1.2 Initiation into the educational use of the networked computer and collaborative work is among the objectives. Some projects make this a priority objective.
It
is important not to confuse skill in handling a computer or piece of software
with the use of this skill for seeking, sorting and classifying relevant data.
The fact that large numbers of today's students are comfortable with electronic
media does not automatically mean that they are able to use computers methodically
and effectively for more and more demanding learning experiences --the ones
called for by schools being an example. Many teachers trying a project-based
approach using the technology described above have found that the situation
required initiating the students, and themselves as well, into an educational
use of this technology and collaborative work and that the time and energy
needed could become substantial. This initiation involves, for example, an
ability to carve up a project, employ computers for exploration, deep understanding,
and communication purposes, comparing data from different sources and learning
from one another.
Awareness of this situation has prompted educators to plan projects with an
initial phase during which the learning objectives in a given subject area
or topic --language, biology or the great rivers of North America-- will only
partly depend on the use of a computer. In these cases the priority objective,
though usually not the exclusive one, is the operation of the networked computer
and software, or learnware, as learning tools. In the project briefly outlined
below ("A Trip to the Mountains and on the Internet") the emphasis
is placed, not on studying the Rocky Mountains, though there is an attempt
to get to know them better, but on using E-mail and the Internet to produce
an online journal. In this way, students acquire the resources to share knowledge
with others more effectively during another phase of the same project or when
conducting another project.
A TRIP TO THE MOUNTAINS... AND ON THE INTERNET
About forty students from Grade 9 through 12 from five Francophone Manitoba schools maintained contact with their classmates and a number of other people during an eight-day skiing trip to the Rocky Mountains. Every day, thanks to E-mail, they sent a team of students and teachers in Manitoba articles detailing their activities and discoveries. Within hours, these articles were published in a Web site accessible to everyone who had the address. They could also add their comments and questions.
This project has shown the students the advantages of E-mail and the Internet and familiarized them with their use. It has also enabled them to learn about history, geography, writing and the requirements of teamwork.
1.3 Under the teacher's guidance, at times very flexible and at
others firmer, the starting topic, or the driving question, becomes a springboard
for increasingly advanced learning experiences that engage the student more
and more deeply in a relationship with knowledge.
The
class's initial interest in a topic or a question is essential but perceived
in successful educational experiments as only a first step. Under the teacher's
direction, the classroom will dissect and discuss the topic's major components
and expand them or, depending on the case, limit its application and define
its range. By degrees, the topic becomes a project and their spontaneous interest
becomes commitment to a research process.
There have been numerous experiments to tell us that, if the project developed
possesses a certain breadth, the student will learn to place the questions
he asks in a truer perspective and find that in order to answer them he must
himself become capable of observing, describing, naming, comparing, classifying,
synthesizing, assessing and carrying out various other intellectual operations.
As he takes on new challenges from project to project, he will also discover
that the skills required to address an inquiry question are more and more
complex. In this process and by degrees, he is initiated into the requirements
of the scientific method, logical reasoning and collaboration with other students.
Topics that offer good potential for educational use will influence the student's
intellectual development and attitudes to learning, but also the concept he
forms of knowledge itself. In a class where project-based learning is practised
with the networked computer, each topic takes on meaning in relation to other
topics. Knowledge is perceived as a dynamic reality. As a result, multidisciplinarity
and interdisciplinarity are axiomatic: the very process of researching a social
phenomenon like television requires learning a certain vocabulary, mathematical
formulas and geographical concepts (see above, in 1.1, "An International
Investigation into Television Habits"). Similarly, we need historical
knowledge in order to fully grasp the importance of the discovery of microbes,
the atom, the laws of thermodynamics and a large number of other scientific
discoveries. Because it provides access to current data on very specific problems
as well as for theoretical research and on today's events as well as our centuries-old
heritage, the use of the latest technologies helps to make the living and
endlessly changing nature of knowledge even more obvious to the student.
1.4 The project-based approach promotes the use of multiple work methods and educational strategies.
The
notion of a project-based approach in the classroom in itself suggests collaboration
by a number of people. This is even more clearly the case with a project-based
approach which, as in this guide, attempts to make the best use of a number
of interconnected computers. The projects chosen in these circumstances will
necessarily involve at some point, while the topics or questions of these
projects are being explored or the results are being processed, task sharing
by students and their contacting other people and various organizations and
coordinating multitudinous operations and on many occasions pooling partial
results.
Even if a student team (which may be a classroom) assumes responsibility for
a project and the most visible outcomes are expected at that level, the individual
work of each team member will still be vital. Indeed, each of them will be
called on to locate information, weigh its value and organize it, write and
calculate, make plans, conduct experiments, present and discuss results, create
visual montages and carry out a host of other activities. Some projects are
also broad-based enough for students or a team of students to tack on specific
learning objectives or even a more specific project of some kind (see Desbiens,
1998).
SCHOOLS FOR THOUGHT
The North American Schools for Thought project is being
backed by three teams that pooled their efforts to bring it into being the
results of their research and experiments in schools (see, e.g., Williams
et al., 1998).
One of these teams, which is from Ontario, is behind an approach to using
networked computers known as the Computer Supported Intentional Learning
Environments (CSILE). In this program, students are placed in research
and collaboration situations and, in various ways, including continuous dialogue
among them assisted by notes, deep understanding of a shared object while
at the same time actively participating in developing new knowledge.
A second team, the Cognition and Technology Group,
is attached to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. In a number of projects,
its members place the emphasis on team solving of real or potential problems.
More specifically, they are trying to promote "authentic" or "anchored
instruction."
