I feel like articles are just stumbling onto the reason why many sciences have coursework and labwork as part of the curriculum.
The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
131–136 of 136 posts
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#132I think the author is totally wrong and is just trying to sell some classes. I learned 3/4 of my skill set by coming up against examples when joining a work project or coming upon problems when trying to fix things. There is no functional difference between practice and performance when it comes to writing software, only the goals of the exercise.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure you don't understand how co-op programs work at universities. You actually take the exact same courses as the "academic thinking" students, you just also alternate with work in a relevant industry. Can you explain why you think taking courses and working flipping burgers or some other summer job is better than taking those same courses and being mentored by practicing engineers, programmers, scientist…
I am assuming that those 18 month of work experience will be at the expense of coursework.
No, you take the exact amount of courses as anyone else would. You can do a 5-year program with 3 co-ops or a 4-year program with 2. Of course, you also don't have summer breaks and there is less time off between the fall and spring semesters.
I'd also like to point out that if you argue college should be about creating academics, plenty of my friends went to my school and went on to become one. They simply used their co-ops to do research, either on campus, for another university, or for a company.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Group project communication and work communication are different. I have rarely had problem to communicate in work, but group projects were usually crap. The worst about group project is when one person picks all the interesting tasks and learns, others don't. Which means that people who know least and need practice most, are the ones that are pushed to anciliary roles with only little practice happening.
> The worst about group project is when one person picks all the interesting tasks and learns, others don't. The reason this happened is because of a lack of group communication skills. I would blame your instructor for not pre-addressing problems like this before things got started, or not checking in at all.
Pre-addressing these problems won't make shy person instantly not shy. It wont make controlling person not controlling nor change someone who is not self aware or don't think much about others.
While these exist in workplace too, setup is different, goals are different and dynamic is completely different. And you can usually find yourself non-group setup with own accountability and tasks.
Most important difference is that in school you are supposed to learn and this turns whole thing to waste of time where you don't learn - and then you miss stuff you was supposed to learn.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The worst about group project is when one person picks all the interesting tasks and learns, others don't. The reason this happened is because of a lack of group communication skills. I would blame your instructor for not pre-addressing problems like this before things got started, or not checking in at all.
Pre-addressing these problems won't make shy person instantly not shy. It wont make controlling person not controlling nor change someone who is not self aware or don't think much about others. While these exist in workplace too, setup is different, goals are different and dynamic is completely different. And you can usually find yourself non-group setup with own accountability and tasks. Most important difference is…
> Pre-addressing these problems won't make shy person instantly not shy.
Of course. But it at least sets the expectation that these things need to be talked about. Otherwise students won't know what to do, or even realize what's happening until after the work division has been decided.
Not just that, but a competent instructor should have checked in with the groups to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen.
Re: The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the main argument for project-based learning is ability to make learning interesting James already addresses this assertion in the very first sentence of the blog post. And the second sentence.
Which first sentence? The first sentence doesn’t have anything to do with that argument. Neither does the second.
The first two sentences EXPLICITLY state the type of arguments that James is responding to. Click on the links in those first two sentences and read the arguments.
The "main argument" of those posts -- i.e., the posts James is responding to, is not that "project-based learning... make[s] learning interesting".
That may be your main argument, but it's not the argument that the people who James is responding to are (mainly) making.