Welcome to the week on Problem-based learning, Project-based learning and Case-based learning with technology.
Virtual Worlds
Let’s start with Whyville.net, a place for students ages 8 to 15. You will have to register but it’s free. Consider how researchers in 2005 simulated a pandemic in Whyville and that has been renewed in 2020 for COVID-19 teaching research.
Second Life… a 3D avatar-based virtual (learning) environment. Nice. But isn’t our First Life good enough for learning? More importantly, isn’t it our First life that really matters? Perhaps. But research on learning in virutal worlds suggests there are things we can do and learn in a virtual world, that are simply not possible in the real world. There are debates about identity formation in the virtual world, and how we express our personalities and explore our psychological depths by creating and acting in a virtual space (trying on different genders, various types of expertise, and even being both good cop and bad cop). Second Life has come, and gone, and come back a little (see this article, 2011). Several similar environments may be emerging circa 2016. Second life is still a choice of national technology groups like ISTE. Some regions disappear, others arise, like Ashemi 2018 and the Eduverse Education Campus 2022.
Maybe you want to watch a virtual hernia surgery in 360-degree VR or maybe you watched the 2016 Rio Olympics in VR. More importantly, what might VR do for classroom learning? Learning analytics and VR are on the Forbes 2022 tech trends list.
Makerspaces
The Horizons 2016 K-12 report cited makerspaces as 1 year horizon trend. That document had several embedded links to examples of makerspaces and called for using them to engage students in STEM related activities and develop student 21st century skills.
Problem-based Learning
A classic example of PBL is to present students with an over-arching “Driving question” such as “Is the Civil War still being fought?” or debate questions like “Should abortion be legal?” Then, let this problem organize the entire class or semester. There are several associated terms that elborate different types of problems, such as “authentic,” “complex,” “real-world,”and “realistic.” Take a look at this 36-slide brief intro.
Some Technology examples include:
Jasper Woodbury Middle School Math videos from CTGV
MyPond/ MySound http://www.mysound.uconn.edu (temporarily off line periodicly for sonde maintenance)
and (interestingly enough) this Challenge Cycle (see STAR Legacy Cycle description)
Video Games. OK.. so start with a 10 minute Youtube overview of games (writ large) and thier pro-social benefits. When many teachers think of games, they think of reinforcement games that use game mechanics to do drill and practice (see for example ABCya). Saving the galaxy with your basic math facts or playing with the principles of good Rumbleblocks design for earthquakes (cannot be viewed in Chrome) and Math vs Zombies may be fun, but it is not all gaming can do for education.
For a classic example of games that teach, take a peek at iCivics, founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Or the middle school history games like Mission US by CPB affiliates.
And in the spirit of the Flipped Classroom, when you have some time, there is a 1-hour lecture on Games Based Learning on YouTube (by our own Dr. Slota) that may really help to clarify that games are not the violent, women-victomizing horror that they are often characterized to be.
Learning in video games provides an interesting contrast to classroom learning. In game learning students persist through failure (fail forward), grind for long periods of time doing repetitive quests, and seek harder and harder “bosses” to fight knowing they are likely to fail often before they acquire the necessary individual and coordinated team skills to succeed. Video Games, such as Portal, are even becoming required in the General Education curriculum of some schools. The APA has reversed itself and has 2013 data to suggest video game play, even violent video game play, may positively impact learning. So something like Scribblenauts might be an interesting addition to a language learning class.
Video games particularly online massively multiplayer games provide a good example of sustained motivation, critical problem solving, and collaborative team learning. There is research to suggest games, even aggressive content games, can be interesting ways to learn how civilizations develop, relate to the Greek Homeric bardic tradition, and gain important work skills like how to manage a team of 25 to 40 people working toward a single goal/quest (Harvard Business Journal, Reeves, Malone, O’Driscoll, 2008). Meta-analysis of the literature is generally positive (Clark et al. 2014). Take a look at Wired magazine’s 1-page article, “You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired” (Brown & Thomas, 2006).
Perhaps we are at our best when acting like Heroes in video games (see this 20 min TED talk by Jane McGonigal for more). Games can create situations that provide visceral experiences in line with real life, or to some degree of accuracy, actually recreate history. Consider this list of Civil War games/simulations. But simulations are different from games, in that simulations do not make entertainment and fun a priority, and constrain events to 1 scenario, the actual one, rather than letting things vary as players make choices. This complicates the use of games set in historical contexts (See Quartz 2017 article on teaching History with video games).
An example of trying to use some of the attributes of Online Games to give students learning questions was a 3-D avatar-based environment called Atlantis Remixed, that has pretty much neared the end of its run as well, but impacted 100,000+ student world wide. Other virtual worlds include the virtual globe theatre, science in Harvard’s ecoMUVEand nearly everything else in Second Life. Have you heard of Machinama– view a video about how even commercial games like World of Warcraft have serious educational value? Teachers at least need to know about these virtual environments, and to wisely integrate technology, they should be prepared to explore how some of their content can be delivered through game-like interactions.
Educational Game Databases. Consider exploring some of these centralized lists of educational games, including Games for Change (a serious research site), The Institute of Play, Playing History and Gaming the Past for History Games, Health Games Research, Math Chimp for math Games, the Science Game Center, Arizona State’s database of various games, Military corportate and educational games list, Common Sense Media reviews of games and movies,
Consider the story of the failed Arden World of Shakespeare. So, what should a state-of-the-art video game in education look like? See (Gee, 2005, pdf).
Project-based Learning
Much is being said about improving STEM education. Project-based learning can help!
See this brief overview for an introduction.
Projects typically have some real-world activity that students complete, the project, that will be put to the test as working or not working, like the “build a volcano” activity mentioned earlier in the challenge cycle. Many have technology components. The volcano project, as a specific example, can now have a tech component (see http://discoverykids.com/games/volcano-explorer/).
NASA Egg-drop
http://quest.nasa.gov/mars/teachers/tg/program3/3.1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKQntlsJ_KQ
2016 Egg Drop winners at UAB
Invention Convention
http://www.inventionconvention.com/
http://www.eduplace.com/science/invention/
School Play/ Yearbook
Power of Project-based learning (Scholastic article)
Robotics (Lego)
Logo, Robot programming like Sphero and Tickle, or C# Unity scripting
http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/
http://www.usfirst.org/
http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/default.asp?domainredir=www.legomindstorms.com
Concord Consortium and probeware
Case-based Learning
National Center for CBL in Science Ed
Medical, Business & Legal education
Harvard MBA cases
The Tylinol Case of Business Communications
CASES for teachers from school projects
http://mediaeducationlab.com/case-study-video-elementary
Finally, Integrated Learning Systems
Computer-assisted instruction…. computer aided assessment… courseware for several grades or an entire school… what’s it called, an Integrated Learning System. Read through this page of example systems (under revision), checking out their web sites to see what they offer and how they contrast with Problem-based, Project-based, and Case-based learning described above. Do Integrated Learning Systems constituted Learning Environments? You decide.
Enduring Understanding- Student Learning Outcome from this module
This module how technology can enhance Problem-based (Jasper), Project-based (Makerspaces) and Case-based learning for learner and make administration and assessment easier for teachers.