Lastly, a third team whose principals were psychologists Ann Brown and Joseph Campione focused its efforts particularly on "fostering communities of learners."
The project-based approach with networked computers creates a setting that
fosters, simultaneously and in a complementary way, teamwork and individual
work, but also the use in both cases of multiple work methods and learning
strategies. Quite naturally -- which does not mean automatically --, students
are invited to raise questions, but also to find answers; to express themselves
in writing, but also orally and visually; to do analytic as well as synthesis
work; to develop intellectual skills, but social skills as well and, to take
one more example, employ cognitive strategies, but also metacognitive ones.
In recent years, a number of projects somewhat related in their approach to
the one used by this guide (see, e.g., the box story above entitled "Schools
for Thought") have demonstrated great ability to integrate highly diverse
methodological and educational concerns and, as a result, take into consideration
students' ages, motivations and the other major characteristics that weigh
on their learning process.
In this common undertaking, the latest technological resources are used to
stimulate, through a variety of projects, the creation of communities of learners
that draw on the best sources to find answers to questions that have meaning
for students. However, more traditional tools like pencils, exercise books
and other books are still always used. While maintaining certain elements
of the traditional school, we attempt to add other elements that expand and
refurbish the range of methods and strategies available to teachers.
1.5 The final project outcome is consistent with the process, has a collective
quality and provides persuasive proof of the depth of understanding achieved
in relation to the identified learning objectives.
In
a project-based approach, the processes of "doing" things and "learning"
things are inextricably bound together (see Blumenfeld et al., 1991,
p. 372). It is by seeking the answer to a question or problem of some importance
that students discover laws, dates and a thousand other data, make connections
among them and learn to make other uses of their brains and hands. It is therefore
logical that it should be what has been "done," in other words the
resultant "product," which is used to evaluate what has been learned.
In concrete terms, this product is a piece of writing, an object, audiotape,
behaviour in a given situation, presentation in front of the class or another
group or any other "piece of work" that evidences a collaborative
learning process. As for the criteria for assessing the extent, depth or any
other quality of the depth of understanding achieved, they are the learning
objectives prescribed in the curriculum of the school or schools. In a project-based
approach with networked computers, however, these learnings have usually been
reconfigured in more interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary terms, for
example around major concepts, topics or questions that require research and
reflection.
If the product has a collective feel to it, this is primarily because the underlying question required collaboration or at least could be more satisfactorily answered via a collaborative process. The product is therefore not just an assembly of individual labours: while integrating the contribution of each and every student, it also goes beyond these to build a synthesis that is discussed and validated in its own right.
CONCLUSION
The project topics, the initiation into the educational use of networked computers and collaborative work, the probing into the topic or the question by each student under the teacher's flexible yet firm direction, the use of multiple work methods and learning strategies and the qualities of the end result are so many factors to be weighed very carefully when developing and conducting learning projects. It may be appropriate, by way of conclusion, to come back more particularly to the attention to be given the students. From this standpoint, a good project has to have a motivating effect on them and conduce to meaningful learning experiences. In a substantial article on the interactions between motivation and learning in a project-based approach, a team of University of Michigan researchers used these words, based on T.W. Malone and M.R. Lepper (1987), to describe what can motivate students: "Student interest and perceived value are enhanced when (a) tasks are varied and include novel elements; (b) the problem is authentic and has value; (c) the problem is challenging; (d) there is closure, so that an artifact is created; (e) there is choice about what and/or how work is done; and (f) there are opportunities to work with others" (Blumenfeld et al, 1991, p. 375).
2. NATURE AND OPERATION OF THE PROPOSED APPROACH: SYNTHETIC OVERVIEW
TABLE
2
uses some major components
to present an overview of the nature and operation of a project-based approach
supported by networked computers (intranets or Internet). It highlights the
following points:
-
As already indicated, the project-based approach implies that the planned educational activity becomes the responsibility of a team or group. This group may include only a few students but it can also encompass a larger number, for example all the students in a class. This group work does not supplant all individual work: on the contrary, it requires such work. However, unlike what usually goes on in a regular class, the context and objective of this individual work is a collective product or "piece of work."
-
In the project-based approach described in this guide, the three main agents - the student, project team and class (including the teacher or teachers in charge) - can use the networked computer to develop multiple collaborative relationships among themselves but also with any other individual, team, class, group or organization hooked up to the network.
-
The major operations to which a school link-up opens the way have to do with information and interpersonal interaction. The information accessed by students and transmitted by them to others can be connected with any subject taught in the classroom and be available in various forms (text, graphics, animation, etc.). Moreover, through the interactions they develop with others, students will learn to exchange points of view, engage in discussion, clarify their thinking and thus assimilate new understandings, hone their skills (intellectual, social, etc.) and consolidate their identities.
-
The result of this dual process is a learning experience that takes concrete form in a text, database, service to a group of people, activity in a business, commented presentation or any other communicable "product."
Whether the activities conducted in the course of a learning project supported
by networked computers are carried out by an individual (student or educator),
small group or a larger collectivity, one of its major characteristics is
being relational. These relations, electronic in this case, can in every circumstance
be established with another person, small group, class or any Web site on
the planet. This is brought out in TABLE
3.
