Description
Project-based learning is a method of inquiry-based learning where students are required to develop an end product using their knowledge of a specific topic. In most cases, the product is directly applicable or usable in the real world. Larmer and Mergendoller (2010) cite seven requisites that a good project-based learning experience must have: 1) A need to know 2) A driving question 3) Student voice and choice. 4) 21st century skills 5) Inquiry and innovation 6) Feedback and Revision 7) Opportunity to present work publicly.
Higher order thinking levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are strongly represented throughout students’ engagement with well-designed projects. Furthermore, a complete pedagogical approach is demonstrated in that all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are visible and build off of one another. If the project is broken down into specific tasks as they relate to taxonomical levels, students are required to: assess (Evaluation) the content of several articles, compare (Analysis) each article to the course content, identify (Knowledge) an article that directly relates to the course content, summarize (Comprehension) the article, and apply (Application) their course content knowledge to (Synthesize) create a solution to the problem.
Link to example artifact(s)
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- Instructor: Dr. Steven Hornik, Kenneth Dixon School of Accounting at the University of Central Florida
- Course Title: ACG6145 Advanced Accounting Information Systems
- View the “Cybersecurity” Flipboard magazine here: https://flipboard.com/section/cybersecurity-bQ0RcU
Instructor Testimony
The learning experience is a semester long project-based learning activity using Flipboard as a medium. Flipboard is a platform that allows users to gather articles of interest, video clips, GIFs, and other media sources from the Internet, and organize those sources into a magazine. The content is viewable on any iOS or Android device, and can also be viewed through a web browser. Users can interact with one another within the generated magazine. Users can also interact with the content. By clicking on the article of interest, the user is linked to the original source.
The activity is designed to facilitate student understanding about course content in relation to the real world setting. In order to maintain control of the Flipboard magazine, Professor Hornik created it through his individual Flipboard account. He then invited the students to the “Cybersecurity” magazine as collaborators. Weekly, the students were asked to locate current articles on the Internet about cyber-security breaches that have occurred and that are news worthy. The students were asked to add the article to the Flipboard magazine. In the comments section, the students provided an executive summary of the article, a detailed summary of the article, analyzed the breach, and created a possible solution that would have blocked the breach and solved the issue.
Link to scholarly reference(s)
Larmer, J., & Mergendoller, J. R. (2010). Giving students meaningful work: Seven essentials for project-based learning. Educational Leadership 68(1), 34-37.
Citation
Bennett, L., & deNoyelles, A. (2015). Use mobile apps to facilitate project-based learning. In B. Chen & K. Thompson (Eds.), Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository. Orlando, FL: University of Central Florida Center for Distributed Learning. https://topr.online.ucf.edu/using-mobile-apps-to-facilitate-project-based-learning/.