I found challenge based learning to be an extremely effective way for students to be engaged in a problem they really care about. Since motivation is key is student learning, I feel like challenge based learning is a great way to motivate students to come up with issues about real world problems that they care about.
I find CBL to be very beneficial for high school students because it gives them something to fight for. When someones cares about something it becomes that much more meaningful to them and they will argue and stand for it. The first step in CBL is to come up with a big idea, this big idea then leads to finding questions to support the big idea. Students often say "when will I ever use this in the real world" CBL helps them apply real world issues towards their projects and gets them processing ideas that they normally would not. The article mentions that education is for the students not the teachers, so what they are learning should be engaging not boring. CBL provides a fun interactive way to learn and should be used more often.
-Eric
I really like how you tied motivation into using challenge based learning in the classroom. I think that motivation is a huge part of learning-getting students excited about what they are learning so they want to dig even deeper for themselves. I also like how you talked about education being for the students and not for the teachers---and that is totally true! I think that is why challenge based learning is so great-it allows students to make discoveries themselves and to have a part in something that they are passionate about.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that CBL should be something for high school students to experience. I did a CBL project in junior high, but it could have been so much more complex and detailed in high school. In junior high it was more along the lines of a debate as to why our issues were important and stating what actions should be taken in advocacy of our topic. CBL is definitely student geared and as a teacher it's an awesome experience to set the foundation of how you want the experience to go, and leave the control to your students from that point on!
ReplyDeleteI agree that Challenge Based Learning could be a great tool for students in high school. Challenge Based Learning projects for older students could be huge and very in depth, and students would really be able to take ownership over their learning, which I think is very important. I agree that it would help students see how their learning is actually related to the real world, and I think it really would make learning about the students!
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