Finally, TABLE
4
is intended to lend specificity to the contents of Tables 2 and 3. For each
operational category (information and interpersonal interaction) and each
activity type (individual, small group or collective, with each of these able
to have as agents individuals, small groups, classes and various other players
linked up to the same network), the table provides illustrations of specific
activities and possible outcomes. This exercise, which every reader is invited
to undergo, demonstrates that these possibilities are particularly abundant
if we call on every working tool available (software for word processing,
publishing, research, calculus, planning, E-mail, electronic forums, etc.)
and every access route to relevant content (databases, historic, scientific
or other sites, ongoing work in other classes, online dialogues, experts,
etc.). It should be noted that every illustration in this table is independent
of every other. However, the table may very well be used as a grid for establishing
links between specific activities and between these activities and their expected
results.
We
saw it in Part I: the project-based approach is at least a century-old notion.
Since the turn of the nineteenth century it has evolved in various directions
and borrowed various forms at different times and in different cultural contexts.
For the past dozen or so years it has been undergoing a major reassessment.
The main factors in this reassessment have been evolving considerations about
the learning process and, closely linked to this line of thought, the availability
of online resources and the networked computer in particular. The sections
of this chapter draw on these two leavens of change: we begin by focusing
attention on some sources of conceptual support and their implications and
move on to look at some experiments carried out in the wake of this support
using networked computers.
Since this century began, Dewey's pragmatic thinking and prolific writing, instigated by Charles S. Peirce and William James, has been providing a basis for the pragmatic view (http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/pub/den/deming_as_prag.htm) holding that everyone, young or adult, learns by observing the consequences of his acts or through his relations, or "transactions," with his environment. However, given students' lack of autonomy, the scarcity of available classroom resources and the limited training required until recently for successful entry into the working world and society generally, the attempts to carry these concepts into effect in the education system have resulted in situations that were both hard to maintain and felt to be too demanding.
Now, with the information and communication technologies (ICTs), a project-based
approach becomes more possible. And what this approach has to offer also becomes
more socially relevant, even necessary. Indeed, current developments in our
political, economic, cultural and other areas, their global interrelationships
and the emergence of a knowledge society are so many phenomena that call for
a population that is not only more educated, more intellectually independent
and more capable of creativeness, but also, in social life generally as well
as the working world, better prepared to function in collaboration with others.
Among the complementary paths that education must henceforth take are, according
to the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century
created by UNESCO, "the gradual discovery of others" on one level
and, on a second level, "the experience of shared purposes throughout
life" (1996, p. 92). During the decades when the working world's main
need was an obedient labour force that was ready for individual exertion,
the behaviourism of Edward L. Thorndike and the followers of this theory called
up a response in the educational community to this social need. Today, the
educational approach advocated by Dewey is the one gaining in relevance --"Learning
is thinking," John Abbott (1998) reminded several hundred school administrators
meeting in Quebec City specifically to discuss the integration of the new
technologies with education. Consequently,
the project-based approach of which he was one of the chief pioneers is viewed
as an option that is likely to enable a greater number of students to develop
their potential and assume their proper roles (as citizens, workers, family
members, learners, etc.) in our evolving society.
This considerable increase in requirements draws our attention to the importance
of motivation to learn. Today, there are many studies to show that placing
students in the position of discovering the world and sharing the results
of their explorations, investigations or problem solving, as the project-based
approach would have them do, represents one of the best ways of arousing and
sustaining this motivation.
The outcomes of their empirical explorations also provide students with matter
for reflection. Through this reflection, their own discoveries and, gradually,
the world itself acquire meaning. As a well-known educational maxim has it,
we learn by doing. The networked computer provides the teacher with a multi-faceted
resource for encouraging students to experiment and see the results of their
activities for themselves. Paradoxically, the resources employed to get students
to move from a listening situation to one in which they are active participants
in discovering reality (research on the Web, simulations, the use of collaborative
software, etc.) often emanate from the so-called "virtual" world.
Researchers in the cognitive sciences (Lave, 1988; Brown, Collins and Duguid,
1989) convincingly demonstrated that the act of learning is also the interpretation
of an experience, language or phenomenon grasped in context. After this, the
cognitive sciences, with their four decades of association with computers,
were brought to provide more and more powerful support to the approaches that
link experience with learning and afford students a more active classroom
role by offering them learning situations that require cognitive and metacognitive
involvement along with collaborative work. Indeed, as Ward and Tiessen state,
collaboratively conducted project-based learning is "an instructional
approach that attempts to engage students in the intentional pursuit of their
own learning goals and in social interactions aimed toward the development
of understanding" (1997b, p. 299).
So that the project-based collaborative approach can foster the assimilation
of complex learning processes, the use of the following ideas and principles
in connection with one or another of the basic components of any educational
situation is suggested.
The student
The interactions that occur in educational situations enable students
to be at the centre of ongoing learning activities and, for example, open
and close "conversations" related to learning objectives known in
advance (see Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1989, on the notion of "intentional
learning"). The interpretative abilities students have individually and
collectively acquired are highlighted by Jerome Bruner, who, following Jean
Piaget, places emphasis on this learner characteristic. Ideas and concepts
that refer back to social and cultural representations a student can recognize
are more readily accessible to him. In other words, "the act of understanding
is no longer a process of coming to know the entities and attributes that
exist in the world, but one of successfully negotiating the meaning of these
objects with others" (Hewitt and Scardamalia, 1998, p. 77).
The student's interest in learning is observed in context where choices are
provided. Participation in decision making is known to heighten student engagement
and to add value to the learning task (Krapp, Hidi and Renninger, 1992). When
a learning project evolves around a real-world problem, the student is even
more motivated by the collective interest for solving the problem than by the
problem itself (Hickey, 1997). The student is called on to play various roles
in the classroom, all of them connected with learning objectives. It is desirable
that the roles he plays should encourage his increasingly central participation
in the learning process (see Lave and Wenger, 1991 and Brown, Collins and Duguid,
1989). In a learning project, the student will take part in the management process
for the whole project and not just a part of it.
