Arguing for PBL

Situated Cognition. Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989, p. 34), point out that although students are shown the tools of many academic cultures in their school career, these cultures are that of schools, and not the actual domain for which the tools are to be used. Students may pass exams but still not be able to use the skills and tools of the domain. Students need to be exposed to domain learning and the tools of the domain on authentic activities.

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), p32-42.

Peer Review of a Synthesis Paper

I am about to begin the review of a peer's paper. I have to say that I am not comfortable enough with my own experience to do this.

In Edtech 551, the final submission piece of work was built up over several submissions with the instructor reviewing each submission, offering suggestions for improvement which were fixed and submitted with the next section, this continued until the final piece was done. I liked this, as the draft and review nature of the process allowed time for assimilation and an understanding of the process to develop.

Without access to exemplars that represent good, medium and bad standards of writing, I am not in a position to use the rubric provided in a valid way. A level 5 edit is required of a peer's work, but how can that be achieved if the reader doesn't know anything about the topic?

I will take care to provide my students with the scaffolding and support they need to do their best work.

Post peer review. The paper that I reviewed was on connectivism, a learning theory I haven't read much about. It would seem from the paper that there is some contention that connectivism is indeed a new learning theory or just an amalgamation of several others; I find myself in agreement with the latter stand point. My peer has written well over twice the length she should have that has made my ability to make suggestions for improvement difficult. I have seen from her writing that my paragraphs don't flow together well and I will need to reorganise a lot to make the ideas and contexts link better.

My peer has made some excellent suggestions for improving my work and has been extremely thorough in her review. She has highlighted what I have already identified as a need to improve the flow and connections; I will use her suggestions to improve.

Writing a Synthesis Paper

I haven't written a paper since my bachelor degree...only 18 years ago!

My annotated bibliography wasn't very good as my focus was too broad and I didn't link the sources I chose well enough to generate a full taxonomy; clearly I needed to review the focus of my paper!

I decided to focus on the use of blogs for reflective writing. The majority of the research I found linked with Self Regulated Learning, so this along with social constructivism would be the basis for my taxonomy within the paper.

Of everything I have done over the course of the MET so far, this has been the toughest to date. The amount of time it took to find the relevant research, pick out what I intended to use, and then string it all together was huge. The process, and the research into SRL, has reminded me of the importance of scaffolding activities and formative feedback and support. I will use this experience to ensure my students are eased into the big write-ups that they will need to do for their course.

What I found useful, after forgetting where I had read parts of articles, was to write down the reference and the content I was interested in under particular headings. This, along with the use of Dropbox and Notability has allowed me to organise my research and content.

Due to the school trip, I was left with a couple of days to write my paper...it wasn't enough. I have to thank my peer reviewer for the thoroughness of her edits and comments for improving the flow of my writing. I'm still not 100% happy with the paper, particularly the start, but it is the best I can do until I can find the information I want about the UK National Curriculum and what the government did to the PLTS (personal learning, thinking skills) initiative from 2 years ago!

Learning from the PBL Process

When I reflect back on how a project should be run, I realise that I wasn't going into the detail needed nor was I focusing on the correct things i.e. the driving question, the motivating entry event, the scaffolding of the assessments, a detailed plan, and the culminating event. Basically everything.

In another module I designed a digital learning experience that I thought would work as a good project, but I see now from my PBL  work that I was not creating a thorough enough scaffold for my students to use to achieve the goals I had in mind.

The Driving Question has been one of the biggest eye openers for me with this module. I wasn't finding a question that was motivating enough for the students to want to go the extra mile with. On top of this, a weakness in my project has been the entry event. Even up until the peer review, my entry event wasn't very strong, however I think I have found an excellent video that discusses the rather outrageous abuse biotechnology companies are doing to farmers that will hopefully insight students to take action.

I have found the project writing experience very similar to doing a Bernie Dodge webquest. Obviously there are differences but there are elements of a webquest design that I think are rather redundant and repetitive, in the same way, there are parts of the project site that ask for repeats of content they have already been done. When I do this process again in the future, and I will do it, I will cut out the extraneous bits and link the relevant resources to the appropriate writing as I have done in this project. In this way, any of my colleagues viewing the content will have everything they need to run the project in as efficient a format as I can manage.

