Team Presents PBL Poster Session at ESSEA Conference
Wed Aug 24 2011
The team working on the NASA-funded Exploring Global Climate Change Through Problem-based Learning project presented a poster at the annual meeting of Earth System Science Education Alliance Aug. 16-18 at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.
The poster session was titled, Designing Cognitive Scaffolds for Web-based Problem-based Learning. The authors were Dr. Laurie Ruberg, associate director of the Center for Educational Technologies; curriculum writers Manetta Calinger and Tamie Shiplett; and graphic designer Cassie Lightfritz. The poster showed the question prompts and related investigation activities the team used in the Exploring the Environment Global Climate Change problem-based learning modules to provide scaffolding for middle and high school students.
The NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future program is creating a number of new modules about global climate change for its award-winning Exploring the Environment site.
Here is the abstract for the session:
"Use of problem-based learning (PBL) is advocated across the science disciplines as an instructional strategy that promotes long-term retention, skill development, and satisfaction of students and teachers. Teachers also choose PBL as a technique to address their concerns about student difficulties in developing (1) a valid and robust knowledge base; (2) abilities to apply knowledge to solve complex, ill-structured problems; and (3) transfer of knowledge to new situations (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Greeno,Collins, & Resnick, 1996; Koschmann, Kelson, Feltovich, & Barrows, 1996).
"We propose that PBL provides a way to help teachers give students opportunities to learn expert problem-solving strategies, practice them, observe them as implemented by their peers, and experience the critical review processes as a way to self-regulate and constructively critique team member work. Based on formative evaluation with students and teachers, we found that achieving successful mastery of the high-level cognitive processes that we are targeting is challenging for both learners and instructors. This poster provides a graphical representation of the question prompts and related investigation activities we used in the Exploring the Environment Global Climate Change PBL modules to provide scaffolding for middle and high school students."
