As I do every week, I first watched the camtasia presentation on guided design before reading the research articles. I immediately was connecting with the method of instruction and already thinking about what the topic of my module was going to be using guided design. Then I read the Casada/DeShazer article where it talks about how this method was used in an introductory engineering class to help students learn problem solving for design, professionalism, and communication. This captured my attention even more! One of my undergrad degrees is in engineering, so I immediately connected with the point that these skills are important and need to be taught. It is unfortunate, however, that the University of Idaho used the instruction method, which is intended to help students learn problem-solving skills, to teach problem-solving skills. Just doesn't seem to make sense, and, according to the report of how the course went, it didn't make sense to the students either. It would seem to me that the problem-solving skills should be learned and taught through the process of actually solving real-life problems - like the method is intended to be used.
I like the idea of using guided design as a method of teaching and learning because I believe strongly in real-life applications of knowledge. Additionally, decision-making is a skill all people must learn to be successful in life and I think guided design puts these two together nicely. I strive to provide realistic problems and projects in my technology classes for my students. Granted, it is not hard to come up with practical applications for a podcast or, say, a web page, but I think in any course we as educators really need to focus on providing real-life problems for students to solve and help them develop one of the 21st C. skills: decision-making.
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4 comments:
I share your enthusiasm for the guided design approach. It feels less gimmicky/artificial and more natural to me. I agree, too, that the Casada implementation didn't work as well as it could have. Real life problems are needed to grab students' attention.
I think that guided design will be a great way to show proof that the student has a grasp of the concepts taught in earlier lessons. By seeing them in a real-life example it really opens the mind to using the tools that were taught.
I find that many of my students aren't capable of making decisions for themselves, or analyzing problems to come up with a plausible solution. I think you are right, that these are skills we need to teach our students because they will be lost in the world if they leave school without them!!
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