1. Looking at Education from an ICT-Assisted PBL Point of View
David Moursund
Teacher Education, University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon USA
~moursund/dave/
I have added some notes to some of the slides.

2. Dave Moursund Professor, College of Education
Background in mathematics, computer science, and education.
Author of 40 books and many articles.
Founded the International Society for Technology in Education and ran it for 19 years.
Major professor for many doctoral students.

4. Map of Oregon

6. Comparison Costa Rica Oregon Population 4,016,000
Land area 51,100 Sq km
Coastline 1,290 km
Oregon
Population 3,450,000
Land area 251,868 Sq km
Coastline 474 km

7. Part 1: Introduction and Overview
Four-part workshop: See handout.
Focuses on uses of Information and Communication Technology in Project-Based Learning (ICT in PBL).
Goal is to help participants help to improve the education of their students.

8. Project-Based Learning
Students work individually or in teams over a period of time.
Students produce a product, performance, or presentation.
PBL is learner centered:
Teacher is “guide on the side.”
Teacher is not “sage on the stage.”

9. Whole Group Activity
Ask participants to show, by raising a hand, if they make quite a bit of use of PBL in their teaching.
Some “really successful” experiences to be shared with the whole group of participants.
It seems to me the issue in Costa Rica is Microworlds-based PBL taught in a computer lab by a computer teacher, versus more general PBL taught by the regular classroom teacher in the regular classroom. The goal from my point of view is to integrate ICT in PBL into the regular curriculum. Connectivity into the classroom seems to be an issue.

10. ICT: Information and Communication Technology
ICT includes all forms of telecommunication systems such as telephones, the Internet, and the Web.
ICT includes calculators, computers, digital cameras, digital music devices.
ICT includes the field of Computer and Information Science.

11. ICT-Assisted PBL
This is merely the integration of ICT into PBL. It includes ICT:
As an aid to doing projects.
As a source of projects.
As one of the learning goals in a project.
ICT integrated into the everyday curriculum, and PBL as a part of the everyday curriculum, represent a philosophy of student-centered education. There are other ways to implement ICT-assisted student-centered education. It seems to me that this would be a good topic to bring up for discussion in the workshop.

12. Whole Group Questions
What percentage of you have have computers and connectivity in your homes?
What percentage of your students?
How much computer and connectivity facilities are available in schools?
In computer labs.
In individual teacher’s classrooms?
What we are looking for is some feeling of a trend toward improved connectivity. In globalization, it is the infrastructure of transportation and communication, and the resources of well educated, entrepreneurial-oriented people, that tend to be the key. People at all levels need to understand the concept of “Flat World” that Thomas Friedman has written about.

13. The World is Getting Smaller
Improving transportation and communication.
Increasing international trade.
Increasing telecommuting to jobs.

14. Examples
World trade in agriculture, mining products, manufactured products.
Worldwide competition for many jobs.
Via traveling to jobs
Via telecommuting to jobs
Worldwide companies.
The Web as the world’s largest “library.”
Think globally, act locally. Think locally, act globally. Each person needs to understand their roles of a citizen of their community, their province, their country, and the world.

15. Smaller World Leads to:
Increased need for each country to compete globally.
Need for students to be educated to become responsible and productive adult citizens of their community, country, and the world.

16. Goals of Education (David Perkins)
Acquisition and retention of knowledge and skills.
Understanding of one's acquired knowledge and skills.
Active use of one's acquired knowledge and skills. (Transfer of learning. Ability to apply one's learning to new settings. Ability to analyze and solve novel, challenging problems.)
Perhaps the key is that the totality of human knowledge continues to grow rapidly, but our rate of learning does not. With limited time and ability to learn, the question is what to learn. Much of education is done in a mode that most of what is learned is soon forgotten.
So, think in terms of what one might learn in a manner that tends to last for many years, or even a lifetime. Contrast this with learning that is quickly forgotten. I have used the content versus maturity approach to analyze this.
It is not difficult to look at the scale of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. It is much more difficult to understand what this means in an education setting. And, when we think of people versus ICT systems, what do these terms mean for ICT systems and what do they mean for people. Artificial Intelligence is an important topic of discussion in this regard.

