Blog Post #2: Video Selfie/Observation Self-Assessment Reflection- Mandy Irick

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_XG5jjPdUN5N0NqSmZqRWw3QjQ/view

For my video selfie reflection, I worked with Mary Kennedy on her PBL project that focused on creating an engineering project that would be instrumental for a company. The students began by researching the specific career in the engineering field. From there, they chose their groups and what type of engineering project that were going to create. The design build had to be based on the physic properties they have focused on in class. The other component to this was they had to be able to create a sales pitch to promote the product to a specific audience. The sales pitch was where I was able to go around to each of the small groups to help them analyze the product and design to make it marketable. My goal was to help them understand how to construct a sales pitch making it desirable along with the group being articulate.

  Identifying What’s Important: My part in Mary Kennedy’s PBL was to make sure that the students’ had a firm grasp on what a sale pitch was and how to construct one based on their product. I also wanted to make sure that this was based on individual needs of the groups so I went from group to group working with them for at least 10 minutes. By doing this, I provided them with guided instruction based on what their group needs were. I just chose one group to video tape but you can see how much guidance they needed during the lesson. The approach I established with them was for the first day I listened to their product and methods behind its construction. The next day, (which is what you see in the video), I revisited quickly their product design. I begin to ask them a series of open-ended questions in my attempt to draw them to think about how to approach a sales pitch. The series of questions that I approach them with are all geared to how can you make your item appealing to buyer. These questions were a way to help pinpoint their selling features and to justify why they were important. I noticed I would restate what their replies were in an attempt to help reinforce how important those statements were. The other thing I noticed I did a lot of was varying from group member to group member to get more responses from them. Two of the students seemed to have it down pat when it came to using their features to promote the bridge they were building. Unfortunately, two others were disconnected by lack of knowledge or interest. I wanted to pull them into the group as much as possible so reinforcing what answers were generated and calling them out by name to give insight was my way of getting interaction with them. The overall goal was to keep them thinking about how to make their product desirable to a buyer. I felt like I was proficient in making them understand the important concepts to focus on when dealing with a sales pitch.

  Making Connections: One of the great things about doing the selfie video was being able to look at the small group interaction that I had with the students to compare with their final presentation of their sales pitch. This helped me to see whether they were taking the guided instruction that I was providing them along with the group collaboration and effectively using it to create part of their final presentation, which was the sales pitch. Many of the groups utilized those small group conversations to help influence their sales pitch. With the group that I videotaped, the key important featured that were discussed were used in their final sales pitch with some varying forms of elaboration. It was pleasing to see that they had taken essentials like building materials, key features like lights and a drawbridge to construct a pitch that made their product desirable to the city of Charleston. This was a major take away for me was seeing the connection or lack of one from the small group guided instruction to the final product. It really allowed me to see who learned from the experience and who did not. The other part of making connections were realizing that students were quick to decide on the creation like a bridge but did not do enough research to help them realize the complexity of their designs. As seen in the video, the group of girls had a design somewhat mapped put but missed some of the fundamentals. Through my open-ended questioning, I had hope to pull from them an understanding that they needed to do more research and comparison on bridges to help structure theirs. They lacked a knowledge of the costs of building a bridge of that magnitude. By questioning them, I hoped they took notice and investigated those components.

  Incorporating Contextual Knowledge: During the second half of the video, you will noticed that some of my line of questioning then begins to focus on incorporating their contextual knowledge of physics to the real world application of their bridge. In one section of the video, the student was asked about what type of material they are going to build their bridge out of. We discuss the difference between the model they are constructing and the real bridge. I noticed quickly during the session that one of the more disconnected students of the group answered with wood and bricks. This quickly led me to pose the question “How does this connect to a draw bridge?” It was during this questioning session that I learned some of the group members were not very connected with the others about the materials that were going to be used. After the video, I had the girls discussed their design plan again to make sure everyone was on board and had a clear understanding of what was going on. The other thing the girls did was to do more research on building a drawbridge. I wanted their knowledge of the discussed elements of physics to be applicable to the construction of their bridge. They needed to understand the physics of a drawbridge in order to know how to construct and build a budget for it. The small groups helped me to see gaps in contextual knowledge so that I could help redirect those gaps or let the classroom teacher know. This would help her to scaffold some more types of small groups or labs to help the students understand the physic concepts required of them.
 

 Drafting Next Steps: From this small group guided discussion, my intent was for students to utilize our discussion as a means to creating an effective sales pitch. One of the strategies that I hope to implement for a future PBL such as this will be doing more mini-lessons with sales pitch. I have thought about even doing a mock one to help illustrate this a little more effectively. The classroom teacher did the whole group instruction for this. The other tactic I would like to use next time is to have a note taker taking the group notes so they have this as a reference instead of going just off memory and me revisiting the group. I provided them with the notes and it would be better coming from them. I noticed some disconnection within the groups, which I shared with the classroom teacher. In the future, I want to make sure group roles are clearly defined with everyone having equal parts. The other part to this is having each student in the group at the end of the session write their own reflection of what their group discussed for the day along with the essence of their project. This way I do not have to wait for a small group session to reinforce collaboration and providing more student accountability.