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[music]
This is AEDT2150U,
Digital Technologies and Advanced Teaching Methods.
The title of this particular video clip
is "Interview with Dr. Roland van Oostveen."
The Analysis Questions for this video clip are as follows.
Can you speak about your passion for PBL?
How did you discover it?
In your opinion, what are the most important
theoretical underpinnings of PBL?
We know that you are convinced about the value of PBL for learners.
Can you talk about success stories?
The next slide shows the answers of the interview
with Dr. Roland van Oostveen
in which he answered these analysis questions.
Okay, so we are here on Adobe Connect.
It is August 30th, 2012, and I've invited Dr. Roland van Oostveen
to talk about problem-based learning, which is his expertise.
Can you speak about your passion for problem-based learning,
and tell us a little bit about how you discovered it?
[Roland] Sure. Um, basically I came to problem-based learning,
um, as a result of what I was doing in, uh, a K to 12 setting.
I was teaching in a Toronto school, um, and had been, um, teaching
in, in, uh, high schools for, um, probably a decade, um, and a bit
at the time that I came across, uh,
uh, project-based learning.
And the basic rationale for why I actually decided to try out, uh, PBL
was, uh, from the perspective that I was just not particularly happy
with the intersection between the content that I was teaching,
um, which was science education, uh, biology specifically,
but, uh, I did a little bit of chemistry
and, and physics, uh, on the side as well.
Um, so the students were expected to memorize a lot of facts
and laws and theories and all that kind of stuff,
and it just wasn't hitting them, um, where they lived.
In other words, the relevancy was not necessarily,
uh, particularly there.
So, I came to, uh, project-based learning
as a means of getting students to be involved
in creating their own investigations and then, uh, implementing them
and then coming to their own conclusions.
And as a result of, of that kind of work,
I found that the students become mu- became much more interested
in science education as a whole.
Um, and in fact, at one point, uh,
we were overflowing the number of, um, students
who were taking higher, um, sen- more senior science courses
and, uh, we were, um, needing to send, uh, some of the, uh, English classrooms
out of the classrooms that, uh, they were taking at that point in time
just because we needed more space, um, to accommodate the students
who were taking, uh, these, uh, senior level courses now.
Uh, so it had, had some, uh, great, uh, effects in terms of the way
that students responded to it.
And I, I, um, suggested that, uh, or my hypothesis
is it's because the relevancy, um, wa- was there for them.
They, they saw that science actually made a difference, um,
in terms of their own lives.
Problem-based learning, from my perspective,
is much more about a context situation,
identifying a problem within that context and situation,
and then moving towards
a particular kind of way of addressing that,
coming to their own solution.
But the emphasis while they're doing that
is not on the end, um, th- the end product
that they're actually going to be producing,
but it's a- the process of what are they learning,
how are they learning, how are they engaging
with other individuals while they're goin-
going through that entire process of inquiry about a particular topic.
So the emphasis in problem-based learning,
for me anyways, is much more on process.
[interviewer] Now in, in your opinion
and, and that's a question that's more theoretical,
because I'd like to know what are the most
theoretical underpinnings of PBL
or the underlying theories that need to be kept in mind
when you design a PBL course or activity?
[Roland] Yeah. One of the things, and, and this will come back
to the, uh, the previous question that, that I sort of, uh,
um, could- didn't go into depth in,
the, the one thing that you need to keep in mind
with, uh, problem or project-based learning
is that the students need to be in control.
In other words, um, this is not something-
thi- this is not a method of learning
where it's going to be a didactic process,
the teacher's going to actually be in, in charge
of, um, the entire process,
the teacher determines what is going to be investigated,
how it's going to be investigated, et cetera.
In fact, if you do that, it's, from my perspective anyways,
you're undermining, um, the entire process
of, of problem or project-based learning.
Um, I loo- characterize project and problem-based learning
as being, uh, learning in action.
So the students are actually actively engaged
in the process of learning.
Um, and they need to be able to determine
what, um, the end product is going to be all about, uh,
what is the process that they're going to be dealing with, et cetera.
Um, so really what I'm talking about here,
the underpinnings that, that I'm dealing with
are, uh, underpinnings that are very, very closely related
to social constructivism to a large extent,
because I see problem and project-based learning occurring
within, um, the setting of a group making, um, decisions together
as to exactly what they're going to be doing,
how they're going to be doing it, et cetera.
So they need to be able to actively construct
their own understanding within their own small group
about what it is that they are dealing with,
and a- as they are coming up with these new understandings,
they are, um, e- essentially creating their own knowledge.
So that, that's, um, part of the, uh, the underlying theory.
Now, associated with that, as soon as you've got a group of individuals,
uh, you need to be able to ensure that they are going to be collaborating
rather than just cooperating.
As th- as soon as they move to a cooperation kind of, of phase,
from my perspective, you don't end up with
that negotiation of meaning that is, uh, very, very relevant
and, and required for a- uh, at least in my mind anyways,
required for a, uh, a negotiated understanding
or creation of new, new meanings, et cetera.
