Webinar: Engage Your Students With Real Life Projects

The webinar was conducted by Suzi Bos, a great woman interested in problem based learning. She always look for trends and teacher reflections on projects related to education, and is really interested in shifting practice into more student-centered real-world way of learning.

It was a great experience listening to the wealthy information given by her and having the opportunity to chat and share different professional experiences in the subject area.

Suzi Boss started by saying, “the longer students stay on school, the longer they are perusing in education, less engaged they feel.”

As research indicates 55% students of grade 5-12 feel engaged. The other 45% are not feeling engaged, from which 17% are actively disengaged and not really interested in what’s going on.

“Deep learning always requires deep engagement.” Suzi said.

It’s necessary to talk to students about their learning experience, which could help in getting them engaged. One solution for disengagement is adopting problem-based learning.

The advantages of problem based learning (PBL):

·         Increases engagement

·         Makes concepts memorable

·         Prepares students for future challenges (college, careers, life..)

·         BONUS: increases teacher satisfaction

The agenda of the whole process was to:

1.      Find project worthy ideas

2.      Increase relevance (but keep the rigor)

3.      Consider the 3 As to guide students toward meaningful, memorable results.

Tip 1:  Find Project worthy Ideas

Start by paying attention to headlines that grap students’ attention.

The key is to ask the following questions:

·         Is the heading a messy problem with no one right answer or solution?

·         Does it generate high interest?

·         Does it involve an ongoing issue or consequence?

·         Could it connect to your standards?

The problem must be right-sized, accessible, actionable, and big enough to matter but small enough to tackle. Problems for students must be challenging but still within students scale to achieve success.

So how to go from interesting topics to real projects?

The answer is to consider the following:

·         Process: what’s your framework for helping students understand the problem deeply, building background around it, and making meaning of it?

·         Context: learning often extends beyond the classroom (not limited to the 4 walls of classroom)

·         Application: authentic products, audiences, and assessment.

Tip 2: Plan for Rigor and Relevance

Ask yourself how can this project be the best use of my time and students’ time in the coming weeks?

Save time for situations that requires deep inquiry and have connections to real world.

Always think about the following:

·         How the topic connect to the big ideas of your content area?

·         Why do these concepts matter in the world outside school?

·         Who interacts with this topic in their work or daily life?

Tip 3: Encourage Real Results

“You’re not talkers, you’re doers.” – Michael Dudek

It’s not all about theories. You need to put theories into practice and find out what works and what doesn’t.

To help students become not just talkers but doers, there are three ideas that should be considered (the presenter “Suzi” called them the three As):

1.      Awareness: allow them to raise others’ awareness for issues they felt they are important and wealth knowing.

2.      Advocacy: allow them to give voice to those who are voiceless.

3.      Actions: putting into practice (put solutions into actions).
 Students must be given the voice and choice to choose among the “three As” to express their understanding of the project.

….Hopefully I’ve pictured the webinar readily, easily, facilely and simply...

I hope it added something to you!