The purpose of our design project is to create a collaborative workspace for educators to create, share, and work in partnership to construct unit and lesson plans. This collaborative site will promote creativity, critical thinking and dialogue, allowing educators with differing levels of experience and curricular expertise to connect globally. “Collaboration allows meaning to emerge collectively and is a vital skill for survival in today’s fast-paced, complex world. (Vallance, 2010) The project proposal is designed to improve teacher self-efficacy in a challenging educational system in developing a learning community leading to improved student achievement in a meaningful learning environment.
The focus of the design will be to construct a framework for teachers to build project based lessons based on the constructivist conceptions of learning. According to constructivist theories, “knowledge is individually constructed and socially constructed by learners based on their interpretations of experiences in the world. Since knowledge cannot be transmitted, instruction should consist of experiences that facilitate knowledge of construction.” (Jonassen, 1999) Therefore, the design will incorporate a framework for creating lessons based on the CLE model with a focus on a problem, question or project. Educators can share, cooperatively build or modify lessons in this space developing the skills involved in designing project based learning lessons while molding their own 21 Century educational skills.
As pedagogy shifts to inquiry learning practices, our project design is based on constructivist theories that incorporate the ideas that: (Brooks, 1999)
* teachers seek and value their students’ points of view
* classroom activities challenge students’ suppositions
* teachers pose problems of emerging relevance
* teachers build lessons around primary concepts and “big ideas”
* deep understanding occurs when the presence of new information prompts the emergence or enhancement of cognitive structures that enable us to rethink our prior ideas
The collaborative design project will provide a framework for lesson construction based on 3 pillars of Project based learning:
1) Understand the Project/problem
– Introduce the project/problem
– Find out what you know or need to know
2) Explore
– gather information
– share information
– generate possible solutions
3) Resolve the Problem
– determine best fit solution
– present the project or solution
– debrief. assess problem/project
(1993-2011 Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy)
RESOURCES:
Brooks, J.G. & M. G. Brooks. (1999). In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, (1993-2011) http://pbln.imsa.edu/, visited, Feb.3, 2014.
Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models: Volume II. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Vallance, Michael, Phillip A. Towndrow & Charles Wiz. (2010). Conditions for Successful Online Document Collaboration. TechTrends, Jan/Feb, 54,1.