What is effective collaboration? 2.2

A short description of what real collaboration is

A very detailed document about collaboration here 

And my personal experience in collaboration of students in my classes... It was difficult for me to answer the "yes or no" questionnaire. Because all my answers were: "it depends..." or "sometimes"

Are your students required to work in pairs or groups in most lessons?
Not always. It depends on the lesson. Do your students have shared responsibility for tasks?
Not always. I know that they should. The more I learn about pbl the better I organize the teams. Do your students have to make substantive decisions when working together (decisions that will impact the result of their joint work)?
Usually yes. That's the core element of collaboration, isn't it?  Is the students' work interdependent of each other (in other words can they only succeed together)?
It should be. But happens when one students doesn't work? The rest want that their team succeeds, so they take over his work. Is it right? Should I leave the team fail because of one student? 


Today I've learned two new words in english: substantive= ουσιαστικός
interdependent= αλληλοεξαρτώμενος

feedback received

Today I received feedback for my driving question from Doriana Palumbo and I'm posting it here because I really like the way she explains her point of views, it's a constructive review and I take her reflections into account.
I'm adding my response to her comments, as if we were discussing and I wish we could.

Firstly, I totally agree with you when you say that is not easy to implement PBL, but I strongly believe in its positive outcomes, in terms of learning motivation, deeper learning process and improvement of students ' skills and competencies.

Nothing worthy is easy for sure, that's why I've kept trying to improve myself during the last 3 years that  I started experimenting with pbl. It's a pity that neither the school infrastructure, nor colleagues or timetable supports us so far and that's when it becomes even more difficult. 

Secondly, you have consciously applied PBL components to your course design, but I think that you should plan better the following parts :

- data collection : can they only search information from their parents ' practices? Why not providing them also with further data sources, like local authorities or producers? They could get inspired by different agricultural practices.

I thought that we were not supposed to give many details on the plan. What you suggest is what I had in mind. Students cannot have an overview of the topic else how. 

- driving question : does your driving question involve any challenging tasks? I teach German so I don't know what goal you think they should  achieve..  maybe pollution produced by animals? You should get to the point with your driving question, because I think it's important for them to know what to focus on. For example, imagining you are an inspector and you have to prove the sustainability of our local agriculture,  what kind of analysis would you make? Which adjustment would be necessary? 

The whole teaching subject that lasts a school year includes many different points to focus, so there could be different tasks, and different driving questions related to the basic big idea. I love your proposal.

- student driven learning : in my opinion,  this is the hardest part to accomplish. I would say to let them decide if farmers are able or not to improve the soil and respect the environment. We are used to foresee everything,  but I think we sometimes understate their skills. Let them come up with a solution on their own. 

That's my usual practice. And I'm always amazed of what they can imagine. 

Thank you Doriana!

Essential Project Design Elements

Shared by Andrea Ullrich
Interesting reading and food for thought

It’s encouraging that Project Based Learning is becoming popular, but popularity can bring problems. Here at the Buck Institute for Education, we’re concerned that the recent upsurge of interest in PBL will lead to wide variation in the quality of project design and classroom implementation.
If done well, PBL yields great results. But if PBL is not done well, two problems are likely to arise. First, we will see a lot of assignments and activities that are labeled as “projects” but which are not rigorous PBL, and student learning will suffer. Or, we will see projects backfire on underprepared teachers and result in wasted time, frustration, and failure to understand the possibilities of PBL. Then PBL runs the risk of becoming another one of yesterday’s educational fads – vaguely remembered and rarely practiced.
Continue reading the article here...

refining the question

After conceiving my BIG idea (!) for a project based learning activity on
"How is agriculture in our area influencing our environment"
changing it into "What is the impact of agriculture in our environment"
not being satisfied with it
and brainstorming with myself
I came up to other options and I'm kindly asking you to vote for the one you like best

Thank you in advance for your contribution!

peer review

One of the highlights of this course, is the peer review, for sure.
My personal feeling about it?
I was anticipating to see how teachers from different schools, different cultures, see my project idea.
I want to thank Theodosis Theodosiou and Vasiliki Archondi who reviewed my 1.3 exercise.

