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Looking at Education from an ICT-Assisted PBL Point of

ViewDavid Moursund

Teacher Education, University of Oregon

Eugene, Oregon 97403 USA

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~moursund/dave/

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Dave Moursund

• Professor, College of Education• Background in mathematics, computer

science, and education.• Author of 40 books and many articles.• Founded the International Society for

Technology in Education and ran it for 19 years.

• Major professor for many doctoral students.

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Map of Oregon

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Comparison

• Costa Rica– Population 4,016,000– Land area 51,100 Sq km– Coastline 1,290 km

• Oregon– Population 3,450,000– Land area 251,868 Sq km– Coastline 474 km

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Part 1: Introduction and Overview

• Four-part workshop: See handout.

• Focuses on uses of Information and Communication Technology in Project-Based Learning (ICT in PBL).

• Goal is to help participants help to improve the education of their students.

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Project-Based Learning

• Students work individually or in teams over a period of time.

• Students produce a product, performance, or presentation.

• PBL is learner centered:– Teacher is “guide on the side.”– Teacher is not “sage on the stage.”

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Whole Group Activity

• Ask participants to show, by raising a hand, if they make quite a bit of use of PBL in their teaching.

• Some “really successful” experiences to be shared with the whole group of participants.

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ICT: Information and Communication Technology

• ICT includes all forms of telecommunication systems such as telephones, the Internet, and the Web.

• ICT includes calculators, computers, digital cameras, digital music devices.

• ICT includes the field ofComputer and InformationScience.

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ICT-Assisted PBL

This is merely the integration of ICT into PBL. It includes ICT:

• As an aid to doing projects.• As a source of projects.• As one of the learning goals

in a project.

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Whole Group Questions

• What percentage of you have have computers and connectivity in your homes?

• What percentage of your students?• How much computer and connectivity

facilities are available in schools?– In computer labs.– In individual teacher’s classrooms?

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The World is Getting Smaller

• Improving transportation and communication.

• Increasing international trade.

• Increasing telecommutingto jobs.

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Examples

• World trade in agriculture, mining products, manufactured products.

• Worldwide competition for many jobs.– Via traveling to jobs– Via telecommuting to jobs

• Worldwide companies.• The Web as the world’s

largest “library.”

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Smaller World Leads to:

• Increased need for each country to compete globally.

• Need for students to be educated to become responsible and productive adult citizens of their community, country, and the world.

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Goals of Education(David Perkins)

1. Acquisition and retention of knowledge and skills.

2. Understanding of one's acquired knowledge and skills.

3. Active use of one's acquired knowledge and skills. (Transfer of learning. Ability to apply one's learning to new settings. Ability to analyze and solve novel, challenging problems.)

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Goals of Education

Acquisition and RetentionUnderstandingUse to Solve Problems & Accomplish Tasks

Perkins’ Three Goals of Education on a Lower-order to Higher-order Cognitive ScaleLow OrderMedium OrderHigh Order

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Activity

• In small groups, discuss which (if any) of the goals of education might need to be changed because the world is getting smaller.

• Share some of the results with the large group of workshop participants.

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People Versus Computers

Areas in which ordinary people

can readily outperform ordinary

ICT systems.

Areas in which ordinary ICT

systems can readily

outperform ordinary people.

Areas in which people versus ICT

system performance is currently

undecided and/or where the two together

readily outperform either alone.

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Conclusions

• Less emphasis on lower-order knowledge and skills that computers can do well.

• More emphasis on higher-order knowledge and skills where people can outperform computers.

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Part 2: Roles of ICT in Education

• ICT as an aid to learning.

• ICT as a content area to be learned.

• ICT as part of the content of the other disciplines studied in school.

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Example: An Inexpensive Calculator

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Example: A Computer

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What is an Academic Discipline?

• Problems and activities it addresses.• Accumulated accomplishments• History, culture, language. Methods of

teaching and learning.• Tools, methodologies, evidence and

arguments.• Nature and extent of its expertise.

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Expertise in a DisciplineLess than a useful level of knowledge and skill.

Level to meets one’s own minimal needs and/or an employer’s minimal needs.

Relatively fluent, broad-based & higher-order knowledge and skills.

Professional level knowledge and skills

General-Purpose Expertise Scale for a Discipline12345

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Problem Solving Includes:

• posing, clarifying, and answering questions• posing, clarifying, and solving problems• posing, clarifying, and accomplishing tasks• posing, clarifying, and making decisions• using higher-order, critical, and wise

thinking to do all of the above

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Activity Question

• By a show of hands, how many of you place a strong emphasis on problem solving in the courses you teach?