The subject matter
As a rule, the teacher will present the material to be learned through a
series of tasks and activities. In a project-based approach, each student and
the class as a whole must make the learning objectives their own; learning here
is seen as a conscious process that is desired and driven by "intention"
(see Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1989). Moreover, according to researchers Resnick
(1987) and Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989), learning activities that draw on
real-life situations have more interest for students than the ones used in most
classrooms. With the teacher's help, students face real problems. The teacher
will structure his or her intervention by planning activities which, while attuned
to student abilities, present increasing levels of difficulty.
Student interactions with a given content have to include time
for exploration, but also for negotiations based on how they see this content
and for concordance on the degree of agreement they share and the action that
logically ensues. The objective is to achieve a meaningful or "anchored"
learning experience (see Bransford, 1990; Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000).
More complex material can be studied from multiple standpoints, alternately
falling back and moving forward.
The teacher
The teacher's responsibility is central. The mere fact that, for example,
the student has easy access to the information on the Web will not automatically
lead to the understanding deemed necessary. Teacher mediation is crucial here.
For about twenty years, cognitive sciences researchers, drawing on the work
of the Russian psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky from the 1920s and early 1930s,
have demonstrated its importance. Networked computers provide direct access
to information and potential for interaction outside the classroom, but the
responsibility for student learning falls nonetheless, first and foremost, to
the teacher.
The teacher's role is that of guide in a community of learners; in particular,
the teacher facilitates student activities through careful scaffolding (see
Brown and Campione, 1994 and 1996, and Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt,
1994). In a community of learners, students assume complementary social roles
and learn, for example, to control their own performance or behaviour by controlling
others'. The teacher's expected mediation is, in Vygotsky's view, double-edged:
cognitive and metacognitive. Through mediation based on metacognition, the teacher
brings the student to gradually take over his learning process (to plan, direct,
control, check and assess it). As the student becomes more adept, the teacher
will offload responsibilities (see also Feuerstein and Rand, 1974). When it
comes to cognitive mediation, the emphasis is placed on the assimilation of
knowledge that is both "declarative" (of facts, data, in short what
is) and "procedural" (how to do this or that in order to achieve
a given purpose): the first type of knowledge has to be tied to the second type
if we want real development of students' reasoning skills and an ability to
apply ideas learned with flexibility (see also Davydov, 1993, tr. Kerr, 1995).
It is not so much by listening to their teacher talk about the methods of scientific
analysis, here considered as cognitive mediation tools, as by using these methods
themselves that students will learn to master them and make them their own (see
Karpov and Haywood, 1998).
Next-generation tools such as Knowledge Forum assist the teacher in (a) scaffolding student learning activity, and (b) keeping trace of student online dialogues and knowledge-building processes (see Part V).
Context
The approach brought forward for consideration here is "situated"
learning (see Lave, 1988 and 1991). According to this approach, based on Vygotsky's
theories, the acquisition of new understandings cannot be separated from the
context in which it occurs. Since most people think that the student's mental
representations are internal (see Anderson, Reder and Simon, 1996) and knowledge
exists in the individual mind ("container model"), the suggestion
that cognition is the result of the meeting of people, objects and situations
(Hewitt and Scardamalia, 1998, pp. 78 and 80) comes as something of a surprise.
The researchers who see learning as situated offer the following justification:
understandings, occurring in real contexts, exist through the way in which class
members (pupils and teachers) communicate among themselves, discuss their interpretations
and organize their processes and behaviours as well as through the permitted
strategies and the other tools and resources used in the class. Having been
shaped in a given context, the outlines of a learning project can be expanded
through the use of the networked computer that is plugged into the local and
world communities.
The project-based approach creates a physical and social context based on which
the student will create his representations of concepts, ideas and principles.
Hence the importance of providing the student with a learning context and giving
him problems to solve that are as real and authentic as possible, while taking
his previous knowledge into account.
However, enriching the learning context with computers calls for constant vigilance
on the part of the teacher with regard to the people and other resources that
can be accessed through electronic networks. "Good teachers filter what
enters the classroom to provide fundamental, concrete experiences that children
can respond to, make sense of, and use to gain an understanding of the progressively
more complex things and subjects to come" (Pepi and Scheurman, 1996, p.
234). These writers base their warning on the following comments by Dewey: "The
first office of the social organ we call a school is to provide a simplified
environment " (1966, p. 20). And here, far from relying on "frontal"
teaching where the emphasis has been and remains on acquiring knowledge in a
listening mode, this great thinker promoted, as we saw in Part I, learning by
doing.
This section offers some succinct examples of the way the learning process is tackled by a project-based approach using networked computers and software that fosters cooperation among students. Where available, the results are summarized as well.
a) The "Thinker Tools" experiment
This project started in 1986 and is based on science teaching in the early high-school
years and more specifically on Newton's theories. In this project, "the
class becomes a research community and students propose and test out competing
theories with the aid of computer models. They compare findings and discuss
which models and theories offer the most powerful explanations. It has had a
sizable impact not only on students' learning of physics principles but also
of inquiry in general" (Reported by Perkins and Grotzer, 1997, p. 1129;
see also White and Frederiksen, 1995).
b) Science and environmental education projects
Various projects in the late 1980s used networked computer-assisted communication
to enhance learning through direct action in the area of environmental responsibility;
the means used were the exchange of real data among classes, collaborative efforts
by classes and university teams to resolve certain problems and wider dissemination
of results. In an Australian water quality project, a school revealed the presence
of a hazardous substance and this information was provided to the local authorities,
who took action (see Robottom and Hart, 1990). Some 16 schools took part in
the Rouge River Project (see Wals, Monroe and Stapp, 1990), which
inspired the Canadian Grand Watershed Project (see McMahen and Dawson,
1995).