Um, so this is very much relying on Piagetian
and then following that, uh, Vygotskian kind of, uh, rationales.
Um, I usually will throw in,
uh, if I'm taking a theoretical stance, uh, about PBL,
I'll also talk about
uh, von Glasersfeld and radical constructivism,
um, because his conceptions of, uh, of the way that we actually construct,
um, understandings within our own minds
are slightly, uh, different from, uh, Vygotsky
and, uh, definitely different from Piaget as well.
And I'll also, um, make, um, connections to other, uh, theories,
uh, for instance situated learning, anchored instruction,
um, they're all relevant, uh, from my perspective anyways,
in, in the whole area of, um, um, PBL.
And then the other piece that I wanted to talk about again
is, uh, um, putting students together in a learning community.
So there I- I'm talking about, uh, CoP, um, so Lave and Wenger,
uh, come to mind, uh, right off the bat.
What I, I actually do within my courses is set a, um, a context
or a situation in front of students,
um, and then it, it is up to the students
within the context of a group of individuals
who are going to be looking at that context or a situation.
If you want- if, if it, uh, makes it a little bit clearer,
perhaps a video case study might be, uh, a little bit,
um, more helpful.
So I actually create video case studies for the students to actually look at.
However, there is no problem
that I'm actually specifically embedding in there.
So, in other words, I'm not determining ahead of time
what the, the specific problem is
that is going to be addressed by the students or the group of students
when they're looking at this particular context or situation.
So I just create the learning environment if you want,
um, and I've gotta ensure that I am, um, siti- situating it
in a real-world context.
In other words, it needs to be a context, um,
that is going to be recognizable by th- the learners
who are coming to that particular, uh, video case study.
They, i- it needs to be complex.
In other words, there's got to be a lot of, um,
um, variables, nuances that are actually going to be,
um, present within the, the particular piece,
and, and the reason for that is relevance.
When we actually go out into the real world, it is complex.
There is- we, we make conscious decisions
as to what it is that we are going to be paying attention to,
and we exclude other things co- by, by conscious decision as well.
So, we need to have that kind of complexity available,
um, just, uh, as, as, um, we would have within the real world
so that we are going to be allowing the learner
to bring their own experiences, their own relevance of their own life,
um, into the, um, into the, the setting, into the video-based case study.
And then, once they have, um, engaged themselves
within th- the video-based case study,
they start to identify their own problem.
[interviewer] We know that you're convinced about the value
of PBL for learners, otherwise you wouldn't do it
and you wouldn't have developed an expertise in that.
And, uh, I- I was wondering if you could talk about success stories,
or at least one story that you could tell, like, as a anecdote
that shows how successful it can be.
[Roland] Sure. Well, I already shared earlier
about, um, the successes that we experienced
when we started to put, uh, project-based learning
into a, uh, a high school setting within, uh, a Toronto public school.
Um, there we ended up, um,
being able to garner many, many students,
uh, who would not necessarily have chosen to take a grade 11
or grade 12 credit in science,
um, a- and that, of course, has a lot of benefits –
not only for the students, but also from the perspective
that we're actually able to hire more science teachers
because we had more sections that they needed to be filled.
So there's all, all kinds of nuances in terms of how you wan- want to,
uh, uh, determine success there.
Um, other success stories, um, basically we're talking about
a, uh, a radical shift in the way that we actually address education
when we start talking about PBL.
Um, because when, when... you, you start taking a look at this,
yo- you're really, um, getting people to, to think about
the role of what a teacher is within an educational context.
[interiewer] Alright. Thank you very much
for, uh, these answers.
Is there anything else you would like to add
to, uh, tie, tie up the interview?
[Roland] Um, I, I'm sort of intrigued about this, this question,
uh, number one under synthesis that you've got there –
how risky is PBL?
And I'm just going to make a comment.
Um, a- as I already suggested, uh, PBL does require a shift
in, in thinking about what teaching actually is as a whole.
In fact, I go so far as to say, in my classes anyways,
that I'm not so sure that I really want
to deal with this entire "T" word.
So, uh, I, I make the suggestion, the hypothesis perhaps,
that we should get rid of the "T" word because it has so many nuances
or so many, um... contexts that, uh, a- assumptions, I guess,
that are, that are brought to play as soon as you use the "teach" word.
Um, if we throw that away,
um, because teaching takes on this other complexity,
it takes on this, this complexity of, uh, facilitating,
asking guiding questions, not giving the answer,
not being, uh, the deliverer of truth,
or the fina- final- arbiter of, uh, information,
or however you want to define what, what teachers
have been in the past.
Um, that I think really, really plays, uh, an important role
in terms of, um, [laughs]
whether teachers want to go down that road or not.
[lecturer] The Synthesis Questions for this video are as follows.
How risky is PBL?
What should a course designer or teacher be reminded of
when designing a PBL course?
If PBL courses sometimes look like other courses,
how can we ensure that we really designed a PBL course?