17. Goals of Education
The general idea is a shift in education from a focus mainly on lower-order knowledge and skills toward the higher-order knowledge and skills. The higher-order tend to be harder to teach and assess. They require teachers who are at such levels.

18. Activity
In small groups, discuss which (if any) of the goals of education might need to be changed because the world is getting smaller.
Share some of the results with the large group of workshop participants.

19. People Versus Computers
This is an example of an idea that can last a lifetime. Educational leaders need to understand it. But, it seems to me that students need to understand it. In some sense, we hide much from students. I support a strong movement toward openness, with students participating fully in their own education, understanding goals of this education, and understanding their progress in this endeavor.

20. Conclusions
Less emphasis on lower-order knowledge and skills that computers can do well.
More emphasis on higher-order knowledge and skills where people can outperform computers.

21. Part 2: Roles of ICT in Education
ICT as an aid to learning.
ICT as a content area to be learned.
ICT as part of the content of the other disciplines studied in school.

22. Example: An Inexpensive Calculator
Solar-powered, relatively rugged and reliable, hand-held calculators have been available for many years. Most adults people now take them for granted and use them whenever they have “serious” calculations to do. That is, they have tended to shift paper and pencil calculation into calculator calculation.

23. Example: A Computer

24. What is an Academic Discipline?
Problems and activities it addresses.
Accumulated accomplishments
History, culture, language. Methods of teaching and learning.
Tools, methodologies, evidence and arguments.
Nature and extent of its expertise.

25. Expertise in a Discipline

26. Problem Solving Includes:
posing, clarifying, and answering questions
posing, clarifying, and solving problems
posing, clarifying, and accomplishing tasks
posing, clarifying, and making decisions
using higher-order, critical, and wise thinking to do all of the above
During the presentation, spend quite a bit of time on this. Focus on the posing part, and ways to help students get better at that aspect of their education. Focus on the idea that problem solving, in this broad context, is the absolute heart of ICT in education.

27. Activity Question
By a show of hands, how many of you place a strong emphasis on problem solving in the courses you teach?
Is there a specific course on problem solving that is taught in your school or school district?
Same ideas, but focus on the “posing” aspects of this situation.

28. Problem Solving and Higher-Order Thinking
Is complex—with the total path not visible from any single vantage point;
Often yields multiple solutions, each with costs and benefits;
Involves nuanced judgment and interpretation;
Involves the application of multiple criteria, which sometimes conflict with one another;
Often involves uncertainty, because not everything that bears on the task is known;
Involves self-regulation of the thinking process, rather than coaching at every step;
Involves imposing meaning, finding structure in apparent disorder;
Is effortful, with considerable mental work involved.

29. Summary
Increasing one’s expertise in a discipline means getting better at doing the higher-order thinking and problem solving aspects in a discipline.
It also means getting better in using the tools and methodologies of the discipline.

30. Writing as an Example of a Higher-Order, Thinking Project
Brainstorming.
Organizing the brainstormed ideas.
Developing a first draft.
Obtaining feedback from self and others.
Revising and going back to earlier step.
Publishing.
In writing and in all lower to higher-order situations, the question is how much one must master the basics before working at the higher-order levels. Modern education supports the idea of working on both simultaneously. Do enough basics to be able to get off the ground, and then let the higher-order needs help drive the study of lower-order knowledge and skills. Practice lower-order in the context of need to use them immediately, rather that sometime in the unknown future.

31. Some Roles of Computers in Process Writing
Use of a word processor helps in each step.
Use of a word processor is particularly helpful in steps 5 and 6.
Computers make it easy to include graphics and pictures in writing.
Computers can help with spelling and grammar.

32. Authentic Instruction and Authentic Assessment
Instruction is authentic when it closely conforms to what we want students to learn to do.
Assessment is authentic when it closely conforms to having students do what we are preparing them to do.
ICT-Assisted PBL can be designed to have authentic content & assessment.

