Talk:Problem Based Curriculum Development - A Case Study

Comments from Jianwei -- Jianwei Zhang 11:15, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

Hi Bob,

If you believe that Word is be better tool to present your work, it will be fine with me.

Re. your case study: I'm very impressed by this project, particularly your rationale and design ideas, as well as the specific processes of the classroom inquiry. This is a strong case study! Here are several issues/suggestions for you to consider:

1) I think many teachers who are really interested in your project --like me--would have a feeling of hoping to be present at the scene and seeing what's really going on in the classroom. Can you help them meet this need by providing some photos of the devices or other artifacts (e.g., student work)? Of course it would be even wonderful if you have video clips.

2) Have you developed any rubrics for the assessment activities you mentioned (e.g., Review of each groups robotic design)

3) Unit 1 is currently named "Research." You may want to change it to "Preliminary/Early Research" as the whole project is all about research.

4) I suggest that you should put the "Project Title" to your first page as the true title; and "Lesson Name" of a unit under the title of that unit so that you don't need to repeat/include them in the text.

5) Put "Unit Timeline" of each unit right after the unit title. You may also want to clearly use the word "unit" in the list so that readers know you're providing an index/navigation structure. Unit 1. Research - Learn simple machines with presentation and assessments integrating small group collaboration (5 classes)

Unit 2. Problem development – students design a real world problem – small group collaboration (3 classes)

Unit 3. Design of a problem resolution – w/presentations (5 classes)

... 4. Construction of the design (5 classes)

... 5. Testing and analysis of the completed device (5 classes)

6) As you may already know, a leading research group in this area is http://llk.media.mit.edu/

I pasted an intro paragraph in your wiki-page so that people will know the importance/focus of this case study before they open the word file. See if this is what you want: ttp://tccl.rit.albany.edu/knilt/index.php/Problem_Based_Curriculum_Development_-_A_Case_Study

Again, a marvelous case study!

Jianwei