Ideas for Planning Projects II

Building off that earlier post, the example of project design from Tim Best, here's how another teacher at SLA frames up their design process.

They started with three columns:

Column 1. Introduce the idea for the assignment, understandings and questions.

Column 2. List skills it introduces, concepts, new learning required, State standards you want to cover, etc.

Column 3. Intro some ideas on how a project could be built and ask for feedback. Run it by peers, and students. Likely the ideas and creativity will expand exponentially.

Choose if you'll use a class theme as in, 'everyone makes a video entry,' or more individualized, as in 'show me what you can do,' where students have more creative control on how they'll incorporate the information into a project. Analyzing the availability of the equipment you have available is key here. Consider having students utilize all the tools available. 

I noticed SLA tended to do split project scope by discipline:

Math: Folks tended to work on the same type of project.

History, English, Social Studies: Tended to offer more creative choice to students on project scope: Video, audio, blogs, wikis, web sites, etc.

Then, discuss how the project will be assessed: The rubric they use at SLA is quite good. I've used a modified version of it in the Lab for quite a while. It's better than the one I used to use.

http://www.scienceleadership.org/blog/Assessment_at_SLA 

Then…

Introduce the concepts, the new material, the skills, content discussions, etc and discuss ways to apply them in a project. Encourage students continually chime in ideas on how things could be done.

The projects are put into an archive of sorts so that every faculty member in your department (and possibly the school) can learn from.

I've shown this model to many folks over the years and the initial feedback is often the same. Here are the frequently asked questions / statements:

*I don't have time to do this.

Does getting everyone in class actively discussing and exploring the course content in deep, meaningful ways sound interesting?

You bet.

Here's where that phrase "learning is messy' comes in handy. uBd is not scripted. It'll take collaboration and compromises. That's the challenge, and the fun of it.

The teacher at SLA I spoke with said they build roughly 1/2 hour to plan each assignment with students. The design activity can be issued homework style as well, aka 'be prepared for tomorrow's discussion on this.'

*What if the path we choose in the assignment doesn't work?

Make adjustments on the way! 

Asking students (and peers I think) for constant feedback is the key. The more you do it the more your facilitation skills will build for building creative capacity.

SLA seems to have a growing theme of sharing project ideas with peers in your department as well. Often this will help frame up ideas prior to tossing it on the table with students.

*If the assignments are so dynamic, what if I don't have answers to questions that come up?

Explore the question with the group. Creates a collaborative, problem solving environment.

I don't have the tech skills necessary to do this.

If the students have creative choice on how they will present the information it becomes, for lack of a better term, less uniform. Each student will be using their own skills to build things rather than making everyone a video editor. If you pick theme based projects, everyone uses video, keep it simple and see how it goes. Ask students to collaborate to solve problems and prowl for tutorials to help. There's a lot of expertise in the room and this type of collaborative model (facilitation) taps into it.

The access your students have to  technology is a key consideration. The elephant in the room, so to speak, and why SLA's initiatives are quite successful, is the fact that every student has a laptop to explore creative capacity.

The important part to understand is that this need not be an 'either / or' option for your entire course out of the gate. Get your feet wet. Give it a try. Take on one project based assignment first and see how it goes. Discuss it with students. Explore these project ideas with students. Scale is important as you adjust and build diverse schools. Pick something simple first. The most common mistake is to make the first projects you do far too large, too complex, too cumbersome.

The part that the SLA folks collectively seemed to enjoy the most is exploring ideas for new assignments. Build off success, make adjustments as you go. Keep moving forward.