert at PBL. Even though I still don't feel like I'm doing it completely "right," I know that by getting outside of my comfort zone and jumping into this with both feet is still doing right by my students. Don't let the fear of how different PBL is from the educational norm stop you from trying it--you'll see how good it is for your students and for your own growth as a professional. I am currently in the middle of my third attempt at a problem-based learning, or PBL, unit (you can read about my previous attempts here and here) and I am approaching this one in a completely different way than in my other PBL incarnations. This is not because I am some sort of educational masochist that enjoys making more work for myself, but because I am trying to find a PBL method that works for me and my students. So what am I trying this time? A case-based approach, with students trying to determine the cellular cause of death of a young girl who died after ingesting an insecticide. The students are assuming the role of a head physician at a poison control center, and must give a 5-minute presentation to the parents explaining the cause of their daughter's death. They met their problem with this letter from the doctor and this attached case report that was taken from this paper. Each class then developed a problem statement using a "How can we ______________ in such a way _______________" format. You can see an example of one below (please excuse the "I'm trying to talk and lead a discussion and write on the board at the same time" handwriting): After stating the problem in this manner, students then developed their "Need to Knows" based on the information available to them, and began their research. They collected their research for everyone to see in a class Google Doc. You can check out the instructions and the class research summaries by heading over to my class website.
I also told students why we were doing this (something that isn't done often enough in classrooms, in my opinion--why do some still insist on keeping what they want students to learn a big secret, making students stumble around trying to figure it out all in the name of "it's good for them?") by writing some "I can" statements for problem-solving, which is really the skill I need students to develop: I can solve problems by:
But what I love about PBL is that I learn right along with my students. Here's a few of those learnings:
I do like this case-based PBL approach, mainly because it is more concrete for the students but still messy enough that they have to sift through all their research and form it into a cohesive, brief whole in their 5-minute presentations. In retrospect, I felt my first attempt was too nebulous, while my second attempt was too scripted and narrow in focus. This may be the Goldilocks "just-right" I've been looking for that fits the background experiences and skills my students bring with them to class every day. Do you have any PBL experiences or insights? Please feel free to leave them in the comments. Tomorrow I am starting the second problem-based learning (PBL) unit (you can read my post about my first attempt here) I have ever taught, after receiving some great training this summer from people (one of them being @rstadt31) who were trained in the way IMSA does PBL.
I'm nervous. And excited. And filled with apprehension, fear, and anticipation. This will be the first time my Physical Science students--all freshmen with a smattering of sophomores--will have been asked to do this. I'm going to have to coach, prod, and probe my teacher butt off in order to help them learn rather than simply give them the answers, but it's going to be worth it. The unit is about the metric system, conversions between numbers with metric units, converting numbers from the English system into metric, and how to measure using metric devices. I know this isn't the most riveting of topics, but we are hoping that the PBL challenge makes it more relevant and engaging for them. How are we hooking them in? By creating a fake contest for them to enter, with the prize being a trip to Europe. They will meet the problem by viewing a video I made using OpenShot (it is included for your viewing pleasure below) describing the contest which, hopefully, will not send most of my class to the nurse immediately after viewing. The only catch in this contest entry is that they have to plan the trip, using an itinerary we developed from a pre-existing webquest about the metric system, doing the proper conversions along the way. You can view the full lesson plan on my class website here. Feel free to leave and ideas or suggestions you have about it in the comments (and yes, I already know the video is cheese-tastic. To my own self I am true). Is this a pretty simplistic PBL unit? Yep. Is it what is needed to introduce these students used to filling out worksheets from the textbook, memorizing the information for the test and then forgetting it as soon as their pencils are done filling in their bubble sheets? I think so. We'll see how much they learn--whether it be about the metric system, or the process of learning itself (which, frankly, is what I am more interested in seeing learned). What they don't realize is that I am learning right along with them, but learning how to make better learners. That's the magic of PBL. For more on PBL, check out the resources below:
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Upcoming Presentations:About the Author
I'm a K-12 Curriculum Director who loves to put things in parentheses (like this) and overuse hyphens--like this. I also abuse semicolons with wild abandon; I just can't help it. Crazy Teaching: Just Doing What Makes Sense by Terie Engelbrecht is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Archives
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Action-Reaction What It's Like on the Inside I Taught My Dog to Whistle Teach Science (.net) ThinkThankThunk My Island View Life of an Educator Edumacation Developing Education Real Teaching Means Real Learning Against the Wind for the love of learning The Tempered Radical McSquared Delta Scape Shifting Phases |