Teaching and Learning Events

Exemplary "4" Criteria

(1) Learning Experience Design

• Description of situation
• Characteristics of learners
• Intended learner outcomes
• Coach's role
• Learner's role

(2) Mind Mapping

• Problem situation
• Content Connections
• Learner Outcomes
• Skills (e.g. problem solving, data gathering, question formulation, reasoning, evaluating)
• Identification of Stakeholders
• Impact on society

(3) Preparing the Learners

• Team building
• Critical thinking activities
• Simulations
• Small scale, structured PBL experience

(4) Meeting the Problem

• Developing a personal, authentic stake by role playing engineers, consultants and concerned citizens
• Providing an authentic letter or document
• Enlisting someone asking for help
• Dramatizations
• Video clips, newspaper articles, and public notices

(5) Identifying what we know, what we need to know, and our ideas

• Coach students to probe what students know
• Explore issues the students believe are critical to finding out more about the problem
• Structure and construct information gathering events (research, interviews, surveys)

(6) Defining the Problem Statement

• Pulls together the problem and the conditions within which it must be solved
• Revisited as information changes student understanding
• Document hunches about potential causes, solutions, and consequences

(7) Gathering and Sharing information

• Structure groups for information gathering around "need to knows"
• Design activities for information sharing (e.g. jigsaws, newscasts, presentations)
• Coach students to eliminate extraneous information and focus on pertinent information
• Design student self and peer assessment

(8) Generating Possible Solutions

• Provide opportunities for students to articulate a full range of possibilities
• Forum for recommending solutions
• Generate a decision making matrix

(9) Determining the Best Fit of Solutions

• Use the benchmarks of good thinking to evaluate the benefits and consequences of each solution
• Consider which solutions get the students closer to their idealized solution

(10) Presenting the Solution (Performance Assessment)

• Outside experts serving on a panel
• Use of a rubric for assessment of content, presentation skills, teamwork, and fit of solution

(11) Debriefing the problem

• Review of effectiveness of strategies
• Consider different approaches
• Discussion of unresolved issues open to further investigation
• Realistic impact of recommended solutions