Consider this: You have a beautifully landscaped garden on your campus, replete with the flowers and shrubs mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. The Shakespeare Garden is separated from the school building by a narrow wedge of land, and your custodians would like you to turn this triangle into yet another garden. You agree, but want the new garden to complement the existing one. To whom do you turn for design proposals? Landscape architects? Professional gardeners?
You might turn to students. That's what happened at Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Ill. Students developed their proposal for the garden, called the Poet's Corner, using the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) process introduced to them in the Problem-Based Communications and Technology (Comm-Tech) course.
Following the PBL process requires students to fully explore and define a problem before they propose a solution. Most students "jump to the solution," said Ellen Jo Ljung, who teaches the Comm-Tech course. "So a great deal of effort goes into problem definition." Creating a "Know, Need-to-Know" chart for every problem they encounter forces students to consider many variables, Ljung explained. And only when students "feel they have a handle on the problem" do they develop a working problem statement, she said.
Next, students create a "Project Action Plan" that helps guide them in gathering information. (When students researched solutions for the Poet's Corner, for example, they decided they first needed to find out which poets refer to nature in their works, determine which plants thrive in shady spots, and investigate the price of these plants. "I never saw such comparison shopping!" Ljung exclaimed.)
After gathering information, students generate solutions, then "check for a fit." Once "a fit" is confirmed, students present their solution to a real audience.
It's important to remember, however, that the presentation is not the last step in the PBL process, Ljung noted. Students must debrief and evaluate their processes "so they can learn from what they did well and consider how they can do it better next time."
Ljung said she has seen students bloom in the Comm-Tech course, and thinks it's because students work on real problems and propose solutions that are often adopted. "It's the power of a real audience and real work," she said.
Ljung cautioned, however, that some students may, at first, resist the responsibility they must assume in a PBL class. "Too many students are used to bell-to-bell talk, and they want the teacher to step in and intervene," she explained. But, even students with the greatest reservations learn "that when I step out, they can take over."