Now this is a design model that can sink my teeth into. The Guided design model is an educational strategy that uses real world problems to teach decision making skills within a content area. Isn’t this what we as teaches strive on a daily basis to teach our students. I know I do. An activity I do in CAI for objective 6.01-6.02 is to let them pick a real world issue to use in their educational presentation. If a student decided to pick teenage pregnancy, hopefully this will help another student to make the decision to use a protection. Anyway…I do like this model. This model helps promote participation in the form of leaders, planners, and researchers. Everyone in the group has a been assigned a part.
Group Project Steps
• define problem
• state objectives
• list constraints limiting solutions,
assumptions one must make,
and facts to be known
• generate possible solutions, and
evaluate using criteria
• select one solution, synthesize
present results and recommendations
as a report, or other product
• implement decision
• evaluate results
• feedback should be provided indicating
how an “experienced” decision maker
might have performed
I wonder if a barrier would be lack of participation from high school students. This sounds good in theory and would definitely work for college students, but I could see some of my high school students refusing to participate and letting the other students do all the work (just like with other group projects).There would have to be accountability and individual grading.
I think that the web resources for this type of model are endless. This is a Design model. My students could use any program out there imaginable to design their project. Elluminate works well for collaborative group conferencing allowing you to sharing your desktop as you are designing.
Kerry -
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of high school students working through and problem solving some of the amazingly tough issues they face. Talk about relevant case studies!!!!!
I have seen examples of when the collaboration piece is a graded outcome and when it is not and I am not sure there is a huge difference when it comes to participation levels. Part of the issue I think can come from the fact that often students are thrown into group projects and while there are clearly defined roles for them to choose to play, they still do not have the skills necessary to work together effectively. Even the adults I work with do not always have the skills to do this well. It can be hard enough to give feedback to a colleague but in situations like these where roles and responsibilities are mushy, it can be overwhelming. And then if it is not done well, it can be damaging. I think we have help students create that structure to work together. As you mention there is so much for them to gain from this process!