Integrating (Technology-Infused)
Project-Based Inquiry Initiatives
into a Middle-Grades Science
Curriculum: Essentials and
Challenges
OR
From (Technology-Infused)
Project-Based Units to (T-I)
Project-Based Curriculum:
Challenges and Opportunities
6/21/2016
Project-Based Inquiry Learning
• Investigation in the context of a personallyengaging real-world challenge
• Early activities generate issues for investigation
• Students design investigations and report
results, multiple resources used
• Results are applied to addressing the challenge
• Public exhibits of solutions, methodologies, what
they have learned
• Investigation and application are often repeated
until a good solution is achieved
• Assessments are built in
• Focus on processes involved in getting to
solutions, not simply on solutions themselves
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Project challenges
– Explain an interesting phenomenon
• El Nino, finches dying off
– Solve a problem
• Helping students avoid catching each
others’ colds
– Debate an important policy issue
• Global warming
– Achieve a design challenge
• Manage erosion in the schoolyard, design a
vehicle
– Build a scientific model
• Ecology of a river
– Answer a “big question”
6/21/2016
• How old is the universe?
Learning Objectives
• Deep learning of content
• Learning of science, project,
collaboration, and communication
skills and practices
• Learning for transfer -- can use
what’s learned outside the classroom
to explain, predict, solve problems,
analyze the ideas of others, ...
6/21/2016
Infusing Project-Based Learning
with Technology
• Principle: Use hardware and
software to make the goals of
project-based learning more
achievable
– To overcome learning difficulties
– To enhance activity structures and
overcome classroom management,
time, and other pragmatic difficulties
– To enhance access to phenomena
6/21/2016
Technology examples
• WorldWatcher for visualizing climate
patterns
• BeGuile for access to population data
• Project Portfolio for keeping project
records and putting together reports
• Model-It for system modeling
• SMILE scaffolds experiment design,
writing up project experiences, and
articulation of lessons learned
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Accomplishments
• Lots of standards-based units
• Lots of software -- in support of recordkeeping, collaboration with each other and with
scientists, model-building and simulation,
designing experiments, presentation, articulation
of what’s been learned, investigation in particular
domains
• Principles of practice -- for promoting student
6/21/2016
engagement, for facilitation, for promoting
student reflection, for promoting teacher learning,
for infusing software, for promoting reading with
understanding, for maintaining individual
accountability, ...
Results
• Students engage better and deeper;
fewer discipline problems
• Learning of content is as good or
better than comparisons (and more
evenly distributed)
• Learning of science, project,
collaboration, and communication
skills and practices is really exciting
6/21/2016
From disparate units to 3 years of
curriculum: Opportunities
• Easier to create and maintain a
culture of knowledge building,
inquiry, collaboration, and rigor
• Easier to integrate the sciences
• Easier to draw connections between
methodologies used by different
scientific disciplines
• Can sequence developmentally
6/21/2016
From disparate units to 3 years of
curriculum: Challenges
• Providing coverage -- depth vs. breadth
• Addressing local needs while addressing
national standards
• Energy
• Diversity of software
• Connecting the sciences
• Building skills across scientific disciplines
• Sequencing
• Task structures that work for different
types of challenges and investigative
methodologies
• Helping teachers assess
6/21/2016
Format
• Four speakers will each address a
set of these issues -- 10 minutes
each
• Discussant -- Michael Young, U.
Conn. -- will challenge us to think
more deeply and moderate a panel
discussion -- 20 minutes
• Questions from the audience
6/21/2016
Four talks
6/21/2016
• Joe Krajcik, Michigan -- tensions inherent
in systemic use of projects in a reform
curriculum -- social and systemic
• Paul Camp, GA Tech -- building skills
across disciplines and their varying
methodologies -- cognitive
• Danny Edelson, Northwestern -- getting to
task structures that will work across units
-- socio-cognitive and pragmatic
• Bob Sherwood, Vanderbilt -- navigating
the commercial markets -- pragmatics