VI. Chapter 5: How Do You Design a Problem-based Learning Curriculum?

a. As we design PBL experiences, we must be aware of our three essential elements—context, students, and curriculum—and the interrelationship among them that contributes to coherent, holistic learning experiences.

b. It’s important to not miss the relationships and connections that provide coherence and relevance for our students who must engage with the learning experience.

c. As such, we begin with the problematic situation—a fully integrate whole—and tease out the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and standards-based learning opportunities that the authentic context of the problem exposes.

d. PBL experiences expose rich content and skills and place students in situations where they can interact with both the people and products authentic to that situation. Students go beyond knowing to understanding as they move across contexts and situations, adapting, coping and thinking deeply.

e. Before designing a PBL experience, we need to develop a set of priorities for our teaching. By explicityly exposing what we already know about the essential elements of context, students and curriculum, we are better able to blend and balance their contribution to each element of the design of PBL curriculum as it begins to meld into implementation.

f. Increasingly, teachers are challenged to provide sufficient coverage, while experts call for covering the curriculum in more depth (e.g. tip of the iceberg learning while going to the core of the iceberg). One way to deal with this is to shift the perspective and play with ideas.

g.

h. With messy, ill-structured problems, any solution that students propose is going to be controversial to one person or another. That just part of problem solving.

i. Problems surround students with issues, concerns, and puzzles—luring them inside the situation and propelling them toward action that’s grounded in a true desire to learn and apply essential knowledge and skills to serve the needs of their problem.

j. In planning a PBL journey, it is important to have an overall sense of knowing where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and what you’ll need to do once you’ve arrived. The activities of planning a problem-based learning adventure are so interrelated that they evolve together:

i. Identify learning outcomes and connections to learning standards.

ii. Decide on a problematic situation and students’ roles in that situation.

iii. Figure out how students will meet the problem.

iv. Develop the anticipated problem statement

v. Describe the performance of understanding.

vi. Gather information.

k. Two important planning activities that help frame the students’ learning adventure:

i. Identify the learning outcomes that the problem exposes. This can be done by extending a map of possibility into a curriculum map.

1. By examining concepts, skills, and processes exposed through mapping, teachers make explicit connections to curriculum by adding to their maps direct curricular references at the perimeter.

2. Curricular references could include:

a. Formulating questions and seeking answers through the observation and intepretation of phenomena.

b. Solving problem and thinking critically in all areas of learning by analyzing, evaluating and interpreting.

c. Problem-solving techniques.

d. Demonstrating skill in comparison and critique writing

e. Gathering data using survey and interview techniques.

f. Judge the value and relevance of information (data) in presenting conclusions.

ii. Describe the performance of understanding in which learners will engage as an authentic companion to their investigation.

1. What meaningful performance assessment will allow students to interact with the problem’s real stakeholders and show that students have learned in an integrated and authentic way?

2. Teachers are encouraged to think carefully about the problem and select an assessment that is authentic to the situation. This decision is not something that we can determine until we are clear about the role that students will take on as they immerse themselves in the problem.

l. Knowing how you’re going to get there.

i. Before developing a more detailed and learning template, you must carry out the following tasks:

1. Decide on a problematic situation and students’ roles in that situation

a. Our challenge is to select a role in which the students will gain a full understanding of the problem and its complexity.

b. We want them to consider the central issue and not simply address the concerns of one set of stakeholders.

c. We also want them to step into a role that will interest them and provide them with a sense of empowerment in the situation.

d. Ask yourself, “What if the central issue is....and the role is…and the final performance would logically be to…?”

e. Map out different possibilities for the role and situation—highlighting, adding, and deleting concepts according to the demands of the role and situation with which you are working.

f. Roles situated within the problem scenario enable students and teachers alike to step outside the constraints of familiar roles and become coinvestigators in the problem inquiry.

g. Roles personalize learning and give students ownership of the problem.

2. Figure out how students will meet the problem

a. Mission Impossible: short audiotape that self-destructs in 10 seconds.

b. A first-rate introduction to a problem gives learners a sense of their stake and role in the problem and just enough information to launch their inquiry.

c. Too much information may kill the desire to know more; too little can shut down the learners’ attempts to get started.

3. Develop the anticipated problem statement

a. Successful problem statements have two parts:

i. A statement of the central issue of the problem

ii. The identification of conditions that will signal an acceptable solution.

b. Use the following guide or heuristic to frame our problem statements: “How can we [state the issue]…so that [state the conditions]?

c. This anticipated problem statement is a tool for the teacher. Students must define the real problem for themselves.

d. Given the open-ended opportunity, students often identify issues and conditions that never occurred to the teacher.

4. Gather relevant information.

a. Students should only be given basic information on the problem and the larger questions to be resolved.

b. Once students identify what the root problem is and what they need to know, they will gather the necessary information from multiple sources.

ii. Knowing What You’ll Need to Do Once You’ve Arrived

1. Learners want to know that their efforts will have consequences. If they believe that someone will think about and value their work, they are more likely to undertake that work with enthusiasm and rigor.

2. Designing a performance assessment where students face real stakeholders or present information to them raises the stakes considerably.

3. Staging the performance so that it mirrors how actual stakeholders might interact adds another measure of relevance.