Waugh and Levin (1988) reviewed various projects in which students approached
issues the way researchers do. Their own project, called Noon Observation,
which reached students around the world, involved measuring the Earth's circumference
based on the measurement of shadows at midday solar time in different locations
on a specific day (see McMahel and Dawson, 1995).
c) Michigan science project
When a project is based on the solution of real problems, "students acquire
and apply concepts and principles in their investigations, they formulate plans,
track progress, evaluate solutions, and produce artifacts(2) related to the problem", report Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx
and Soloway (1994, pp. 483-484). These cognitive science researchers are working
with teachers in the State of Michigan to implement the project-based approach
in science secondary classes. "Orchestration among the features, assert
the same authors, results in classrooms where students are afforded opportunities
to construct knowledge actively and to think critically and are motivated to
take responsibility for their learning" (Ibid., p. 486).
d) An electronic progress portfolio
In the neighboring State of Illinois, Louis M. Gomez and his research team have
been testing an electronic progress portfolio. The purpose of this tool is to
facilitate thoughtful exploration activities by high-school students. One group
of students conducted research on the planet Pluto's orbit around the sun by
using this portfolio to describe their work in progress and enter and organize
the data they gathered. To present their results, the students used software
like Hyper Studio and Claris Home Page (see Loh et al.,
1997, pp. 174-175). The students also used the progress portfolio to go back
over their activity (see id., p. 176). The researchers conclude by emphasizing
that this tool has encouraged students to do thought-out research while further
applying in concrete ways certain methodological aspects of their exploration
programs.
e) The 22 French schools participating in the "L'eau" project
on water (http://www.ac-toulouse.fr/piquecos/pages/eau.html) combined to produce
a CD-ROM that was chosen in 1997 by France's national education ministry for
a European educational multimedia competition. A second project of the same
type is on the way and will focus on eco-citizenship.
f)
I*EARN (International Education and Resource Network)
In 1995, this network encompassed about 1,000 schools with representation on
every continent (see Copen, 1995). Its aim is to promote a better understanding
of other cultures and world problems among students from kindergarten to senior
high school and thus prepare them for the challenges they will have to face
as adults. It works through projects students build with their teachers. In
fact, the students are active participants in all project phases, with the teachers
seen more as "facilitators."
Most of the projects focus on actual social or environmental problems, but some
tackle other topics. Information and dialogue by E-mail are important elements,
but projects usually seem to have very specific end goals (an international
paper, comparison of data on a scientific phenomenon, an exchange of artwork,
or even financial assistance for building water pumps in Nicaraguan villages).
These projects form part of regular class activities. Various reports indicate
that they enrich course content and have a positive effect on student motivation.
One might add that they provide settings that greatly encourage awareness of
foreign languages.
Such projects show that networked computers enable classes to engage in learning
projects in which students are active and, in the best cases, participate in
knowledge building activities, make connections between course content and actual
situations and have access to varied and up-to-date documentation: the teachers
act as guides or companions. Without networked computers, a number of these
projects would be inconceivable.
Theses
projects are numerous in Anglophone than in Francophone communities and are
more often based on languages and mathematics than other scholl subjects. However,
new projects appear as school and classrooms hook up to networks.
Teachers wishing to develop projects with their students will find a suggested
process and list of resources in the next two parts of this guide (IV and V).
(2) The term "artifact," often used these days in the North American project-based learning stream, refers to any expression of a cognitive learning process by students that takes tangible form and is likely to arouse varied opinions. It is close in meaning to the term "product," or "production" (see, for example, Blumenfeld et al., 1991, p. 370, n. 1).
Drawing on experiments carried out thus far, this part offers the broad outlines and major elements of a general project-based approach using networked computers. From the teacher's standpoint, this process is a special class management method, in the circumstances a method that displays a number of affinities with "facilitation", "pedagogical supervision" and "participatory class management." In essence, it relies largely on activities involving all class members to encourage their curiosity and perseverance and create interactions and windows of collaboration for them that are directed towards specific learning objectives.
Moving from the psychosocial to the cognitive angle and still from the teacher's
standpoint, we can offer this definition of a networked computer-assisted project-based
approach: the involvement of each and every student in activities that aimed
at individual, team and class learning objectives, beginning with their prior
knowledge and scaffolding their processes of exploration, comprehension, problem
solving and the production of tangible collective results. The class management
approach suggested in the following pages is based on this definition and the
one in the first paragraph above.
Our suggested process occurs in three phases: project planning, project implementation and results processing. Operationally, then, we can state that the project-based approach with networked computers consists in preparing, implementing and then processing the results, including activities carried out by students interacting with one another and with various resources, especially the ones on the computer network they are hooked up to.
By its very nature, a project is a time-limited activity resulting in an original
creation or specific service (inspired by PMI Standards Committee, 1996, p.
4). Each of its phases leads to a well-defined outcome: the result of the first
phase is a plan; of the second, one or more "products," and the third
phase results in evidence of collective understanding by the class.
The process involving one or possibly more than one project at a time may, depending on the case, occupy a more or less conspicuous place in the school timetable. Teachers may also use a project-based approach on a regular basis or only from time to time. Again, two or more teachers covering the same subject or different subjects can choose among a variety of agreements to join in conducting a project or series of projects. Another issue that is sometimes hard to resolve is what links to establish between project objectives and the objectives of a part of the curriculum. What can be done in this area may vary considerably from school to school, depending on school policies but also on teachers' professional judgment.
