Problem Based Learning Environments

Koschman’s work at Southern Illinois University was very interesting. Koschman shares that many thought that the PBL model was “already ideal” and didn’t need enhancement by technology. These articles were written in the 1990’s, but professionals still have a distrust of technology.

Two things struck me from the Southern Illinois University project. The first was that technology seemed to enhance the students’ experience with PBL. The second was that this group was ahead of the time. The learning lab, the case videos and chat features seem obvious solutions now, but they were new at that time.

The Hung, Harpole Bailey, and Jonassen article brought back a lot of positive learning experiences for me. I have an undergraduate degree in Political Science. I started school thinking I’d be a history major. I realized quickly that history in college was the memorization of facts. Political Science classes at my college instead used a “depth” instead of “breath” approach.

It has been over a decade since I completed those courses. I feel even more strongly that this is the best way for students to learn. I would argue that being able to access accurate information is more important now than being able to memorize it.

It is my opinion that students’ ability to evaluate, analyze and incorporate factual knowledge into solving problems is true education. I will ungracefully climb off my soapbox now.

Cooperative Learning

The three articles this week pointed to a plethora of research on cooperative learning. Each of the authors agreed that cooperative learning was beneficial. Johnson, Johnson and Smith even provided several quotes and examples of cooperative learning accomplishments.

With all this positive support it is interesting to me that each of the authors felt it was necessary to make recommendations on cooperative learning. It seems as if the authors go out of their way to convince the reader that this can really work!

So do we are educators and learners need convincing that this will work? I think we do. It is hard to break through what Johnson, Johnson and Smith called the “myth of individual genius”.

I still remember clearly in sixth grade when a long-term substitute teacher put us in groups of four. We thought of this as cheating and actively fought the process. This patient expert walked us through many of the steps the authors recommended in these articles.

I’d like to hope that we don’t need the “structure, structure, structure” that Millis calls for. I like to think that we are moving away from an individual society to a more collaborative society.

I think the authors point out some wonderful examples of groups that have effectively used collaborative learning. These vary from agriculture, engineering and the military. I think the keys to using cooperative learning are; teacher feedback and helping students identify the collective goal.

I still work on using this model in my own life. I was surprised how much I identified with some of the problems between groups the authors illustrated. It is easy to see how teachers and students give up on this model. However, I agree that is might just be worth all that effort.