33. Examples
Students memorize lists of spelling and vocabulary words versus students write using correct spelling and use of vocabulary.
Students memorize arithmetic computational facts versus students solve multi step math problems that include use of computational facts.

34. Authentic Instruction for:
Agricultural Age: Hands-on, informal, learn by doing.
Industrial Age: Factory-like educational systems.
Information Age
Learning in and being assessed in an open computer, high connectivity environment.
Learning to learn, learning to take responsibility for one’s own learning

35. Activity Question
By a show of hands, find out how many people in the workshop sometimes give open notes and/or open book tests?
How about allowing students to use calculators on test?
How about open computer (with connectivity to the Internet) tests?
Do students in the Costa Rica schools have calculators in school and at home to routinely use? What about their use in testing situations? In the USA, calculators are readily available at home, and many tests at the state and national level now allow students to use calculators.

36. Discussion
More and more workers actually work in an open computer, open connectivity environment.
Few students are taught in that environment.
Few students are assessed in that environment.

37. Individualization of Instruction
Students have widely varying interests, abilities, talents, and rates of learning.
Constructivism—building on previous knowledge and skills.
Advantages of individualization, tutoring, Computer-Assisted Learning, and intrinsic motivation.

38. Examples of Mass Production of Individualized Products
Cars.
Computers.
Eye glasses.
Question: How can we individualize education of students?

39. Individualizing Instruction
Think about this diagram both from a student point of view and from a teacher point of view. For a teacher, it points to the need for individual knowledge about students and the knowledge and skills to meet the student needs. It suggests that teachers need to be at a higher-order level, especially with respect to their students. So, the teacher’s dot is quite a bit higher on the scale as compared to the student. The teacher needs both content and pedagogical knowledge and skills.

40. Empowering the Learner: Consider
Educational system that treats student all alike, as “products” to be “manufactured or produced” to fit specifications developed by people “at the top.”
Versus
Educational system designed to empower each individual student to develop his or her individual capabilities and interests.
Seymour Sarason wrote the interesting book on empowering students and teachers. He argues that this is the only way to significantly improve education. His ideas are, of course, different than those of Robert Branson, who pushed for distance learning and CAL. However, I agree with both Branson and Sarason, but with the added provision that we change the curriculum so that ICT as aid to problem solving in the disciplines is thoroughly integrated into the disciplines.

41. Part 3 Seven Steps in Planning an ICT-Based PBL Unit of Study
Mission or purpose, title, contents.
Project goals and objectives.
Prerequisites and remediation.
Teams or individuals? Details on choice of topics and what to do in the project.
Timeline and milestones.
Needed resources and their availability.
Assessment. (Part 4 of this Workshop.)

42. Example: Protect and Improve our Environment
1. Mission: Students will do a project on environmental problems and possible solutions in Costa Rica.

43. Environmental Project (continued)
Goals: Students will learn about the history, science, and politics of environment.
Students will learn to do library-based and field-based environmental research.
Students will learn to write a comprehensive position paper, and to develop and give a multimedia presentation.

44. Environmental Project (continued)
Prerequisites and Remediation: Provide some detail on what previous knowledge and skills is being assumed with respect to environmental studies and with respect to ICT.
This is an important idea. You want all students to have some knowledge, skills, and vocabulary in common, but you also want to draw upon the diversity of knowledge and skills. It is not clear what constitutes a minimum common core of knowledge and skills. The PBL environment is good in helping students learn from each other and from the overall project environment to fill in holes in their education.

45. Environmental Project (continued)
Teams/individuals. Empowering students.
How are teams selected?
What powers are given to students to defines goals and objectives of their project? (For example, study of forests, agriculture, rivers, oceans, air, manufacturing.)

46. Environmental Project (continued)
Timeline and Milestones.

48. Milestones
Clearly defined measure of accomplishment of task or subtask. Example:
Team selects its leader and topic. Writes and turns in first draft on what each person on the team will do.
End of week written report on what the team and each individual member have done during the week.
Etc.
Milestones tend to divide a large project into smaller projects.