Figure 1 below shows the three phases cited above in their
continuity along with some of the major activities associated with them. Especially
for the activities, the terms used are merely indicative. The same applies to
their sequence: though these activities have a logical sequence, they will almost
always tie in with the actual flow of a project, and to maintain consistency
it is often necessary to go back over an earlier stage for fresh clarifications
or to make some adjustment. A learning project is not built like a bridge.
Figure 1 may be perceived in two or three dimensions. Imagine,
for example, your classroom on a school bus that leaves the highway temporarily
to take a pleasanter road with better scenery that is very probably a little
longer. Secondly, imagine that your class is still on a school bus but the bus
changes temporarily into an airplane that takes off for a flight and then lands
and continues its journey on the ground. In both cases, linearity, the routine
of the route, will have been broken since, at a given point, the class took
another road or took flight while still sticking to the same direction.
Considering the usual practices in education, the process pictured below is
likely to strike some as a series of activities which rarely take place only
in the classroom. As we shall see in Part V, the networked computer offers increasing
avenues for collaboration among various partners in order to conduct collaborative
projects, and there is every reason to believe that this pattern will continue.
Above anything else, it is important that every project clearly support the
achievement of locally identified learning objectives for teachers as well as
for students.
FIGURE
1
SCHEMATIC OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT PROCESS
http://www.tact.fse.ulaval.ca/ang/flang.jpg
INITIAL PHASE: PROJECT PLANNING
Contrary to what happens on a real trip, where the discoveries we make repay
the trouble ("That detour was worth it," people will say), the mere
fact that the people on the bus or plane described above take a route where
they seem to learn more and better is not usually enough. Third parties who
are more or less numerous and in more or less powerful positions, depending
on the project in question, will also have something to say before a project
is recognized as a success beyond the classroom. Some of these third parties
are school principals, parents, school councils, educational authorities and
the Ministry of Education. The more likely a project is to attract attention
or require resources, the more necessary it will be to keep the relevant authorities
informed and be sensitive to their expectations. As engrossing as a project
may be, it will be seen as "an unnecessary detour" or even "a
waste of time" if the higher-ups have not grasped its interest and significance.
It is up to the teachers to decide whether it will be appropriate to get involved
with their classes in projects and the types of projects they will be (short
or long, around concepts or topics, limited to one subject area or combining
various disciplines, etc.). Using their professional judgment, teachers will
also anticipate, for example, what links will be set up with what teaching subject(s)
and the official curricula, what tasks will be carried out individually or by
students in small groups and whether the project will bring classes into contact
with other classes, experts or the local communities.
A project's feasibility and educational relevance are two of the criteria that
will help to light the way for the teacher's decision. The latter brings a reminder
that class time is valuable, terminal objectives have to be met, locally approved
curriculum orientations have to be respected and that considering the time available,
objectives defined and directions decided on, all the students will have to
be able to engage in a relevant learning process. As for the feasibility criterion,
it comes more as an incentive to weigh the estimated time a project will need,
available resources (equipment, software, various documents, etc.), foreseeable
sources of support and student capabilities. It may appropriately be recalled
that this last factor should be seen as dynamic and not static: in a project
designed for learning, it is axiomatic that student capabilities will increase
as things go along.
When planning a project, the main activities to be dealt with, as suggested by recent and ongoing experiments, are as follows:
The idea for a project, or a project with a particular theme, may come from a number of sources and arise in widely varying contexts. Before making any commitment, the class will have to answer at least these two questions: What exactly is involved? What do we as a class want to do?
Whether
the initiative is taken by the teacher or a student or a group of students,
project-based learning together means that the whole class will very soon see
an occasion to discuss it. A project idea may also come up in a regular class
discussion - when, for example, the students show special interest in an issue
or problem. Whatever the hypothesis, student appropriation of the project is
a necessary condition for its success. Agreement on a written plan will be the
tangible sign of this appropriation.
In addition to a description of the chosen topic, the plan will contain learning
objectives
and assessment criteria.(3) The objectives will focus on the concepts, ideas and other
essential components encompassed by the topic or question, on the skills and
possibly the attitudes it will more specifically seek to develop and, ultimately,
on the outcomes or "products" through which the students will express
what they have learned. The criteria will make it possible to assess the outcomes
and compare them with the proficiency considered appropriate in the circumstances.
For students, the chance to imagine the collective achievement ahead is going
to stimulate their metacognitive skills - they will spontaneously begin making
plans, offering suggestions about the way to proceed, etc. Given that the computer
on a network for learning purposes in a school setting is a new tool, the plan
will also in many cases leave room for acquiring the needed skills for using
the available equipment and software effectively in learning. The GrassRoots
program, like other experiments, has shown that student shortcomings in this
respect require special attention.
The other parts of this guide, and especially Part II, contain many other indications
that can be useful in this phase of the project.
2. Locating the required resources
Any project-based approach will involve great concern about the resources students will be able to access. The use of computer networks lends this issue a new dimension that calls for very special attention.
In any project, the resources we can call upon are automatically numerous. However, they are not all equally relevant. And even among the relevant resources, choices have to be made that are often difficult. What the students and their teacher already know about the project topic or question and the skills of some students in making use of such sources as libraries, local organizations, businesses, public institutions and the Internet are the first factors to be taken into account. Next come the equipment and documents (written, visual, computerized, etc.) that are readily accessible in the classroom or the school. The plan discussed above will indicate, still in collaboration with the students, what resources will take precedence and what will be done to ensure that they will really be available or accessible. If required, an initiation period will be planned. It may also be necessary to plan to buy a software program, CD-ROM or some other document or obtain permission to go someplace or interview somebody.
