ETEC 551-Reflections on Project Based Instruction

I’m currently in the midst of converting my teaching style from a lecture based curriculum to project based instruction.  And I must admit it is not an easy transition. I’m finding that the most challenging part of this new approach is creating projects from the material that I’m presenting.I was looking for videos that might help me in the creation of project based activities. While most of the videos did not relate, I did find the interview with Phylise Banner to be helpful because related to not only face-to-face project base classes but, in particular, the online portion of a hybrid class.

I found that the advice she was giving about online classes related directly to the project based, face-to-face classes that I'm struggling with. I especially liked her explanation of hierarchy, that students need a sense of organization and structure. They want to know what is the beginning, what is the middle and where and when is the end. She mentioned that she loves to include hypertext in her content, that these hyperlinks take students in tangents from the core content. But this is my favorite idea of hers: that we learn from the tangents, from the side roads that our own curiosity leads us on. That's self-created curiosity is where we learn best. That one gem that I got from her video made watching the other three worth it. In my project based, face-to-face classes my instructions will include many hyperlinks to topics that are related but tangential to the course material.

Resources

Phylise Banner – SUNY Learning Center (2012), Competencies in Online Learning. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Xgyp7sj_Y&list=PL10135682177CBD2D&index=16