I have built other project sites in the last year and it is clear that I need to return to them and completely review the motivational attributes and assessment requirements in them. A proper culminating activity needs to be designed so that the students take the tasks more seriously as an authentic audience.

New knowledge of learning theory in the classroom

Throughout the course, I have been reminded of the learning theorists like Piaget and Vygotsky I studied during my certificate in education, although, to be honest, they were covered so quickly I didn't remember their theories!

Over the years I have done my own research on the use of games, simulations, projects, blogs, gamification, etc. in an effort to better apply the technologies and concepts to my lessons; it has been good to consider the theories that have generated the practices.  Unlike the U.S. Education system that requires teachers to recertify every few years, UK teachers do not suffer this pressure so reflecting on one's teaching and improving, is generally an intrinsic behaviour. When I think more on it, when I read about the theories now, I actually understand them and can apply them properly to my classroom!

Vygotsky's ZPD comes closest to the theory of learning that I implement in my lessons, although I tend to have a blend of many of the theories going all at once. I don't think about doing this, it just happens as the activities I use are enjoyed by the students and produce good learning results. I use a lot of assessment for learning techniques that involve students expressing what they know; they do this via mini whiteboards and by communicating with each other. My classroom would most likely be described as a social constructivist environment although I wouldn't have called it this before taking this module!

In my reading I have enjoyed looking at the scaffolding techniques associated with the ZPD. This led me to look at cognitive apprenticeship and how I might apply it to project based learning. I thought originally that allowing students to work in their friendship groups would lead to good group dynamics. The research indicated that managing a group is easier if the students feel comfortable telling each other to get their work done, which they may not do if they are close friends. Structuring the groups in such a way that there is a difference in the skills and knowledge of the students allows for cognitive apprenticeship to take place between the peers; less capable students can emulate and learn from the more experienced and the more experienced peer solidifies their understanding by using teaching/coaching.

Of greatest interest to me was the theory of Self Regulated Learning. This theory has implications for students in all areas of their learning and was brought to my attention as I looked at the meta-cognitive behavior of reflection in PBL. SRL considers three attributes of the learner: self-efficacy, motivation and meta-cognition. Believing in one's ability to do a task requires that a student feels safe to fail in their learning environment; developing an ethos of encouragement and support in a blended learning environment is essential and I will have my students generate the rules of how they behave and support each other at the start of each year.  Motivation can be intrinsic and extrinsic and depending on the students and situations, can be more of one than the other. I have completed a module on gamification via Coursera and was intrigued to see Mihali Csikszenmihalyi's name pop up in a reference to motivation in SRL. Demonstrating positive self-talk for students to emulate, along with the use of positive and negative self-rewards, will be new techniques to try this year.  Finally, self-reflection will require that students are coached and scaffolded in the behaviour. Reflective thinking expressed as writing in blogs or portfolios can meet the requirements of a self-regulated learner. Blogs also permit commenting by an authentic audience, thus increasing the motivation of the author while creating the situation where collaborative knowledge construction can take place.  I have tried to get my students to review and enhance their work after I give them feedback in line with assessment for learning strategies, but with a content heavy curriculum, this has been hard to follow up on. Blogs could be the answer!

Post project reflection

My colleagues will play a substantial role in the review of the project. They will highlight where elements of the project went well and what needs to improved. This will likely occur as they happen so I will keep a writing record of any discussions we have. As I want to see my colleagues engage in the use of a department blog this year, perhaps this can be a mechanism by which they record their observations.

The students will be asked to provide a response via a survey using Likert scales. This will allow me to quantify their opinions of the project concept and how it went. My students aren't shy in coming forward so no doubt I will hear about their concerns as they arise.

The experts and parent audiences that come into contact with our students will be asked for their opinions of the work and interactions they see, this will allow us to tune these elements for the future.

All of my work goes through multiple iterations and evaluative feedback. The students are instrumental in what and how my colleagues and I present our course. Trusted students will be sought out on a weekly basis and asked for their opinion; they know that their voice has power and that we will react to enhance their learning experience. One of my biggest concerns is that the students will find the project too much for them to handle along with their other subject content. If this is the case, we most be monitoring the students' concerns very regularly.

The Final Project

The Plant Project: (click for full website) Plants as Food, Plants as Fuel.

