Constructivism Module

Do you want to learn about organic compounds? I didn’t think so. The students all feel the same way…they dread the biochemistry topic every year, but the concepts are repeated throughout the living environment course and are essential stepping-stones to the concepts that follow. Each year, the students that study - get it, and those that don’t, don’t get it. How do I get them all to know the organic compounds? Well, this year I tried something different. “Make a project on the organic compounds” I tell them…”it will be due in two weeks”. A student raises her hand…”but I don’t understand what to do”. “Do anything you want”, I said, “just make sure you include information about the organic compounds, make it fun, interesting, use technology, something you know how to use, something maybe you don’t know how to use, challenge yourself, have fun.” I hope that I’m promoting an open-learning environment. I hope that its not too open. I hope with open-ended learning goals and open-ended methods through which the goals could be pursued I get a product that shows they learned. I hope the process for them is enjoyable so they want to learn like this in the future. So, I provided a webpage on my website with suggestions for those that needed a push. I provided the webtools and links that I have learned in T.E.A.M. but I didn’t teach them. I just made it accessible, made suggestions that were easy, and they took them! I can’t believe it. When I ask them to listen and learn, they don’t, but when I expect them to learn and let them take care of it on their own, they we able to chose their own method of learning and produce evidence of their learning. The students filled out a web-form for me about their project idea. In this way, I could monitor their progress and offer assistance when they needed it. Tomorrow the students will bring in their projects but I already started receiving them last week. I’m impressed; the students took the information from the textbook, and the notes from class and made projects. A movie: Justin the Science Guy, a slideshow made on rockyou!, flashcards made on study stack, game shows, songs, and more. Some worked in groups, others worked independently, and then some even worked independently and then collaborated in groups. And they constructed this all on their own. Constructivism? Of course, with a class of 28, you will get some lazy students who want the information to be provided to them. However, I believe observational learning can be really powerful in these situations. All students will view the projects of others and some of the projects require student participation. In this way, all students are being exposed to the information. All students will benefit, since it is likely that the information is being presented in various ways because of different student perspectives. I believe through observational learning, the ripple effect or the “contagious” spreading of behaviors through imitation will occur, and students that sold themselves short of the learning process in this project, may accept the challenge for future projects. I believe peer models are especially effective and the social collaboration is a good motivation for the lazy students. In my opinon, I think this is all practice for later more important topics in my classroom. Should stem cell research be permitted? Are we the cause of global warming? How can we educate the community about going Green? Personally, if I can get the class excited about the organic compounds using this approach, then those should be a piece of cake, right? I’ll attach two sample projects from students in my class. Tomorrow and the rest of the week I will receive the rest and I’ll be able to post them on my website for the other students to use as a review.