Tuesday, 26 April 2011

Why Project-Based Learning Can Improve Motivation And Relevance In Your Classroom

Project-based learning has been defined as a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning in the classroom designed to engage students by investigating interesting problems. Projects have a lot of potential to help people learn of all ages. There are a number of factors in the design of curriculum that can affect motivation and thinking processes. Project-based learning is not without its difficulties for both students and teachers. Technology can be employed to support the learning efforts of both students and teachers as they work on their projects. This article briefly describes these topics in greater detail.
Teachers are concerned about motivation as well as technical issues of thinking and learning. Unlike psychologists, teachers have a requirement to integrate both dimensions in classroom. If the teacher wants to go beyond rote memorization and engage students in sophisticated challenges that require deep understanding the teacher must be concerned with motivation, because this motivational energy will help students processed in the face of challenging lesson material.
Researchers have found substantial evidence that focusing on relatively long term problems that require meaningful engagement with challenging subjects that integrate ideas from a number of diverse disciplines in which is supported by practical and useful technology can help overcome many classroom challenges and prepare students for practical and relevant skills for the future.
There is considerable evidence that there is a strong link between student motivation and mental engagement in the classroom. In all of these studies it was crucial to define the difference between learning and performance, with the primary distinction being that learning is engaged with education for its own sake as a valued and state, rather than as a means to achieve an external goal like approval, grace or a score on a test. Motivation is easier to generate and sustain when aligned with education as a legitimate and valued goal.
Problem-based learning at once allows groups of students to collaborate, to apply themselves in real-world challenges that demonstrate the relevance of the material, explore and integrate information from across multiple domains and allow the teacher to adopt the role of facilitator and co-learner rather than as the single point of expertise in the classroom.
It is generally considered easier to develop contextual knowledge when working on complex problems than it is when considering concepts in the abstract. This adds to the motivation of project-based learning. In this framework, teachers are well employed as a master craftsman who provide just enough scaffolding in order to ensure students can remain on task and productive rather than floundering without guidance. Judicious application of scaffolding allows the teacher to maintain an appropriate level of complexity without sacrificing student motivation or focus attention.
Project-based learning, therefore, can be an appropriate way for teachers to generate collaborative motivating an interesting learning environments inside their classroom that will contribute to raising and maintaining student motivation with interesting and relevant material.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com

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