Final Synthesis Paper

Annotated bibliography

I struggled to get started on this activity. The concept of a taxonomy of learning theories as to how it  can be applied within a field of interest had me trying to decide what field I was interested in and what a taxonomy would look like. I sought clarification on "taxonomy". My original thinking was correct in that a taxonomy within biology shows a current organism's genetic/familial history i.e. it's origins. It seems logical then to look backwards from the organism to see from where it came, I figured that I would apply the same logic to the current task. Looking at recent research uncovers the work that those authors have based their research on, looking at that research uncovers more.

I decided to look at:

A Selection of Research on the Use of MOOC Software and Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning strategies for Reflection and Peer Assessment in K-12 PBL Classrooms.

I found a lot of articles. In retrospect, reflection and peer assessment are different beasts and I should have selected one of them; I got spanked for choosing articles that didn't address the question - I think they were relevant, but because the focus was so broad, the articles I chose seemed inappropriate.

Regardless of my graded performance, I have assimilated some useful info that I can use in the development of my self and peer assessed, SRL, topics.

I have found evidence that training students to use a rubric over 2 attempts can bring their grading of a piece of work in line with the instructor so that there is no significant difference. Since there is some evidence of poor attitude toward the grading done by peers, I believe allowing the students to see this in action should remove any anxiety they have regarding peer assessment. Research has been performed on Coursera's MOOC peer assessment that shows that they can take account of student bias based on their marking of a baseline piece of work. What is interesting is that Coursera makes everyone peer assess oneiece of work that is common to everyone, this allows for their algorithmic adjustments to the scores. Seems sensible then to do something similar with a class of students, but I do this anyway.

I have been trying to create a digital learning environment within Google Apps for Education that permits students in a PBL environment to submit a piece of work, self assess it and have it peer assessed without the teacher getting involved. If I can program Google Sheets to do something similar to what Coursera's does in the way that it anonymously distributes work to be peer assessed to every student I will be very happy. Research has shown though that students require the input of a more experienced peer and/or their instructor, so: a) the grading may not need to be anonymous, and b) the teacher still needs to give feedback.

APA style

It has been a year since I have needed to use APA style for citations and references.  In this module I have let myself get royally spanked for getting it wrong; I have an reason, but it is not an excuse!

I have been failing to put page numbers for direct quotes in citations, and I have been leaving off the journal pages from the reference itself! On top of that, I have to admit to using citations from GScholar and Albertson's library without taking the time to double check that they are formatted correctly, particularly the volume and issue number italicization and bracketing :-/ Serves me right for not finding and taking the time to get it correct.

For the final synthesis paper, I decided to start with the format of the paper, citation and referencing all copied into the doc I was writing in; this allowed me to quickly check every time I put a new reference in. 

I have bought a copy of the APA style guide in Ebook format but Kindle won't open on my PC anymore . This is a bit of a problem since I had to use a friend's Amazon account to buy the book; Amazon doesn't like Malaysian credit cards! Fortunately, the Purdue Owl has been useful in getting the basics of APA, and other resources are available online.

One element of citing that I am still uncertain of is referring to an author that is referred to by another author. Example: Author A referred to Author B's study stating "This happened in our research" (Author B, 2000, p15, in Author A, 2014, p20). To paraphrase Yoda; tricky, this is, and I am still not sure that it is correct. Ask for help, I will!

Reflecting on my Learning Theories work

I have been looking forward to doing a module on learning theories and doing some reading.

I have found in my work that my ideas about using technology are so far beyond that of my colleagues that they are resistant to my suggestions; the best way I feel I can get my message across is to demonstrate that the ideas I suggest are supported by the community of educational technologists and research.

When I began to read Jonassen and Land's book, I thought "I don't understand a word of this." I was having to read and reread every sentence of their introductory chapter, and look up every other word on order to make sense of what I was reading. Interestingly, reflecting on the issues I have had has made me appreciate Vygotsky's ZPD and the concept of constructing new meaning from previous knowledge and new experience; I have actually felt the cognitive distance between myself and the authors. 

What has been tough is that I have been teaching normally over this compressed summer module and I have struggled to read all of the materials and assimilate the content. On top of this, I have had a one week school trip where I had very little time to do my work; while I knew this might happen, had I been more aware of the cognitive load and time that the module required, I would have chosen to do the module in the Fall or Spring semesters when I would have had the time to think about my thinking and the content of the readings as they pertain to my work. 

