Day 3

Austin Baker

Video Choice #1: Group Contracts for Collaborative Work

1.  What are some of the problems students might encounter when working in groups on extended, complex projects?

Attendance, attention spans, apathy, quality of work…basically all of the same types of problems encountered by the teacher. But, when students are held accountable by their peers, I think that they would be more motivated to do well. It’s one thing to have the teacher telling you that you need to work harder; everyone is used to that, and I think students often get desensitized to it. But it’s another thing to have one of your friends/peers calling you out for slacking off or being uncooperative. High school student, above almost everything else, want to be accepted by their peers, and, having their peers call them out is a huge motivator.

2. How can contracts be designed to mitigate these problems?

By having peer expectations visible from the start of a project, students have no excuses for not doing what is expected. This also allows students to no room to argue for why they did not reach a goal. By knowing what’s expected of them upfront, students learn to deal with workloads. They learn to manage time, seek out help if needed, and collaborate to get what they need in order to complete assignments. Contracts such as the ones shown in the video turn the classroom away from a student vs. teacher environment, and away from a student vs. student environment, into one of a student vs. themselves environment. In the end, if they’re not meeting their goals, the responsibility falls solely on themselves, because they knew what was expected of them upfront, and they were held to those standards by their peers.

3. What checks and balances need to be in place for contracts to be effective? 

They need to be fair and not restraining in that they need to allow each student to work as an individual within the bounds of the assignment. They also need to allow the students to ask for teacher intervention if something/someone is not working well, so that the teacher can help the students come to a solution. This models real-world work interactions and interventions. By having the contract set up so that the teacher is brought in to help settle issues once an impasse is reached, students learn to solve such issues on their own after seeing the teacher model good examples of conflict resolution.

Consider the Profile of a South Carolina Graduate in terms of world class knowledge, world class skills, and life and career characteristics.  After viewing the videos, explain how PBL and collaborative group work fits the criteria identified in the profile.

World Class Knowledge: PBL is rigorous in that it asks students to work on real problems that are extended and complex, and, as it is interdisciplinary in nature, PBL addresses the multiple languages, STEM, arts & social sciences portion of the profile.

World Class Skills: PBL addresses creativity and innovation by asking students to think outside the box. Instead of basic rote memorization or worksheets, PBL is asking students to solve problems, which naturally requires creativity, innovation, critical thinking, and problem solving. Because of the scope of PBL projects is often large, it lends itself to collaboration, teamwork, and communication. Students learn to teach themselves to learn how to solve problems that arise during the course of their projects, mimicking real-world scenarios and fostering a sense of life-long learning.

Life & Career Characteristics: PBL inherently requires a level of self-direction that a lot of traditional methods of teaching do not require. This builds integrity, perseverance, work ethic, because students have to move beyond a passive mode of learning to become actively engaged in their own learning because of the active nature of PBL. Students often gain a global perspective and interpersonal skills, because successful completion of PBL projects will often require them to work in groups, work outside of their comfort zone, and engage with the world around them and the global resources available to them.