PROJECT BASED LEARNING
Project based learning gives a thorough practical exposure to a problem upon which the project is based. Projects are developed generally in groups where students can learn various things such as working together, problem solving, decision making, and investigating activities. Project based learning involves the steps such as analyzing the problem, formulating the problem into small modules, applying the mechanism or method to solve each module and then integrating the solution of all the modules to arrive at the complete solution of the problem. To solve a problem it is required that those who work on it gather the relevant data and process it by applying a particular method. Data may be collected as per the requirement of the project in a particular format. All the team members should be associated to accomplish the task. After collecting data, it should be processed to solve the problem. The results should be reported in a predetermined format.
MODULAR APPROACH TO PROJECTS
There are several approaches to execute a project such as modular approach, top down approach and bottom up approach. Amongst the most common forms of project based learning, the modular approach to execute a project is the most reliable technique. A structured or a modular approach to a project means that a project is divided into various manageable modules and each of the modules has a well defined task to be performed with a set of inputs. This would lead to a set of outputs which when integrated leads to the desired outcome.
Steps in Project Based Learning
1. Identification of a project: The project idea may come through any real life situation. For example one could think of doing a project for organising a seminar. One needs to understand the usefulness of the project and its impact. Students must be encouraged to undertake interdisciplinary projects.
2.Defining a plan:- Normally for any kind of project, there are several project members involved in it. One project leader has to be identified. The roles of project leader and each project member have to be clearly defined. Students who are performing a project must be assigned with specific activities. The various tools for executing these activities must be known. To obtain a better solution, one should always think of the extreme situations.
3. Fixing of a time frame and processing:- Every project is a time relevance project. A student must understand the importance of time frame for completion of the project. All the activities which are performed in the projects require certain amount of time. Every project must be well structured and at the same time it must be flexible in its time frame.
4. Providing guidance and monitoring a project: Many times, the participants in the project get stuck up with the process and become unable to proceed further. In such a case or otherwise they need guidance. Guidance can be obtained from various resources such as books, websites and experts in the field. While it is essential that project leader should ensure monitoring of the project, the guide teacher also helps in monitoring the project.
5. Outcome of a project:-One needs to understand what can be the outcome of the project. The outcome can be single or it can be multiple. The outcome of the project can be peer reviewed and it can be modified as per the feedback from users or experts.
Let us consider a project “Organising a seminar for career counselling in a school”. The project can be broken into sub–tasks such as :-
Drafting the concept note that would establish the need for organising such a seminar,
Arranging a hall for the seminar having proper sitting arrangements with audio–visual facilities,
Making a list of participants and sending information to the participants,
Sending invitations to the guests,
Arranging career counsellors to speak at the seminar,
Arranging for hospitality to the guests, etc.
The above example demonstrates the need of a modular approach to a project. A separate team of people may be assigned to perform each of the above listed subtasks.
The advantage of modular approach is that it is much easier to design a smaller task. Also, some of the modules can be re–used if they have already been done for some other project. For example the list of participants may be reused if it was already prepared for some other seminar. It also ensures that some tasks can be done in parallel which is very helpful for executing a project in short time.
TEAMWORK
TEAM WORK
Many real life tasks are very complex and require a lot of people to contribute in achieving them. An effort made by many people together in order to accomplish a task is called teamwork.
For example, in many sports, there is a team of players. These players play together to win a match. Take an example of a cricket team. We find that even if a bowler bowls a good ball but if the fielder cannot take a catch then a wicket cannot be taken. So, in order to take a catch we require efforts of a bowler and also of fielders. To win a cricket match, contributions from all the team members in all the three areas batting, bowling and fielding are required.
COMPONENTS OF TEAMWORK
Apart from technical proficiency, a wide variety of other components make a successful teamwork. It comprises of skilled team members with specific roles, to achieve the goal.
Communicate with Others
When a group of people performs one job, it is necessary to have an effective communication between the members of the team. Such communication can be done via e-mails, telephones or by arranging group meetings. This helps the team members to understand each other and to sort out problems to effectively achieve the goal.
Listen to Others
It is necessary to understand the ideas of others while executing a job together. This can be achieved when the team members listen to each other in group meetings and follow steps that are agreed upon.
Share with Others
Ideas, images and tools need to be shared with each other in order to perform a job. Sharing is an important component of teamwork. A person in the team who is well versed in a certain area should share his expertise and experience with others to effectively achieve the goal within the time frame.
Respect for Others
Every member of the team must be treated respectfully. All the thoughts and ideas that are put forth in the group meetings may be respected and duly considered. Not respecting the views of a particular member may cause problems and that particular team member may not give his best.
Help Others
A helping hand from every member is a key to success. Sometimes help from people who are not a part of the team is also obtained in order to accomplish a job.