• Is there a specific course on problem solving that is taught in your school or school district?

• Same ideas, but focus on the “posing” aspects of this situation.

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Problem Solving and Higher-Order Thinking

• Is complex—with the total path not visible from any single vantage point;

• Often yields multiple solutions, each with costs and benefits;• Involves nuanced judgment and interpretation;• Involves the application of multiple criteria, which sometimes

conflict with one another;• Often involves uncertainty, because not everything that bears

on the task is known;• Involves self-regulation of the thinking process, rather than

coaching at every step;• Involves imposing meaning, finding structure in apparent

disorder;• Is effortful, with considerable mental work involved.

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Summary

• Increasing one’s expertise in a discipline means getting better at doing the higher-order thinking and problem solving aspects in a discipline.

• It also means getting better in using the tools and methodologies of the discipline.

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Writing as an Example of a Higher-Order, Thinking Project1. Brainstorming.2. Organizing the brainstormed ideas.3. Developing a first draft.4. Obtaining feedback from self and

others.5. Revising and going

back to earlier step.6. Publishing.

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Some Roles of Computers in Process Writing

• Use of a word processor helps in each step.

• Use of a word processor is particularly helpful in steps 5 and 6.

• Computers make it easy to include graphics and pictures in writing.

• Computers can help with spelling and grammar.

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Authentic Instruction and Authentic Assessment

• Instruction is authentic when it closely conforms to what we want students to learn to do.

• Assessment is authentic when it closely conforms to having students do what we are preparing them to do.

• ICT-Assisted PBL can be designed to have authentic content & assessment.

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Examples

• Students memorize lists of spelling and vocabulary words versus students write using correct spelling and use of vocabulary.

• Students memorize arithmetic computational facts versus students solve multi step math problems that include use of computational facts.

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Authentic Instruction for:

• Agricultural Age: Hands-on, informal, learn by doing.

• Industrial Age: Factory-like educational systems.

• Information Age– Learning in and being assessed in an open

computer, high connectivity environment.– Learning to learn, learning to take responsibility for

one’s own learning

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Activity Question

• By a show of hands, find out how many people in the workshop sometimes give open notes and/or open book tests?

• How about allowing students to use calculators on test?

• How about open computer (with connectivity to the Internet) tests?

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Discussion

• More and more workers actually work in an open computer, open connectivity environment.

• Few students are taughtin that environment.

• Few students are assessedin that environment.

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Individualization of Instruction

• Students have widely varying interests, abilities, talents, and rates of learning.

• Constructivism—building on previous knowledge and skills.

• Advantages of individualization, tutoring, Computer-Assisted Learning, and intrinsic motivation.

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Examples of Mass Production of Individualized Products

• Cars.

• Computers.

• Eye glasses.

Question: How canwe individualizeeducation ofstudents?

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Individualizing Instruction

Expertise Scale Illustrating Lower-Order

and Higher-Order Knowledge and Skills

Novice World

Class

Current Level of Expertise of

Learner

Higher-orderL ower-order

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Empowering the Learner:Consider

• Educational system that treats student all alike, as “products” to be “manufactured or produced” to fit specifications developed by people “at the top.”

Versus• Educational system designed to empower

each individual student to develop his or her individual capabilities and interests.

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Part 3 Seven Steps in Planning an ICT-Based PBL Unit of Study

1. Mission or purpose, title, contents.

2. Project goals and objectives.

3. Prerequisites and remediation.

4. Teams or individuals? Details on choice of topics and what to do in the project.

5. Timeline and milestones.

6. Needed resources and their availability.

7. Assessment. (Part 4 of this Workshop.)

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Example: Protect and Improve our Environment

1. Mission: Students will do a project onenvironmental problems and possiblesolutions in Costa Rica.

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Environmental Project (continued)

2. Goals: Students will learn about the history, science, and politics of environment.

a) Students will learn to do library-based and field-based environmental research.

b) Students will learn to write a comprehensive position paper, and to develop and give a multimedia presentation.

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Environmental Project (continued)

3. Prerequisites and Remediation: Provide some detail on what previous knowledge and skills is being assumed with respect to environmental studies and with respect to ICT.

