The PBL process continued this week. It was an important week as the introduction of the Driving Question and its sub questions were discussed. Edutopia states that the importance of the Driving Question in a PBL project are essential to both teachers and students. From a teacher’s point of view, the Driving Question “helps initiate and focus the inquiry of the project.” As well, “it communicates the purpose of the project in one open-ended question.” From a student point of view, It “creates interest and a feeling of challenge” so that even the most reluctant student thinks, "Hmmm, I guess that sounds kinda cool." In essence, it guides the work. It gives the “boring activities” some relevance and purpose. It makes the students understand the answer to the important question of why are we doing this?
The Driving Question I came up with for my project is How do we, as young entrepreneurs, create a successful business venture within the confines of our school? Here is a link to the overview of the project. This question allows for the entire curricular standards of the business course to be met. The students will need to learn about all aspects associated with running a business from startup through liquidation, including financing the business, marketing the business, working the business and closing the business. In the end, students will have learned different aspects of entrepreneurship. All important but different for all participants.
The use of a Tubric - available on the BIE website - was used in the development of the Driving Question. I have added this resource to my PBL project resources and, as well, my own resources for this course. The course used many resources for the development of a Driving Question. These included a webinar and an ePortfolio and are also available in my resources page.
According to the Webinar, The Driving Questions should follow three main criteria:
- The question must be “engaging.” The Driving Question must create excitement for the student. They need to understand what the project is about and its relevance to the real world and the individual student.
- The question must be “open-ended.” The Driving Question must be more than a basic question that a Google search would be able to find. It must allow for unique answers from each student and the final answer must be detailed and reflected upon.
- The question must be “aligned with curricular standards.” The Driving Question must be written to allow for the content, knowledge and skills to come out in the project. It must be aligned with the standards however, not written in such a direct way.
Other things that should be present in an effective Driving Questions are the following: It must be objective, focussed and answerable through research, practice, collaboration and reflection. Sub questions should also be present. These should be used to help in the answer to this question through the use of mini lessons as each sub question relates to a curricular standard expected of the Business Opportunity course. All will relate to running a business and answering the Driving Question. The individual lessons associated with these sub questions will lead to a far better understanding of business and its eventual success.
As second part to this week’s learning was to use a technology based organizer to help brainstorm ideas for the project. I used a program called Gliffy. Although I have never used this program before, this brainstorming presentation helped to organize my thoughts for this PBL project.
References
Drake, R.J. Driving question. ePortfolio. Retrieved Feb. 14, 2016 from http://www.jetspost.com/eportfolio/pbl/driving_questions.htm.
Larmer, J. & Olabuenage, G. Driving question - Webinar. Retrieved Feb. 13, 2016 from http://bie.org/object/webinars_archived/driving_questions.
Miller, A. (2015). How to write effective driving questions for project-based learning. Edutopia.
Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/pbl-how-to-write-driving-questions-andrew-miller.
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