Interest Is Not Enough: Designing for Engagement in Project-Based Courses

• In Event: Moving Advanced High School Courses to Poverty-Impacted Urban Settings: Multidisciplinary Research on Rigor, Access, Learning, and Engagement

Abstract

Objective. Project-based learning that employs simulations of the “real world” can stimulate student interest and learning by connecting disciplinary work to students’ funds of knowledge and outside interests (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). Although initial interest may be triggered by these factors, sustained interest, especially in the face of difficult challenges and unfamiliar roles, is more difficult (Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Nolen, 2007). In our research we have identified a number of tensions to negotiate in designing and implementing project cycles. Our paper will provide examples of these tensions and describe how we have designed projects to promote both engagement and deep, flexible, and adaptive learning.

Methods and data. We videotaped entire project cycles in AP Government and AP Environmental Science, including concentration on focal collaborative groups. Capturing all of each groups’ interactions enabled us to analyze discourse and interaction to see how engagement was negotiated, supported, and constrained in tasks students found initially interesting. In this paper, we focus on three important tensions:
1. Unfamiliar Roles. Simulations ask students to become lawyers, legislators, scientists, and the like – roles of which students have only sketchy understanding. Although the opportunity to try on adult roles was very interesting for the students in our study, their lack of domain knowledge sometimes prevented engagement in productive activity. For example, as “lawyers” preparing a case for a mock Supreme Court hearing, students had a difficult time distinguishing their roles as representing sides in a case based on the Constitution, rather than promoting the position of their clients. They had difficulty managing the worlds of the justice system, with its reliance on case law, and the moral world of “what is fair.” For novices, these and related issues made effective argumentation difficult.
2. Material tools. Students made use of a number of material tools found on the internet or created by teachers or students. Teachers balanced the tension between providing enough tools to support students’ role-based work and avoiding students shifting into “worksheet mode” when work appeared too school-like. Student-produced and internet tools promoted engagement through autonomy, but could constrain engagement when students lacked the domain knowledge or literacy skills to mine internet resources effectively.
3. Formative assessment and scaffolding. A third tension was balancing teacher intervention (providing specific support regarding roles and tools to make frustration productive) and letting students resolve their own problems. Our data suggest the importance of structuring tasks early in a project that require students to collaborate around a common tool (e.g., the same case or set of data) rather than dividing the work and pooling information. Interactions around a common tool provided a natural opportunity for formative feedback as students debated interpretations and strategies that was missing when students operated solo.

Significance. Our emerging design moves beyond generating student interest to building structural supports for student engagement in complex projects. Of particular importance in this effort is dealing with the wide range of literacy skill in urban schools, which is the topic of the next paper.

Authors

• Susan B. Nolen, University of Washington - Seattle

• Kendall Becherer, University of Washington - Seattle

• Susan E. Cooper, University of Washington

• Gavin Tierney, University of Washington

• Chris Ward, University of Central Florida