49. Environmental Project (continued)
Resources needed and availability:
Computers and connectivity.
Digital cameras.
Instruments to measure water, soil, and air pollution.
Computer projection system.
Assessment: Designed so students understand requirements and participate in assessment process.(See Part 4)

50. Examples of Goals in ICT-Assisted PBL. Students Learn:
Subject matter content. Content might be science, social science, math, language arts, etc.
ICT as an integral component of the subject matter component.

51. Goal 2 Activity
ICT as an integral component of the subject matter component. Pick a non-computer discipline you teach.
Think about some computer aspects of the content of that discipline.
Share your ideas within your small discussion group.
Share with the whole workshop group.

52. For Example
I teach science. For my Goal 2, I want my students to learn:
Use of computers to collect, analyze, and present data.
Computer modeling.
Use of computers to search the science literature.

53. Goals (continued) To budget resources (such as time).
To self-assess progress and quality of work. (We will talk about assessment in Part 4 of this workshop.)

54. Goals (continued)
To work as a team member (cooperative learning and problem solving).
To be a creative, higher-order thinker and problem solver.
To transfer previous learning into new settings.
To learn to learn and help others to learn.

55. Part 4: Assessment and Evaluation
Assessment is data gathering.
“Evaluation" refers to judgments based on that assessment information.
Both assessment and evaluation should be valid, reliable, and fair.
Many people in this type of ICT-Assisted PBL workshop tend to feel that assessment is the most important topic. Although I devote quite a bit of workshop time to the topic, I do not feel it is the most important topic.

56. Activity
In small groups, make a list of types of assessments you think are useful in PBL.
Share some of the results with the whole group of workshop participants.

57. Three Types of Assessment
Formative Assessment providing feedback to help improve quality of a project.
Summative assessment after project is completed.
Long term “residual impact” assessment long after a project is done.

58. Assessment (Data Gathering): Some Examples
Observations of students while they work.
From assignments.
From analysis of student products, performances, presentations.
From tests.
Peer assessment.
Self assessment.
Portfolio assessment.

59. Rubrics and Milestones
Detailed specifications of the product, presentation, or performance.
Designed so that students can learn about assessment.
Designed so that students can learn to assess themselves.

60. Rubrics
Rubrics are useful throughout all of education, not just in PBL.
Students can and should be involved in helping to create rubrics. (This is part of students learning to self-assess.)
Rubrics should be written so that students can fully understand them and can self-assess.

61. Example of a Rubric for Teacher that is not Very Useful to Students
Emergent (Student displays few, if any, of the rudimentary knowledge and skills that are expected.)
Limited (Student displays few, if any, of the rudimentary knowledge and skills that are expected.)
Developing (Student displays a minimally adequate level of the expected knowledge and skills.)

62. Rubric (continued)
Capable (Student displays a functional, adequate level of the expected knowledge and skills.)
Strong (Student displays a high level of the expected knowledge and skills.
Exceptions (Student displays an outstanding and creative/innovative level of the expected knowledge and skills.

63. Student Friendly Rubrics
Student understands what is to be done.
Student can accurately self-assess.

64. Self Assessment
Learning to self assess and become more responsible for one’s own learning is one of the most important goals in all of education.
Whole group activity: Share some examples of how you help your students learn to self-assess in the courses you teach.
From my point of view, this is probably the most important aspect of PBL. PBL is an excellent environment in which students can learn to self-assess.

65. How can I (a learner) tell if I have learned well enough:
to serve my current needs?
so that it will stay with me, for use in the future?
to transfer my new knowledge to new situations where it is applicable?
so that I can build on it in the future?
so I have some insight into what I don't know, and how to learn the things I don’t know?

66. Portfolio Assessment
A collection of one’s work arranged and displayed for viewing by others.
Students analyze each item in their portfolio, explaining why it is in the collection and how it helps to demonstrate their educational progress and their increasing expertise.

67. Final Remarks
ICT-Based PBL helps to create a teaching and learning environment that empowers students.
Intrinsic motivation, authentic content, and authentic assessment are important in helping students become independent, lifelong learners.