But mostly, I enjoyed reading about the ideas of my course-mates!. It's a trip into some other person's mind, isn't it?
It's very difficult to review a project idea of another teacher, especially when he/she comes from a different country, from a different school level, teaching different subjects. I was more or less afraid to write my review, because maybe I was seeing things from a different perspective. It's the foreign language  too that doesn't help in explaining.

To review we must reflect on what we have  learned so far, so there is deeper learning while reviewing but I'd love to collaborate with some other teachers to build the final product together. It's not easy in a Mooc, I know and as Benjamin Hertz mentioned in one of the fb group posts: what this course is missing is a more structured and committed form of collaboration, especially if it would attempt to replicate a PBL process for the learners. The cooperation that you are engaging in is very much up to everyone themselves and it is in fact not collaboration but cooperation (the difference between collaboration and cooperation will be explored in Module 2). A more structured collaboration is very difficult to implement in a MOOC, simply because there are so many learners. We are working on a technical solution that will hopefully help us to address this as we would love to have some real group work happening on our courses. So keep an eye out for it in the future!
I keep an eye out for it in the future!!!

the resources issue

Thank you Arjana for the "It's a project-based word" resources!
(That's the great importance of getting connected)

• How Project-Based Learning Prepares Youth for Freelance Nation
• Project-Based Learning Models the Work World
• What’s Next? Personalized, Project-Based Learning
• Building Better Teams for Project-Based Work
• How to Avoid the Free Rider Problem in Teams
• How Project-Based Learning Fosters Community Change
• 5 PBL Power Examples: Muppets, Makers and More
• Reflection versus Critique in a PBL Classroom
• 10 Teacher Moves to Build Support in a PBL Classroom
• 3 Tips for Planning Authentic PBL Projects
• 4 Ways to Promote Growth Mindset in Project-Based Learning
• Welcome to a Project-Based World (A 5 Minute Commencement Speech)
• 17 Teacher Tech Tools for High Quality Project-Based Learning

Interesting speech!

my PBL Design: Formulating my driving question m1-1.6

class?

topic?

driving question?

This question should be the guiding principle for the entire PBL process that you will go through with your students"

That's how I have imagined my next pbl course

we will focus on our area

Will it work?

I can imagine students gathering local information on the topic and making some 

infographic? presentation? flyer? to inform farmers of our area 

The driving question seems: 

open-ended: since there are specific agricultural activities in our area (greenhouses mainly), different aspects of the environment are influenced and the final product can be different for each team

engaging and inspiring students by creating curiosity: because it is related to their own area and the activities of most of their parents

be aligned to your learning goals: because it's clearly curriculum based

and at the same time being non-Googleable: because students will need local data 

(Update 11th of June - brainstorming)

On a second (and third and forth) thought, I think that it's not a very good driving question.

Maybe the "What should we say to the farmers of our area about the environment?" is better...

or What does the soil want to say to our farmers?

What does the micro-world think about our farmers?

What would be the verdict in a trial between farmers and environment?

I guess that the smaller the project, the easiest to find a good driving question.

components of good pbl 1.4

Here they are! My creative concept!

which of the 5 components I feel will be the most challenging for me to realize and why?

• effective collaboration? 
• I can handle it.
• is it assessment because your curriculum requires very regular and rigid summative assessments that you are worried will get in the way of PBL? 
• No, I can handle it, although it's time consuming. 
• Or maybe you are more concerned about the passivity of your students in lessons and getting them to take the initiative? 
• Hmmmm....the passivity that will be connected with a wrong driving question, yes. But I'm mostly concerned about the right connection with a real world problem, and how I will combine it with my teaching subjects. It seems that not all subjects are ideal for pbl. If I could collaborate with other teachers and subjects, I think it would have been easier. Anyway.... since every year I teach different subjects, I must use my summer for reflecting, planning, getting organized. 

the driving question 1.5

From a draft to an info-graphic! 

