C+-+Laurel+-+off+Lake+-+Resolving+the+tensions+inherent+in+PBL

Trevor Shaw, Dwight Englewood School shawt@d-e.org @gen_learn Habits of Effective Problem Solvers: http://bit.ly/1BvqFo7

There are several tensions inherent in any student-centric learning environment:
 * Teacher Objectives vs. student interest
 * Student ambition vs. student skill limitations
 * Non-linear nature of learning vs. our desire to measure progress

A key ingredient in any student-centric environment is **Intrinsic Motivation.** In his TED Talk, Dan Pink outlines three essential ingredients to motivation:

- Autonomy - Competence - Relevance

There is an important relationship between the first two of these ingredients: In order for students to be Autonomous, they must first have a level of competence. (They don't know what is possible, until they have a basic level of knowledge) But, in order to help our students to become competent, we must differentiate our instruction (since they all have different interests and learning needs). In order to differentiate, we need to do some formative assessment to find out what each of them needs.

So, these trends in pedagogy should not be looked at in isolation, but rather as an interdependent set of strategies and techniques. The work of Kohn, Pink, Tomlinson, Fishcher & Frey should be looked at as pieces of a larger puzzle.

In designing a curriculum for a Physical Computing Course, I needed a model that could combine these elements in a way that preserved authentic student engagement and learning.

The Reading / Writing Workshop model from Teachers College provides a good model, which can be adapted to almost any other subject area. Below are some basic principles of the model:
 * **Focus on Habits of Mind Rather than Content --**More important than learning specific content, is the development and fostering of strategies and habits of mind that make a student a good reader. It is not essential that every 10th grader read//The Scarlet Letter//. It is critically important that the students develop skills and strategies that make them effective readers. The workshop model puts forth "Habits of effective readers." These habits become the instructional objectives of the course rather than the reading of particular texts.
 * **Differentiate** -- Students in a reading workshop class are not all reading the same book. Rather, teachers guide students toward "just-right" books based on their current reading skill level AND their interest (AUTONOMY)
 * **More Doing, Less Talking --** Direct instruction is limited to mini lessons limited to 10 minutes and sometimes not given at all.
 * **Formative Assessment (a lot of it)** -- While students are working on projects, teachers are engaged in 1:1 interviews with students questioning them on their progress related to the Habits of Mind, which are the objectives of the course. Other tools involve surveys and informal, conversations with groups.

Taking the concept of "Habits of Effective Readers," I created the [|Habits of Effective Problem Solvers].

Using these principles as the primary objectives of my course, I adapted the TC Reading Workshop Model to deliver a physical computing curriculum.

I used the app Chronicle to collect narrative, photo, and video data to track student progress in these Habits.

Chronicle flags students for whom a note has not been entered in several days, preventing students from falling through the cracks.

It also allows you to set "Assessment Tags," which are like proficiency standards. If there is a standard that you want to ensure certain students reach, you can use a traffic light icon to indicate that a student has accomplished an objective (green), is making progress on an objective (yellow), or has failed to meet an objective (red).

We discussed the difference between the types of things that are measurable objectives (Student can create a working electrical circuit) and those that are areas for constant growth (collaboration, creativity, etc)

There was a good deal of debate about the usefulness of rubrics when it comes to both of these types of objectives. Some people felt that rubrics were very important to allow students to gauge their progress toward an objective. Others were more reluctant and felt that a true rubric (1-4) creates an artificial gradient of progress. ex. I know how to describe excellence, but I think it's really hard to describe what a 2 or 3 look like. All sorts of things can get in the way of excellence. It's complicated.

Moving forward, I would like to do a better job defining some more of the descriptions of skills that students will need to achieve proficiency in to complete a task. Some of these should be required of the entire class. Some will be specific to student needs and interests.

I would also like to do a better job more clearly defining the structure of the projects and increasing student voice in the description of the challenge and definition of excellence. (We talked a bit about Tony Wagner's definition of rigor.)

Finally, I would like to see my students do a better job of documenting what they have accomplished and where they struggled. We talked about the challenge of doing this without pulling the student out of the learning (Stager / Kohn). It should be authentic. Maybe find some ways to have students showcase their work -- publish for other students in the library.

The problem is when they don't have the skills to accomplish the task and you slide back to old type of instruction. In order for the class to be autonymous, they have to be competent. In order to get competence, you have to differentiate. In order to differentiate, you have to do some formative assessment to see where they are.

Do - instead of just talking about it

Just right books - differentiated by ability and interest --Content doesn't necessarily matter, it's about the practice in developing the skills. For example, does every student need to read "The Scarlet Letter" to be a good reader? Not necessarily.

One on one interviews to figure out where people are --use this information to build a profile about your students

Habits of effective readers. Skills and strategies. Those are the focus of the class.

What does this look like for tech? For research?

Habits of Effective Problem Solvers - collaboration, engagement,

Skills of Effective Researchers

It would be nice if we agreed about all this as a school!

App - Chronicle

Mini lessons - should last no more than 10-minutes

Revision/writing process is so similar to design process

Opportunities for presentation and documentation

I'm going to do a mini lesson on X. If you need X, pay attention.

Benchmarks

Proficiencies

Vs

Skills or strategies that don't have a finish line, like collaboration, creativity

Rubrics

Formative assessment - surveys, then sitting down for an interview