So far, I don't feel like I am performing at my best.

Integrated Curriculum

In my current workplace, a British international school, we follow the U.K. National Curriculum and our students do GCSEs and A Levels. The specifications for these exams are rigorous and don't leave room for the scope and time that Project Based Learning really requires.
The development of the Plant Project to run outside of class time, and tying in as many of the specification points as possible, has been the only way to get all of my biology teaching colleagues on board. I have managed to convince them of the benefits of having the students do the self-regulated learning and reflection required of PBL.

I am positive that a lot will go wrong this first time around - I am planning a 2 year project :-/ - and I am sure there will be a lot of students who don't see the value in the project, but I am hopeful that we will see some improved interest in thinking about biology outside of lessons from our students. With the support of the biology teachers, and plenty of enthusiasm, we will change the culture and attitude toward schooling that many of our students have i.e. "we want to sit and listen to you talk."

To fully ingrain PBL and self-regulated learning into a classroom requires a culture of such teaching philosophies throughout the whole school, and be supported by the parents. Without the support from the leadership, and the students knowing what is expected in one class is actually expected in all, it will be difficult to get all of the students motivated to behave in a manner that suits PBL.
In an effort to extend the project to make it more interesting to the varied students that take biology, I have approached the Art and Business Studies teachers to seek their input into how the students might apply their biology to those subjects. Many of the Art students tend to prioritize their drawing over the other subjects as it takes so much of their time (and I do complain a bit to the Head of Art over our breakfast chit-chats), so I figured, why not get the students to inspire their artistry with the biology they encounter. Have you ever looked down a microscope at stuff...any stuff? Protein is just cool! Biology is cool! Plant xylem tissue looks like a vacuum cleaner hose - I wonder which came first? ;-P

The plant project could have the Art students developing their ideas from their plants. Creating their own paint from plant dyes. Creating their own brushes.
The Head of Business Studies has already expressed interest in having his students prepare the financial elements of the culminating activity. Since the plant project is about developing food or fuel, there are economic interests that can be applied.
Since part of the project will require a public address or video, I intend to get the Media Studies teachers involved. I recently viewed some of their students' work at a showing this year and I hope they will be able to use the plant project as a vehicle to showcase their talents.
Chemistry is a natural fit with plants and I am sure the Head of Chemistry will want to use the project for context in her teaching - plant fruit ripening is one area I can think of immediately that could be investigated.
The Textiles teacher may want to get involved if the use of plant products is part of the specification she teaches; in bio, we investigate the tensile strength of plant fibres, hopefully we can find a link.

If indeed I can get input from a wide range of teachers, in a small areas, and the project is a success for all of us, perhaps we can more formally organise and plan the integration for next year or the year after. The more success we have and the more interest we get, the more likely the culture of the school and the attitudes to strictly instructivist teaching strategies will change.

Annotated Bibliography

Theory and Practice of Case-Based Learning Aids

Authentic Assessment

The criteria I wish to address most with this project is the attitudes of the students toward plants. I have been guilty in the past of biasing students against plants and other areas of biology that are less laboratory based. Through learning and teaching about plants I have become a better teacher as I am more knowledgeable and interested in how plants function and their adaptations. Since plants are such a big part of the course, it is vital that the students acquire a sense of wonder about them and actively want to know about them. The course refers to adaptations twice: Describe the concept of niche and discuss examples of adaptation of organisms to their environment (behavioural, physiological and anatomical). Describe how natural selection can lead to adaptation and evolution.  These statements are vague and have wide context.

Attitudes -

• That plants are important to our survival,
• That our future depends on plants and we need to understand them,
• That while plants may be slower than animals in general, their adaptations for survival are very diverse and extraordinary.

I believe the creation of a video that highlights a number of local plant species, perhaps 5, for their “cool”, “strange” or “weird” adaptations would be a good way to bring the students into contact with the more interesting plants. The Raflesia species, native to Malaysia, may be a good start, but closer to home there is a weed that grows on our football field with fast thigmatropic responses to touch that protect its leaves and reveal its thorns!