3. Organizing the cooperative work
Project scheduling over time, the division of labour among the teacher, students and groups of students and the other aspects of work organization will be planned to reflect the project's learning objectives, but also the students' existing knowledge and interests.
Planning
a learning project means defining its topic, identifying its objectives and
the criteria to be used to gauge their proficiency level and plan the resources
needed to achieve it, and then shaping all these elements into a concrete work
plan. This organization will have to enable every student and group of students
to make a significant contribution and consolidate existing understandings and
skills as well as assimilate new ones (see Talbot, 1990, p. 113). In some cases,
"learning contracts" will shed useful light on these various points
for all concerned.
Several proven strategies exist for fostering interaction among students while
enabling each of them to make a contribution and develop various abilities.
One of them is what we generally call "cooperative learning". Another
is the method that asks students to delve thoroughly into one aspect of a topic
or question and then present the results to their group for discussion. We may
also consider a system where, in rotation, a representative of each group visits
another group to present his own group's project results. To be avoided is any
fragmentation of the work that stops a student from making the connection between
what he is doing and something bigger.
Organizing the work also presupposes that the class adopts some operating rules
that include ethics (recognizing everyone's work, mentioning sources, paying
attention to everyone's opinions, etc.). The more the students see these rules
as necessary for achieving the project objectives, the less time the teacher
will have to spend enforcing them. Spontaneous compliance with rules agreed
on by students will be one of the best signs of the interest the project is
arousing in the students and the effort they are putting in to see it through.
SECOND PHASE: PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
It
is during this phase that the project takes shape and comes alive. The class's
raw material then becomes information, in the broadest sense of that term. Sometimes
individually and sometimes in small groups, but always with a sense of collaborating
in a common goal with their teacher's support, the students are seeking, processing
and creating information. To this end they amass data, conduct experiments,
meet with resource persons, analyze, compare, weigh, measure, calculate, write,
draw, discuss and carry out a number of similar operations that reflect their
ages and the topic in question.
While all this brainstorming is going on, the teacher keeps one eye on their
adherence to the existing plan and with the other makes sure that student interaction
and collaboration are helping to build a community where the central concern
is learning. Accordingly, the teacher will promote frequent and open communication
among the students, pass around information about available documentation to
who is in charge of various tasks, invite the teams to regularly survey their
work progress, periodically go over the project with the whole class and use
this occasion to encourage, stimulate and, as needed, refocus.
This is unquestionably the phase where the computer is most used. The use and
possibly the production of online resources will add a value that would be very
hard to get by other means. Part V below lists a number of resources that can
enrich, accelerate and facilitate the work required during the activities described
in the following paragraphs.
To see this phase and the two key activities planned for the process as a whole
in their proper places, it will probably be useful here to refer to Figure 1
above.
4. Gradually
developing our thinking and documentation
Sticking to the plan agreed
on in the initial phase, the students learn by researching, processing and creating
information and apply themselves to giving the results of their learning tangible
form in a product or service. Thinking and documentation (in the broad sense
of the term) develop hand in hand.
Tapping
the potential of the networked computer in the classroom offers a host of advantages
-- for example, providing current data on a large number of topics and real
problems and facilitating cooperation among students within a class or with
other classes -- but poses a number of challenges as well. The young students'
search of the Internet for relevant and specific information may be accompanied
by frustrating glitches, even in cases where the preparation of these students
in computer skills is felt to be satisfactory. The quantity of problems connected
with computer use that students have to deal with, even in senior high school,
will be a concern for the teacher. What may be required will depend largely,
beyond the students' skills level, on the type of work going on and the software
or groupware that is available.
The engagement or, conversely, avoidance strategies students use is another
matter that will call for continuous watchfulness by the teacher. Even though
there are numerous experiments to show that computer use for learning purposes
heightens students' motivation (see Réginald Grégoire inc., Bracewell
and Laferrière, 1996, p. 9), it still remains that some students faced
with the inevitable problems that arise in projects will be tempted to settle
for token participation only. In such cases, teacher intervention may prove
necessary (see Meyer, Turner and Spencer, 1997). Here as with the problem of
computer skills, the same principle applies: students have to feel able to achieve
the identified objectives or else measures have to be taken to give them this
feeling. The coordination and supervision systems used and the kind of support
provided will vary with student skills and types of activities. They will foster
independence in students and student groups and place the emphasis on learning
in itself rather than perfecting products, though never minimizing the need
to always aim for quality products.
5. Coordinating
and blending contributions
Essentially, this activity
is one of synthesis. It also involves a lot of coordination. It is usually organized
around two elements: presenting the contributions of the small groups and, on
occasion, individual students to the entire class, and developing a collective
product by the class itself.(4)
The
various contributions will be prepared and presented in line with the plan agreed
on in the planning phase or altered in the meantime. Each presentation will
be followed by questions and comments as well as a discussion on what it adds
to the class's collective production. The teacher will especially highlight
the positive aspects while also mentioning things that could have been developed
further or done another way. In a relaxed atmosphere, this activity can also
lead to questioning about group work, responsibility, research techniques, the
distinction between true and false, the teacher's role, etc., as well as interesting
ideas for future projects.