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Environmental Project (continued)

4. Teams/individuals. Empowering students.

a) How are teams selected?

b) What powers are given to students to defines goals and objectives of their project? (For example, study of forests, agriculture, rivers, oceans, air, manufacturing.)

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Environmental Project (continued)

5. Timeline and Milestones.

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Milestones

Clearly defined measure of accomplishment of task or subtask. Example:

1. Team selects its leader and topic. Writes and turns in first draft on what each person on the team will do.

2. End of week written report on what the team and each individual member have done during the week.

3. Etc.

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Environmental Project (continued)

6. Resources needed and availability:a) Computers and connectivity.

b) Digital cameras.

c) Instruments to measure water, soil, and air pollution.

d) Computer projection system.

7. Assessment: Designed so students understand requirements and participate in assessment process.(See Part 4)

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Examples of Goals in ICT-Assisted PBL. Students Learn:

1. Subject matter content. Content might be science, social science, math, language arts, etc.

2. ICT as an integral component of the subject matter component.

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Goal 2 Activity

2. ICT as an integral component of the subject matter component. Pick a non-computer discipline you teach.

– Think about some computer aspects of the content of that discipline.

– Share your ideas within your small discussion group.

– Share with the whole workshop group.

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For Example

I teach science. For my Goal 2, I want my students to learn:

• Use of computers to collect, analyze, and present data.

• Computer modeling.• Use of computers to search the science

literature.

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Goals (continued)

3. To budget resources (such as time).

4. To self-assess progress and quality of work. (We will talk about assessment in Part 4 of this workshop.)

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Goals (continued)

5. To work as a team member (cooperative learning and problem solving).

6. To be a creative, higher-order thinker and problem solver.

7. To transfer previous learning into new settings.

8. To learn to learn and help others to learn.

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Part 4: Assessment and Evaluation

• Assessment is data gathering.

• “Evaluation" refers to judgments based on that assessment information.

• Both assessment and evaluation should be valid, reliable, and fair.

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Activity

• In small groups, make a list of types of assessments you think are useful in PBL.

• Share some of the results with the whole group of workshop participants.

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Three Types of Assessment

• Formative Assessment providing feedback to help improve quality of a project.

• Summative assessment after project is completed.

• Long term “residual impact” assessment long after a project is done.

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Assessment (Data Gathering): Some Examples

• Observations of students while they work.• From assignments.• From analysis of student products,

performances, presentations.• From tests.• Peer assessment.• Self assessment.• Portfolio assessment.

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Rubrics and Milestones

• Detailed specifications of the product, presentation, or performance.

• Designed so that students can learn about assessment.

• Designed so that students can learn to assess themselves.

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Rubrics

• Rubrics are useful throughout all of education, not just in PBL.

• Students can and should be involved in helping to create rubrics. (This is part of students learning to self-assess.)

• Rubrics should be written so that students can fully understand them and can self-assess.

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Example of a Rubric for Teacher that is not Very Useful to Students

1. Emergent (Student displays few, if any, of the rudimentary knowledge and skills that are expected.)

2. Limited (Student displays few, if any, of the rudimentary knowledge and skills that are expected.)

3. Developing (Student displays a minimally adequate level of the expected knowledge and skills.)

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Rubric (continued)

4. Capable (Student displays a functional, adequate level of the expected knowledge and skills.)

5. Strong (Student displays a high level of the expected knowledge and skills.

6. Exceptions (Student displays an outstanding and creative/innovative level of the expected knowledge and skills.

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Student Friendly Rubrics

• Student understands what is to be done.

• Student can accurately self-assess.

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Self Assessment

• Learning to self assess and become more responsible for one’s own learning is one of the most important goals in all of education.

• Whole group activity: Share some examples of how you help your students learn to self-assess in the courses you teach.

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How can I (a learner) tell if I have learned well enough:

• to serve my current needs?• so that it will stay with me, for use in the

future?• to transfer my new knowledge to new

situations where it is applicable?• so that I can build on it in the future?• so I have some insight into what I don't know,

and how to learn the things I don’t know?

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Portfolio Assessment

• A collection of one’s work arranged and displayed for viewing by others.

• Students analyze each item in their portfolio, explaining why it is in the collection and how it helpsto demonstrate theireducational progress andtheir increasing expertise.

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Final Remarks

• ICT-Based PBL helps to create a teaching and learning environment that empowers students.

• Intrinsic motivation, authenticcontent, and authenticassessment are importantin helping students becomeindependent, lifelong learners.