The video could be presented as a documentary that highlights the plants’ adaptations with brief explanations as to the mechanism that causes the action to occur, or the reason behind the evolution of the adaptation. If the actual plants can’t be found, clips from YouTube could be used to produce the documentary with the student presenting their points in between.

I would be aiming to have the students move up Bloom’s Affective Domain Taxonomy by at least one step but with most showing an enhanced attitude to the level of Valuing. This will require a pre and post survey as to the students’ attitudes. Relying solely on the authentic assessment measure of the video documentary may not be accurate as some students may be good actors! Combining the effort they make with the video and their responses may provide a greater degree of accuracy; assuming they respond honestly!

Bloom's Affective Taxonomy (retrieved from :http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html)

Receiving Phenomena: Awareness, willingness to hear, selected attention.

Responding to Phenomena: Active participation on the part of the learners. Attends and reacts to a particular phenomenon. Learning outcomes may emphasize compliance in responding, willingness to respond, or satisfaction in responding (motivation).

Valuing: The worth or value a person attaches to a particular object, phenomenon, or behavior. This ranges from simple acceptance to the more complex state of commitment. Valuing is based on the internalization of a set of specified values, while clues to these values are expressed in the learner's overt behavior and are often identifiable.

Organization: Organizes values into priorities by contrasting different values, resolving conflicts between them, and creating an unique value system. The emphasis is on comparing, relating, and synthesizing values.

Internalizing values(characterization): Has a value system that controls their behavior. The behavior is pervasive, consistent, predictable, and most importantly, characteristic of the learner. Instructional objectives are concerned with the student's general patterns of adjustment (personal, social, emotional).

Epistemology Paper: Discovery Learning

Assessment - Setup - Journal 2

Just tested IFTTT; works nicely.



This could be a rather useful, not only for this project but for the reflective writing the Pastoral team at my school expect of their tutees. I will look to incorporate this system into the ePortfolios I have built over the last 6 months.
Tutors want a one-stop dashboard of their tutee's work within their ePortfolios. The Blogger Blog for reflective writing has always been a bit of an issue in my mind; I had no way of pulling the data to the teacher. IFTTT allows this. It will require a bit of setting up, but once it is done it should work without any input from the less techie tutors!

Bizarrely, IFTTT creates a folder which, if you move, breaks the link to Blogger; a new IFTTT folder is created in the root directory of GDrive. I'll have to look at setting up a specific GSheet to write to. It would be better if IFTTT recognised files by their key and not their name!

Assessment - Setup - Journal

As part of the assessment plan for my students, I want my students to create a log/journal of their biology work. This log will be assessed for their critical thinking and problem solving.

To make the assessment as efficient for the teachers as possible, I thought I'd look at IFTTT to set up a push from Blogger to a GSheet. This will allow the teacher and student to see a log of the journal entries and quickly access those entries. I'm still toying with the concept, but I've just thought - this second - of using Doctopus to share the Journal Log sheet with the students. The teachers' assessments can be done with Goobric and kept private (FERPA) while comments directly on the blog can be formative.

Let's see how it goes!

Plants as food, plants as fuel?

I spent some time this week looking for YouTube clips that I can use to set the scene for the plant project, and stimulate discussion among my students. I found some really interesting stuff about the use of crude oil and plants that I wasn't aware of myself; I think I'm going to enjoy this project!
I have had some ideas about retrieving energy from plants that involve the breakdown of the unused cellulose in the stalks of crop plants when the crop is harvested. In Malaysia every year, farmers in Malaysia and the surrounding countries like to set fire to their fields, this creates a haze that has closed our school; this issue is what has prompted my thinking. Sadly, my research into this project has led me to find Cellulosic Ethanol production; always a day late and a dollar short!

I am still questioning the construction of my Driving Question - one of BIE's 8 Essentials for PBL - as to whether it is too vague:

Using plants, how will you produce your own food or fuel for a future of climate change, no oil and drought?

After a bit of thought and looking at other examples of driving questions, perhaps this will work:

Using plants, what do you have to do to produce your own food or fuel for a future of climate change, drought and an absence of oil?

Try again after watching the Wing Project!:

Using plants, how can I produce my own food/fuel for a future of climate change, drought and an absence of oil?

Considering the scope with which I have given this project - a 2 year course - the driving question really needed to encompass a lot of standards from the course. I hope I have managed this.