Bringing together a final collective product may require some time. By the nature
of things, the teacher will be called on to intervene more directly with the
whole class during this activity than during the development of products within
small groups. On some aspects, however, the students may be called on to work
in groups again. This will probably be the case, for example, if the collective
product is a journal, audiotape or a series of graphics or else involves travel
outside the school (e.g. to a seniors' residence).
THIRD PHASE: RESULTS PROCESSING
Every
project takes place in a continuum. If it was undertaken, this was because it
made sense in the class's learning path and more specifically because it aroused
interest in the students and corresponded to learning objectives that were felt
to be desirable or, more probably, imperative. In the acquisition of knowledge,
skills and attitudes, then, it stood for a movement from one stage to another.
What will this next stage be? The answers to the following three questions should
make it possible to at least mark out its general drift:
-
What exactly did the completed project enable us to learn?
-
What could have been done differently or could be done differently in the future?
-
What could or should be done to follow up on this project?
In the following paragraphs, the "Project retrospective" activity
comes back to the first two questions and the "Project follow-up"
activity deals with the third.
6. Project
retrospective
The collective product reflects
the learning efforts completed. We now have to go back over everything to
make an assessment and integrate the conclusions in a larger whole.
This
retrospective, which the teacher will fine-tune to the students' ages and
the features of their project, could focus on its metacognitive, cognitive
and social aspects. There are several ways of doing this: whole-class or small-group
discussion, tests followed by comments on the results, games, applications
in a slightly different context, etc.
Going back over its metacognitive aspect will enable the class members to
ask themselves about their individual and collective involvement in the project.
Did they mechanically perform the tasks in the plan or were they looking for
answers to questions? In more difficult situations, did they use more than
one strategy? Overall, did they work with method? Did they regularly check
on their progress? Did they show perseverance? Did they make efforts to memorize
some of the information? On balance, what mental processes did they use and
which did they leave out?
The cognitive retrospective will lead to questions about what was learned
and how well it was assimilated. This could be organized around such questions
as: To what extent were the learning objectives achieved? During the project,
what links were made with earlier learning acquisitions? What questions remained
unanswered or were answered unsatisfactorily? Was this project an occasion
for learning in the area of language? History? Mathematics? Another subject
area? In these same subject areas, were gaps noted that interfered with the
project's development?
Finally, the social retrospective, which is very important in the project-based
approach, will open the way for discussion of certain values (attention to
others, responsibility, critical awareness, democratic attitude, etc.) and
suggest such questions as: What did we get out of working with others on the
same topic? What turned out to be the biggest problem? How could we make working
in groups more motivating?
Follow-ups or extensions can use the classroom framework but also have a wider scope. They can be explicitly educational or focus on matters where the educational outcomes are less obvious.
Would
the project results not be useful to other classes in the school or another
school? Could some of these results not be made available on the Internet?
Would it not be appropriate to invite the parents and possibly other people
(the school principal, people consulted on the project, etc.) to an exhibit
of the project results or a special presentation of these results prepared
especially for them? These are a few questions that come up infrequently in
regular schools but arise spontaneously in a project-based approach.
It may also be felt appropriate, following the project retrospective, to assign
a small group to round out the information on a particular aspect of the project
or do a classroom review of some basic learning that was not as fully understood
as one had thought. The project-based approach also leads to the discovery
that the content and logic of the curriculum do not always match up with classroom
imperatives!
The completed project will unquestionably have aroused a desire to embark
on other projects. The teacher will carefully collect any suggestions for
consideration at the proper time.
If the project has been one with a certain scope, people outside the class
will probably have been consulted or performed some service for a small group
or the whole class. Would it not be appropriate as a mini-project to thank
these people and tell them about the final outcome? It might also be a good
idea to make the principal's office or other authorities aware of any suggestions
about what could be done to facilitate the planning and implementation of
learning projects in the future.
Towards a collective intelligence ...
A
project will be all the more successful if the students' participation and
their contribution to the topic or the understanding of a question or problem
have had impacts on the class as a whole. This will occur if, for example,
the "artifacts" or products of a small group of students have attracted
the interest of other students and enabled them to expand or refine their
own learning processes. A class demonstrates that it is becoming a learning
community when students manage to converse on various topics, questions, issues
and problems using the appropriate concepts, express fresh ideas and discuss
the meaning of ideas and principles. The class's collective knowledge is revealed
through the analogies used, the conceptual networks established in pooling
sessions, the scenarios proposed and the narratives or stories (5)
developed by the class around a given topic. Coming back to the basic concepts
described in Part III, these demonstrations of what the students have learned
are in fact signs of meanings or interpretations the students have come to
share concerning a given learning objective - in fact, shared meanings. Less
tangible but no less persuasive as evidence of the existence of a class learning
community are the mental capacity and collaborative habits that students will
develop. On this subject, the comment by philosopher Pierre Lévy (1997,
p. 201) is inspiring: "The ideal mobilizer for the computer world is
no longer artificial intelligence (making a machine as intelligent if not
more intelligent than a man), but collective intelligence, namely the optimal
use and synergism of skills, imaginations and intellectual energies, whatever
their qualitative diversity and wherever they may be."
(3)
These criteria are the ones the teacher will use for individual student evaluations
as the project is going on and at the end of the second process phase.
(4) Remember that this product can assume many forms including, as with some
of the I*EARN network's projects, an actual service (see above,
III, 2).
(5) The work of Roger Schank (1990), a key figure in artificial
intelligence, highlights the importance of narration as a mode of understanding.
As it is not easy to recall abstract ideas by making stories, one can better
remember and bring past experience to life. For Schank, it is the main way
through which we acquire and access knowledge.