I was very excited to read Edutopia's article Race to Knowledge: Putting Project-Based Learning on the Fast Track by Diane Curtis. As a former mechanical engineer, and Kettering University alumni, I have lived the project-based learning and would not trade it for anything. As a student at Kettering, I also participated on the Society of Automotive Engineer's Clean Snowmobile Challenge (SAE CSC). I whole-heartedly agree with the fact that there are a lot of things to be learned when working in a team environment that one cannot learn in a classroom alone. For me, I think it was the realization that not everything (if anything at all) turns out as one would predict let alone in the timeframe one would hope.
Working on the CSC, we would plan, prepare and work all year long to come up with a robust design, test it out, make modifications as necessary and retest. However, it never failed that we would still be doing quite a bit of tweaking the week leading up to competition. Later on, after I had worked full time in the engineering profession, I found that the job was no different than the competition. Because test data typically produced unpredictable results, our course of thought would often change.
To implement something like project-based learning at the high school level is something I find to be very exciting. What better way to prepare our future leaders than to give them firsthand experience in validating their thoughts and ideas, working within a budget and set timeline and working with individuals you may or may not particularly enjoy being around. Additionally, the students would learn that you do not always come up with a “correct solution” the first time around and that sometimes, failure can lead to a positive outcome!
http://www.edutopia.org/race-knowledge
No comments:
Post a Comment