If our job is to prepare students for the workforce, we must balance teaching the knowledge and skills to students. Students must be more active in their learning. The days sitting in a class listening to faculty lecture needs to be a thing of the past. We need to focus on courses that are centered on projects and not fake projects but real projects that will help students prepare for the workforce. So, class could be structured as follows -
The Project Context
Weeks 1-3 Proposal/Requirements
Weeks 3-8 Design/Implementation
Weeks 8-9 Testing/Deployment
Week 10 Project Delivery
There are some key principles that the students need to master. Faculty can provide reading assignments and videos that provides the foundation knowledge needed to do the project. You will find that students will be more motivated to learn because they will need information to do the project. The concepts support the project instead of the project supports the concepts. There is a tendency to add a lot of concepts and you end up just mentioning them with no depth to learning. This forces you to only cover what is needed to do the project. The focus of the course is the student has been hired by X to do Y. Information about the context of the project gives all the information needed to understand the domain the project is in. The context is as much information about the company and other details needed to do the project. We want to students to simulate working and have deadlines for students to meet. Week 10 is presenting the final product/paper to the client. Students learn to write technical documentation such requirements documents, etc. This is reinforced in each course. Some courses might provide a requirements document and the course is focused is on delivering a product. Some courses might be just to deliver a requirements document. The goal is to make the work real to students who are working in a term. For some faculty, this technique seems very foreign.
I always get but the students do not know anything. Well, they are increasing not learning concepts anyway in a traditional model. They are forgetting everything in a few months anyway.
We are not doing our jobs as educators. We need them prepared to work. The classroom needs to be redesigned like the workplace and provide tasks/projects that students work on just like they were in an actual workplace. You will find a more engaged student and more satisfied with the course at the end. From January through March, we piloted several project courses (one undergrad and one grad). 100% of the students would rather have a project course than a traditional course. I have done these types of courses for a long time with great success. It is not easy and requires more work by the faculty but we need to do something different if we want different outcomes. More to come ...
The Project Context
Weeks 1-3 Proposal/Requirements
Weeks 3-8 Design/Implementation
Weeks 8-9 Testing/Deployment
Week 10 Project Delivery
There are some key principles that the students need to master. Faculty can provide reading assignments and videos that provides the foundation knowledge needed to do the project. You will find that students will be more motivated to learn because they will need information to do the project. The concepts support the project instead of the project supports the concepts. There is a tendency to add a lot of concepts and you end up just mentioning them with no depth to learning. This forces you to only cover what is needed to do the project. The focus of the course is the student has been hired by X to do Y. Information about the context of the project gives all the information needed to understand the domain the project is in. The context is as much information about the company and other details needed to do the project. We want to students to simulate working and have deadlines for students to meet. Week 10 is presenting the final product/paper to the client. Students learn to write technical documentation such requirements documents, etc. This is reinforced in each course. Some courses might provide a requirements document and the course is focused is on delivering a product. Some courses might be just to deliver a requirements document. The goal is to make the work real to students who are working in a term. For some faculty, this technique seems very foreign.
I always get but the students do not know anything. Well, they are increasing not learning concepts anyway in a traditional model. They are forgetting everything in a few months anyway.
We are not doing our jobs as educators. We need them prepared to work. The classroom needs to be redesigned like the workplace and provide tasks/projects that students work on just like they were in an actual workplace. You will find a more engaged student and more satisfied with the course at the end. From January through March, we piloted several project courses (one undergrad and one grad). 100% of the students would rather have a project course than a traditional course. I have done these types of courses for a long time with great success. It is not easy and requires more work by the faculty but we need to do something different if we want different outcomes. More to come ...
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