Participate
All the team members must be encouraged by each other to participate in completing the project and also in discussions in group meetings. Also every member should take an active participation so that they feel their importance in the team.
A SUCCESSFUL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
In order for projects to be successful learning experiences, each student should:-
have a sense of participation,
have enough time to work on a project,
have some choices in the creation of questions, approaches, etc.,
possess the skills to work with others,
have the knowledge necessary to explore questions that arise,
understand the teacher’s method of evaluation.
Some of the projects with the objective to provide exposure to students to undertake and implement various aspects of real life projects, such as creating a magazine, Awareness of Pulse Polio Programme, Robotics, Health Analyser System, farewell to class XII, Know your District/Region, create a website as teamwork and establishment of a computer network are given below :-
SOME EXAMPLE OF PROJECTS
SCHOOL MAGAZINE
Project Title : Creation of School Magazine
Description
The project aims at creating a monthly magazine of your school, which should include articles describing the latest happenings and achievements in the field of sports, academics and other various activities that have occurred during the past month. It should not include any article that is a copy of copyright material. It must be created by the students only.
Guidelines
Make a group of students to undertake a project on Producing School Magazine. This group should be divided further into several subgroups of 2-3 students to carry out the work on similar lines as mentioned below:-
(a) Task force : This group should be involved in motivating the students for writing and submitting the material for the school magazine.
(b) Students Articles : This group should collect the articles submitted by students on areas of their interest. Articles may also include quiz, humour, puzzles, and poems, etc.
(c) Sports Section : This project team should collect all the information regarding the sports activities of the school like any zonal or district level games, team members who took part, etc.
(d) Achievements in the field of Academic/Cultural activities : This team should collect materials on the cultural and academic events of the school.
(e) Illustrations : This group should create the illustrations, drawings, etc. for making the Magazine more attractive and informative.
(f) Editing and layouts for printing : Editorial group should confirm that the articles are original writings of the students. After verification, the editorial group may compile all the collaborative works done by the rest of the groups and should create a layout on the computer. After creating the layouts the editing groups should show their layout to the teacher under whose supervision the project is going on.
After the layout has been finalised the magazine should be printed and can be distributed among the students and teachers of the school.
Outcome
The School Magazine.
PULSE POLIO
Project Title : Report on “Pulse Polio Sunday” held at your village/town.
Description
The goal of the project is to help and create a monitoring report for the Pulse Polio Program in your region. The group should work to promote the Polio Eradication Movement taken up by the Government of India.
Guidelines
Let us create a group of 8–10 students. This group should be divided further into sub-groups of 2–3 students to carry out a specific work each covering different regions.
(a) Task force : The students in this group should contact the Pulse-Polio Programme coordinators at the pulse polio centre in their locality.
(b) Motivation group : This group should create digital posters on polio vaccination that can be used to promote pulse-polio awareness among people of their area.
(c) Data collection : After the Pulse Polio Programme scheduled for the month they should collect the data that how many children have been vaccinated and how many are still remaining in their locality.
(d) Report generation : The chart representing the data should be drawn using appropriate computer software.
The data of polio vaccination can be recorded for the whole year.
Outcome
“The Pulse Polio Report” highlighting the status of Polio Eradication Programme in your village/town created using some presentation software such as PowerPoint or Impress.
ROBOTICS
Project Title : Application of Robots in different fields
Description
The purpose of the project is to prepare a report on uses of robots figure in different fields. It will also help students to realise the extent of automation and efficiency accomplished by robots in various fields of industry.
Guidelines
Form a group of 8–10 students for the project. This group should be
divided further into subgroups of 2–3 students to carry out specific tasks on the similar lines as mentioned below:
(a) One subgroup should collect the information about different types of robots through websites or otherwise.
(b)Another subgroup should collect the information on various industries who are using specialised robots in their manufacturing units and to suggest the most suitable site for visit.
(c)Third subgroup should prepare a report on various functions/tasks performed by robots in the manufacturing unit.
(d)Fourth subgroup should prepare a module showing advantages of using robots.
Outcome
A compiled document describing the functions, and components used
in robots and the tasks performed by them in a particular manufacturing workshop along with relevant information and pictures.
KNOW YOUR HEALTH
Project Title: Know your Health: Development of a System to record and analyse the data related to health of students in a class/school.
Description
This is a project related with collecting and analysing the data related
to health of the students in a particular school/class. This project involves collecting data of students such as height, weight, their day to day food habits, their past health history etc. Some data related with their parents will also be collected.
The data will be collected by survey and this data will be stored in some Data Management System. It can then be analysed and some preliminary measures can be suggested to students and their parents.
