Leadership and PBL...
The readings we have had regarding project based learning (PBL), have been eye opening for me. I am not formally an educator, nor am I in the K12 world where a lot of this seems to be going on. However, I do think it has applicability in higher education, particularly in professional master's programs.
In our School, we have a master's degree in library and information science. This is a practitioner focused degree and grants recipients a necessary credential for career development in information organizations. A long standing issue in our program has been the lack of applied assignments throughout the curriculum. While there are important theories that need to be introduced and understood at least at a basic level, this degree, again, is for practitioners. For the most part, student assessment occurs in very traditional ways - from multiple choice tests, to assigned papers of varying length.
This has been ongoing discussion for the last ten years when we hired a new Director. He has always expressed a strong interest in practical hands on assignments (that might not rise to the level of true PBL, but there is a point here). Two areas that have long stood out are technology integration and information storage and retrieval.
For example, we require our students to take a technology course. Even though the student can pick the technology class, most select the same basic technology survey course. The course had the bad luck to, over the years, be assigned any random bit of technology other instructors thought our students should know. So in addition to whatever the course instructor had decided was important to include, other instructors would complain - "My students can't do a screen shot. Teach that in the tech class". Over time, this resulted in several seemingly disparate, unconnected tech skills being included in the class.
One such assignment dealt with basic competency with office productivity software. These particular assignments are troubling to say the least. For example, one MS Word assignment was to follow the brochure wizard and create a brochure. For Excel, students had to type in a budget that was provided. Neither of these would be considered PBL or deep learning.
At one point, the Director hired me as a PTI for the course and with his permission, I did attempt to broaden the scope in this specific assignment. As the office productivity assignments were part of our assessment program, I could not remove them. However, I did switch the office productivity software from MS Office to Google Docs. I did this specifically so I could include collaboration which I felt was an important skill to include. Second, though artificial, I created a framework of an assignment to incorporate the different software packages. Students were put into groups. Each group had to 'be' a library facing a particular issue. They would use Google Docs to come up with a professional document outlining who they were and what the issue was. They used Google Forms (spreadsheets) to survey their 'users' (the class members not in their group). And last they used Google Presentations to present to their board of directors a summary of the issue, collected data, and recommendations for addressing the issue. This still does not qualify as PBL or deeper learning.
The point of that long story is to say that the small changes to that assignment happened, ultimately, at the instructor level. Our Director has little to no control over specific assignments or assessment points. While he has consistently championed more practical application, people, are slow to change. Also hindering change is the fact that our faculty, are not students of pedagogy. They are experts in their respective fields of information science or technology, but not experts in teaching per se. Many, I suspect, default to teaching methods they experienced when they were in graduate school. They aren't reading about Envision schools, they aren't reading about PBL. Instead they are reading about information search behavior, or latest issues dealing with Internet security systems. Our Director has tried to create an environment conducive to PBL-type assignments with little to no success. At this point, I'm am unsure what he can do in this particular environment to see real results.
In our School, we have a master's degree in library and information science. This is a practitioner focused degree and grants recipients a necessary credential for career development in information organizations. A long standing issue in our program has been the lack of applied assignments throughout the curriculum. While there are important theories that need to be introduced and understood at least at a basic level, this degree, again, is for practitioners. For the most part, student assessment occurs in very traditional ways - from multiple choice tests, to assigned papers of varying length.This has been ongoing discussion for the last ten years when we hired a new Director. He has always expressed a strong interest in practical hands on assignments (that might not rise to the level of true PBL, but there is a point here). Two areas that have long stood out are technology integration and information storage and retrieval.
For example, we require our students to take a technology course. Even though the student can pick the technology class, most select the same basic technology survey course. The course had the bad luck to, over the years, be assigned any random bit of technology other instructors thought our students should know. So in addition to whatever the course instructor had decided was important to include, other instructors would complain - "My students can't do a screen shot. Teach that in the tech class". Over time, this resulted in several seemingly disparate, unconnected tech skills being included in the class.
At one point, the Director hired me as a PTI for the course and with his permission, I did attempt to broaden the scope in this specific assignment. As the office productivity assignments were part of our assessment program, I could not remove them. However, I did switch the office productivity software from MS Office to Google Docs. I did this specifically so I could include collaboration which I felt was an important skill to include. Second, though artificial, I created a framework of an assignment to incorporate the different software packages. Students were put into groups. Each group had to 'be' a library facing a particular issue. They would use Google Docs to come up with a professional document outlining who they were and what the issue was. They used Google Forms (spreadsheets) to survey their 'users' (the class members not in their group). And last they used Google Presentations to present to their board of directors a summary of the issue, collected data, and recommendations for addressing the issue. This still does not qualify as PBL or deeper learning.
The point of that long story is to say that the small changes to that assignment happened, ultimately, at the instructor level. Our Director has little to no control over specific assignments or assessment points. While he has consistently championed more practical application, people, are slow to change. Also hindering change is the fact that our faculty, are not students of pedagogy. They are experts in their respective fields of information science or technology, but not experts in teaching per se. Many, I suspect, default to teaching methods they experienced when they were in graduate school. They aren't reading about Envision schools, they aren't reading about PBL. Instead they are reading about information search behavior, or latest issues dealing with Internet security systems. Our Director has tried to create an environment conducive to PBL-type assignments with little to no success. At this point, I'm am unsure what he can do in this particular environment to see real results.
I think the idea of PBL strikes a lot of people as being a great thing, but in practice it is harder to accomplish for many. It seems your director could be one that has experienced this dilemma. A previous principal of mine loved PBL, but strongly discouraged it when in practice because there were too many variables in the education of students. He liked the rows and aisles much better because it was cleaner to "manage".
ReplyDeleteThose catch all tech courses often become a disjointed series of software training days.
ReplyDeleteI think you started towards a good PBL opportunity with the simulation of the groups being a library. In order to make the experience more "real" and pertinent, is there a particular problem or improvement within the UK library system that the students could address while applying the newly learned software skills? Then they could present their research and solution to someone higher in the food chain at the library?