Month: March 2022

What do we want students to get out of real world projects?

Introduction

Engaging students in real world projects creates opportunities to connect with students’ passions, build connections to the broader community, and for students to see that they can have an impact. Our discussion at February 2022’s Collab Lab focused what we want students to experience on these types of projects, what students, teachers, and partners bring that can help create these experiences, and what stands in the way. Joining the discussion were students from MSOE’s Create Institute and Software Development Lab, and Engineers Without Borders at Marquette University who are involved in real world projects of their own.

Start with the end in mind

To start our exploration we asked ourselves:  “What do we want students to experience as part of their learning?”

• Exciting challenges
• Feel comfortable to ask questions
• Supportive setting
• Fail forward
• Open result
• Experience variety
• they can have the opportunity to get excited about the learning
  • they can become the expert
    • they can teach the teacher
      • they can become effective collaborators
• Bring their ideas to life– makes everything more relevant, to feel a sense of empowerment (voice, make/change decisions)
• experience success from mistakes– students should learn from their answers
• take classroom knowledge in the abstract to practical application — make everything relevant
• have a voice in shaping the project — problems don’t have a single answer (broaden scope)
• listen to other people’s ideas and provide feedback– builds both community and communication skills
• find something for them to be passionate about and run with it — motivation to advance
• Understand the “why” behind concepts — knowledge can be transferred, retained
• Self awareness
• Provide opportunities
  • new experience
  • further exploration
• Connect to future experiences
• Enlightenment/fun/joy
• Problem solve
• Build skills
• Communication – seeing themself in the position
• Finding purpose
• Build confidence in their ability (wins)
• empathetic
• Have fun
• feel empowered and inspired
• to know they can make a difference/real world
• to feel included, (culturally/gender)
• to see what they can be
• to feel safe & heard
• to feel connected to their community
• they can learn from failures
• Engaging “tricky” students
  
  • ask a lot of questions
  • some are afraid of failure
  • confidence building
  • it’s ok to take a risk

For our participants, the big “whys” behind all of this are for students who feel inspired, valued, and heard; to see that they can make a difference in the their community and contribute to the happiness of others.

The Assets we bring to learning

We continued our discussion by asking about the assets the students, teachers, and community partners bring to the table to support student engagement in real world projects.  For students, the key assets noted across our discussion groups are their curiosity, excitement, and perspective.  Other assets include their:

• ideas
• background knowledge
• culture/cultural perspective (language and norms)

In the case of educators, it is their own passions, ability to facilitate inquiry based work and create the space and structure for this work to happen that are key assets that support student engagement in real world projects. Others include:

• connections
• resources
• justification
• expectations
• community partners
• culture
• growth mindset
• dedication
• empathy
• communication

For community partners, the most noted assets are the expertise, relevance, and perspective they can bring.  It’s their view of the world from beyond school which helps make the work relevant to students and gives them an incentive beyond grades to dive deep.  Other assets noted in our discussions include:

• expertise
• resources
• awareness
• different lens
• support for students/teachers for experiences
• Role models/mentors

Finally, it was noted that all three groups bring their own cultural intersectionalities, which create the opportunity for much richer collaboration and learning.

Barriers. A familiar list

We wrapped up the discussion with a quick inventory of barriers to engaging students in real world projects. The list should look familiar:

• too much internet?
• loss of community/hands on opportunities
• Switch from micro (classroom) to macro (real world)
• not enough trust of teachers
• not enough time/prep
• Focus on standardized testing
• Time
• Inequities/Disadvantage
• Lack of access to resources & support
• Money
• Balance of commitments
• Out-of-touch leadership
• Overworked teachers
• No opportunity to collaborate
• Student, school, community misalignment
• Teachers
  • almost anything out of the classroom
  • legislation
• Community Partners
  • understanding connections to curriculum
  • time for meaningful engagement
• Students
  • need to balance effort across classes to prevent burnout
  • jobs
  • home responsibilities (cleaning, cooking, siblings, etc.)

Acknowledgements

Thanks again to MSOE’s STEM Center for hosting Collab Labs this season and to our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Chris Beimborn – UW-Milwaukee EnQuest Coordinator and STEM Outreach Manager

Abby McGill – Marquette University, Engineers without Borders

Anne-Marie Warren, Laura Pizano, Pelumi Ajayi – Student Fellows with MSOE’s Create Institute

Hunter Turcin & Amish Verma – Students working with Learn Deep in MSOE’s Software Development Lab

Continue the Conversation

If you like the topics we select every month and would like to continue the conversation, we invite you to join ‘inspirEd‘, an online Collaborative Learning Community. We focus on growing our innovative teaching practice together by sharing what works and what hasn’t.