This will help the students to maintain their health and hygiene and hence they can concentrate more on their studies.
Guidelines
(i)Decide a group of students from whom data is to be collected. A group of 2-3 students can collect data of 20 students.
(ii)Set the format of data to be collected by consulting a doctor. Note
some useful information such as height, weight, food habits and exercise habits.
(iii)Collect the data by survey i.e. by distributing formats among students.
(iv)Get data entered into some database system such as MS Access/MS Excel.
(v)Check the entered data.
(vi)Prepare some reports/graphs from collected data. Graphs can be student wise/class wise.
(vii) Show these graphs to doctor and obtain certain suggestions for
each student.
(viii)Distribute suggestions to students/parents.
(ix)Take feedback from students/parents regarding use of this project
and use it for improvement.
Format of data collection
1. Name of the student: ..................
2. Class: ..................
3. Age (in years): ..................
4. Height (in cm): ..................
5. Weight (in kg): ..................
6. Food Habits
a. Number of times food taken (2/3/4):
b.Type of food (veg/non-veg)
c.Regular food (Chapati, Rice, Dal, Veg)/Non r
egular food (fast food):
7. Exercise habits
a.Do you exer
cise daily?: (Yes/No):
b. If Yes, how many minutes?:
c.Type of exercise: (Running/Play/onmachine
Yoga/SuryaNamaskar/other)
8. Time to wake up: ..................
9. Time to go to bed: ..................
10.Past medical history: ..................
11.Write your normal daily schdule.
Outcome
Report on data related to health of students.
FAREWELL TO CLASS 12TH
Project Title: To organise a school event as ‘Farewell to class 12th’ as a collaborative project.
Description
The aim of the project is to organise the event with collaboration of students and using CCT tools.
(a)Identification of Participants
The participants would be students of class 12th, class 11th, teachers,chief guest and special invitees. Among the participants, class 11th
students are key members who will be organising the event. Class 12thstudents, teachers, chief guest and special invitees constitute theaudience. The role of class 11th students, who are arranging the event,
is more proactive than others. The first task is to get the list of studentsand teachers. One way of getting the names of the students of class 11th and 12th, is to ask one member of each section to get the details of the respective class. Another way is to get the information directly from class Attendance Register or school website.
Planning
All events should start with a plan and there is a need for regular discussions among participants. Initially a group meeting is to be organised to discuss the objective, requirement and proposed line of action. Conventional way of holding a meeting is to inform students on the notice board or through class announcements. Another way of informing all the participants is by sending e-mails. An agenda of the farewell party is to be prepared and communicated to all members mentioning time, date and venue.
(c) Identification of Task
In the main event there are various subtasks which are to be delegated to different groups. Broadly the following tasks has to be assigned.
•Coordination of management for date, venue, chief guest and specialbinvitees.
• Budget estimate.
• Collection of funds.
• Procurement of food and cold drinks.
• Procurement of gifts and mementoes.
• Organisation of cultural programme.
• Maintenance of accounts.
• Coordination and monitoring.
Guidelines
Use communication tools such as Messenger from any service provider such as Yahoo or own school e-mail service for creating task based groups. Members of each group should exchange information and get consolidated view. The decision can be then forwarded to coordination and monitoring group. The status of each task should be updated to the notice board or website or by sending the status report to all members through e-mails. This will create interest and enthusiasm in all the members whether he/she is involved directly or indirectly. A website can also be created where each member can post the statusand notices regarding events.
(a) Delegation of Task
Once the subtasks are identified, the jobs have to be delegated to various groups. During allocation of tasks, it should be kept in the mind that representatives of all the classes are properly selected.
(b) Estimation
Conventionally the members allocate funds in different heads as perassumption and guess. Each group member can calculate the expected expense. For better estimation, members can do a market survey to explore the current market rate of various items and the prospectivesupplier. Market survey can be done directly or the same information can be gathered from internet or by telephone. This will give fair idea about the expense and contribution from each student. The same can be informed to all the members with details of where and to whom the contribution is to be submitted.
(C) Collection of Funds
All the members can deposit their contribution to the designated member of their respective classes. The same can be updated in the database, and if required the same can be updated in the website also.
A system can be developed to track the collection and expense.
(d) Allocation of Funds As per the estimation each group would be allocated the funds. The group would regularly update the expenses, by keeping, bill/receipt of expenses made.
(e) Cultural Programme
There would be maximum participation of members in this group andwould require coordination and regular meetings for making the eventinteresting. This task can be coordinated by e-mails. E-mail is a very effective tool for communication and can be used for communicatingabout rehearsal schedules. It will be better to use a unified messagingservice for communication and event management.
Outcome
A good organisation of farewell party to outgoing students of class 12th.
THANK YOU
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