Successfully Implementing Problem-Based Learning in Classrooms by Brush Thomas;Saye John W.; & John W. Saye

Author:Brush, Thomas;Saye, John W.; & John W. Saye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Purdue University Press

As she stated, the tool was developed to meet a need she identified in order to enrich the experience for her students and to help her learn about their thinking. She had been designing presentation outlines before the start of the study during the previous school year. During this study, she designed four outlines.

Amy was interested in her students’ thinking, both as they presented their own solutions and as they responded to presentations by other teams. She reminded them during the question phase that she would ask questions but that she wanted them to ask questions of the group as well. The first outline was for the mini-golf activity. The students had to design a miniature golf course using specified shapes for the holes. The holes were not drawn to scale, and the task required the students to scale up the holes and make them all the same scale in order to determine how to position them in the given area. All of the groups produced a letter and a miniature golf course layout on a poster board. The outline Amy wrote on the board for them to follow included the obstacles the group may have encountered (“Getting started struggles”). She asked about the moment they knew how to solve the problem (“Aha! moment”) and the final product (reading the letter and describing the layout). “Who did what” asked them to describe how tasks were divided among the members of the group (e.g., writing the letter, cutting out shapes). Questions came either from Amy or other students in the class.

Amy was interested in how each group solved the activity, from their initial ideas to their final product. Based on her experience, she felt the students had not explained clearly or specifically the solution paths they had followed. She was trying to determine a way to word a question to elicit each group’s solution path more clearly. Even though the outlines were improving, she was still not entirely satisfied with their effectiveness in eliciting students’ solution processes, even toward the end of the study when we discussed them. She explained:

[Be]cause some case studies lend [themselves] more to talking about struggles they had getting started. What I would like to hear them do more—and this is another question I haven’t figured out exactly how to word—is paths that they started to follow. Like they thought, “Oh, this’ll work,” and then what caused them to realize that it didn’t. And, so then what did they start thinking next or move to next?

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