So, a great deal of thought and blogspace, even time at conferences, goes into such topics as “PBL” (problem-based learning), “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics”, and “21st-century learning” (which is either self-evident or means so many different things to different people [not unlike PBL] that it’s difficult to pin down).
There are many reasons given for focusing on these topics:
- increasing student engagement
- preparing students for the “real world”
- increasing a desperately needed source of technological innovation and prowess
You can feel free to fill in some of your own.
After grappling with PBL in my courses for years and having focused my attention, pretty much to wasted effect this year, on STEM for awhile, I woke up this morning with the idea that rather than focusing on the process or outcome, I should do what I do best: look at my students and think about programs to provide them what they need for growth and development.
I have been slowly, surreptitiously expanding over the last few years the individualization of my math and English courses. So, I have decided to think about the individual students whose needs or desires have led to programmatic modifications. I am perhaps motivated the more to do so by a recommendation letter from a former student now at Cal Tech who provided in some detail his perspective on what was good about my teaching; by an ISP where, knowingly or not, a student set out to isolate what was best about at least some of the math courses I teach; and by some end-of-semester reflective papers from senior English.
Here are some cases:
- A group of three students in BC Calculus who are taking the final exam of a course they haven’t taken yet because they’ve already done, through group tests earlier in the year, the material their classmates will do between now and the end of the year
- A student who is simultaneously taking math courses on two different subjects at the same period, one of which is traditionally a prerequisite for the other
- A group of students who have tied literature, philosophy, and personal engagement and reflection into a unified whole in a final paper
- A group of students who have taken calculus tests in French and Spanish in order to add intellectual engagement of a different dimension to the course