Last night, while I was watching the video concerning the driving question

I was taking notes, handwritten notes, to visualize what I was listening to.

Later on, reflecting on what I had drafted, I decided to make an infographic.

and that was the best way to remember how to form a driving question.

Isn't that what we expect from students in a pbl approach? 

Learning by doing, being inspired and engaged!

(update of 11th of June)

I'm adding this great resource on driving question, mentioned by Olga Passlidou, originating from this webpage. There is a lot to study there! Thanks Olga for sharing!

Now I think that I must reconsider my initial choice on the driving question of my project idea!

Reflections on my current teaching practice m1-1.3

1.3 task is not just a course task that has to be completed, but Interesting questions that I was reflecting on, even while cooking!

What teaching strategy do you use most commonly? 
Depending on the  teaching subject, a mixture of traditional and project based strategy.

What do YOU do most of the time in the classroom? 
explaining...

What do the students do most of the time? 
During my theoretical courses, they are mainly listening, taking notes.
But actually, they are talking to each other, getting distracted when they are not engaged in the learning process.

Do you feel your current approach could be easily complemented with a PBL approach? 
Easily? No. But it would be more effective, for sure.

Do you sometimes have the problem that students don't remember what they "learned" the day before? 
Yes!...
How do you address this? 
repeating and repeating and repeating.....

Do you already use some of the PBL approaches mentioned in the video? 
My most successful etwinning projects where fully integrated into my teaching subjects and the lessons were following project based learning approach.
Odysseus - research project on Human Rights
Planning our sustainable town - research project on sustainability
Two islands inspire - research project and landscape design
In fact, etwinning has played a major role in the change of my teaching.

What works, doesn't work? Why? 
In the end of each pbl attempt I make an evaluation of my planning, of my implementation, of students' engagement and learning. I'm not satisfied with the result and I try to spot my mistakes. That's why I'm following this course. I like this pedagogic method and I want to improve myself as a facilitator of knowledge.
The fact is that there is no magic recipe to follow. There are some directives that the educator must know and use flexibly, depending on the students of each class.
What keeps impressing me is that later, students remember details of those lessons that I wasn't expecting them to remember. Learning by doing, right?
I've faced problems on late planning, on the way to form teams, on forming the right driving question, on the use of technology and the available resources, on the students' evaluation. Each case was different and I had to adapt to different situations. It made me be more careful with planning and improved my organization skills for sure.
I feel that I'm an amateur. Sometimes things went wrong because I didn't know how to be flexible.
BUT, no matter how many difficulties I have faced during my attempts for pbl, I don't regret. I remember each of these  attempts with joy and I keep the enthusiasm, my own enthusiasm that most of the times was/is being transmitted to my students. 

How do you find out about your student needs and how do you incorporate this knowledge in your teaching? 
It's a major issue! In the beginning, I was deciding the course where I would use pbl, on my own. Then I realized that it was a mistake. If I had the consent of my students they would engage more, so I started asking them, in the beginning of the school year, about how they would like to learn the specific subject. Then we brainstorm on the final product. I have to admit that I'm trying to influence them, in favor of my choice!...
I ask them to fill a questionnaire too, to identify their strong and weak points, so that I adapt my techniques and the teams.

A class and a subject topic that I teach which I can use to experiment with PBL.
This is the perfect timing for me, to reflect on this. The curriculum is being changed again and next school year I'm about to teach "environment and agriculture" in my B class of the department of agriculture, ages 16. I want to find a way to follow a pbl approach and I believe that this teaching subject helps. Time to experiment again! 


(It ends up quite a pleasure to keep this diary!)