Walden University 7106-1 Project Collaboration Page 1. How will you facilitate an authentic collaborative learning experience to promote deeper student engagement with content skills and concepts?
Students will be placed in groups to work on their project. Through the course of the lessons, students must work as a team to create, design and organize their final products. They must further work together to correct issues that arise in pre-production, production and post-production. They are a real film crew and each has a role within the group. The roles are director, cinematographer, script supervisor, and editor. When the projects are almost complete, they present them to the class for critique. In critique, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate their successes and provide feedback and support for issues in a constructive manner. Students then can go back to their projects in the next few days and rework what isn’t working before final turn-in.
2. As members of collaborative groups, how will you support students’ efforts to identify solutions to the problem you are using as the framework for your PBL instructional unit?
As the students are working, I conference with individual groups and make sure that everybody is on the same page in the group. I assess their roles and how they will be performed, their story and how it unfolds, and their fit within the guidelines of the project. I am careful to keep them in the guidelines, but not to stifle their creativity. I know when I create the project, I have an outcome in mind. However, some students present things outside the box, but within the guidelines and I have to be careful to assess that and reward that in my class.
3. What criteria will you use to assign learners to collaborative groups, including a rationale? What will be the size of the collaborative groups you will include in your unit?
I have several criteria that I use to assign learners to groups. I use their baseline writing skills from their Screenwriting Concepts that I assess on an ongoing basis. I also use their work logs from previous projects that assess what they have done and the roles they have played within a group. I create groups and subgroups based on this data. Then I randomly assign groups from the data groupings that insure equality within the group and I then make adjustments for peer-to-peer interactions and personalities that I have observed from working with previous project groups.
4. Which digital tools and websites are you considering for collaboration in your unit?
I have video clips from AFI (American Film Institute) that explains roles within the groups and best practices for producing their films. We have watched them in class already, but they are posted for viewing on our school web site (password protected – for viewing in class without entering it in the public domain). Additionally, students will view examples from their own research about topics of the same nature. It is interesting to watch them when they get the project. They first hit some streaming video sites and then they start working their ideas together. Most will end with very different ideas than they started with when working the group setting.
5. How will you assess participation of the students in their collaborative groups? (In Module 4, you will create assessment rubrics in which you will include this element.)
Student participation is assessed in two ways. First, I have my observations as I conference in groups. I make sure that the silent student knows what is going on by directing questions at them. Making sure they are just being quiet, but still understanding their film and group’s concept and their role within it. Second, I have students keep a work log of their participation and their contributions to the group. At the end of the project, students must sign each others work logs to make sure they are telling the truth and being honest about their participation. I also stress that this is the time to be honest with their peers and point out their deficiencies in the work log. Don’t sign anything that you don’t see to be truthful. When this arises (occasionally) this is my chance to conference with the group again to come to a resolution and really assess through dialogue the ambiguities that have arisen within the group about participation.
Problem Based Learning
Walden University 7106-1 Project Collaboration Page1. How will you facilitate an authentic collaborative learning experience to promote deeper student engagement with content skills and concepts?
Students will be placed in groups to work on their project. Through the course of the lessons, students must work as a team to create, design and organize their final products. They must further work together to correct issues that arise in pre-production, production and post-production. They are a real film crew and each has a role within the group. The roles are director, cinematographer, script supervisor, and editor. When the projects are almost complete, they present them to the class for critique. In critique, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate their successes and provide feedback and support for issues in a constructive manner. Students then can go back to their projects in the next few days and rework what isn’t working before final turn-in.
2. As members of collaborative groups, how will you support students’ efforts to identify solutions to the problem you are using as the framework for your PBL instructional unit?
As the students are working, I conference with individual groups and make sure that everybody is on the same page in the group. I assess their roles and how they will be performed, their story and how it unfolds, and their fit within the guidelines of the project. I am careful to keep them in the guidelines, but not to stifle their creativity. I know when I create the project, I have an outcome in mind. However, some students present things outside the box, but within the guidelines and I have to be careful to assess that and reward that in my class.
3. What criteria will you use to assign learners to collaborative groups, including a rationale? What will be the size of the collaborative groups you will include in your unit?
I have several criteria that I use to assign learners to groups. I use their baseline writing skills from their Screenwriting Concepts that I assess on an ongoing basis. I also use their work logs from previous projects that assess what they have done and the roles they have played within a group. I create groups and subgroups based on this data. Then I randomly assign groups from the data groupings that insure equality within the group and I then make adjustments for peer-to-peer interactions and personalities that I have observed from working with previous project groups.
4. Which digital tools and websites are you considering for collaboration in your unit?
I have video clips from AFI (American Film Institute) that explains roles within the groups and best practices for producing their films. We have watched them in class already, but they are posted for viewing on our school web site (password protected – for viewing in class without entering it in the public domain). Additionally, students will view examples from their own research about topics of the same nature. It is interesting to watch them when they get the project. They first hit some streaming video sites and then they start working their ideas together. Most will end with very different ideas than they started with when working the group setting.
5. How will you assess participation of the students in their collaborative groups? (In Module 4, you will create assessment rubrics in which you will include this element.)
Student participation is assessed in two ways. First, I have my observations as I conference in groups. I make sure that the silent student knows what is going on by directing questions at them. Making sure they are just being quiet, but still understanding their film and group’s concept and their role within it. Second, I have students keep a work log of their participation and their contributions to the group. At the end of the project, students must sign each others work logs to make sure they are telling the truth and being honest about their participation. I also stress that this is the time to be honest with their peers and point out their deficiencies in the work log. Don’t sign anything that you don’t see to be truthful. When this arises (occasionally) this is my chance to conference with the group again to come to a resolution and really assess through dialogue the ambiguities that have arisen within the group about participation.