2019 #VREDU: #DTA: Project-based learning with work-groups: Not just the content: project skills, team skills, self-confidence

Project-based learning with work-groups:  
Not just the content: 
project skills, work-group skills. self-confidence  

A Digital Teaching Assistant (DTA) can support inquiry-based and project-based learning.  A preliminary plan for supporting inquiry-based learning is presented.  This article is explicitly licensed Public Domain (CC0). 

Group project planning template

Click image to enlarge

Project skills? Team skills? Self-confidence?

• Team sports do not cover the whole domain of team skills.
• People also get paid to work in teams.
• Team skills (search)
• Project management skills  (search)
• Self-confidence (Wikipedia)
• Using Group Projects Effectively

Can students really work effectively in groups?

• Not without practice.  The same as with swimming.
• "Sometimes most of the work is done by a few of the students."
• That happens when the project is not effectively structured. 
• "The students lack project management skills."
• Developing skills is what they go to school for.
• "Teams need somebody to manage them."
• Self-managed teams (search)
• Business teams with no experienced leader often have a Group facilitator (Wikipedia)
• That's in business.  Education can't afford that. 
• But it can afford the help of a Digital Teaching Assistant (DTA). 
• And a DTA can be designed by a group facilitator and a project manager.

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The DTA needs a template 

• Inquiry-based learning often leads to a presentation.
• That kind of project is specific enough to have a template
• A DTA can present template elements to be completed by the team.
• These results are intermediate products that show the ongoing work of the team.
• The teacher can evaluate these intermediate products and give feedback to the team.
• The teacher can also evaluate the contributions of each student and give feedback to the student. 

Major elements of project management for a team

• Roadmap: Sequence on planned actions leading to the completed product.
• Agenda: Every meeting must have an agenda and stick to it.
• Action items:  Teams do things by creating action items.
• Acton items taken: Team members take and execute action items.
• Action items completed:  These are the work product of the team.
• Milestones set and Milestones reached.
• DTA can ask for these, with guidance on what to enter.
• DTA can collect the actions items taken and show them to the teacher.
• DTA can deliver feedback from the teacher.
• DTA can collect the action items completed and show them to the teacher.
• DTA can organize what it collects in ways that support teacher evaluation.
• DTA can deliver feedback from the teacher to the group or to individuals.
• Teacher can monitor group progress and asses individual contribution.

Roadmap for inquiry-based learning project

• Starting point is a question.
• Collect ideas about what the answer might look like (brainstorming*).
• Organize the answer-ideas into categories such as most probable or most interesting. 
• Select one or a few answer ideas to evaluate.
• Gather relevant reports bearing on the answer-ideas.
• Evaluate the answer-ideas in the light of relevant reports.
• Revise answer-ideas in light of the evaluation.
• Decide whether an answer-idea is indicated and supportable with current reports.
• If no: go back to the select step and repeat.
• If Yes: go to presentation preparation*
• *Brainstorming and presentation preparation are skill sets that the DTA can help with.

Related

• Self-managed teams (search)
• Virtual teams (Wikipedia)

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License

• Original text in this blog is CC By: unless specified public domain.
• Use as you please with attribution: link to the original.
• All images without attribution in this blog are CC0: public domain.
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• Annotated screenshots made with Jing
• This blog is not affiliated with anything.   Ads are from Google.
• Selby Evans in Kitely and hypergrid, Thinkerer Melville in Second Life.

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