Part B: Application of TPACK

I have chosen to do a project that relies heavily on both collaboration and application-based learning. In my experience these two pedagogies have proven effective ways of teaching and when students are finished with projects the material they learn takes on meaning. I like to do projects in which the students are actually applying what they learn. In the engineering field in which I teach I really feel this is the only effective way to teach, the students need to understand what the work environment will be like in this field after they graduate. I also make use of student collaboration. Engineering seldom work alone and are typically split into teams to tackle specific problems. I have chosen technology that will facilitate the use of these two strategies. The students will have access to laptops with webcams and Skype for real-time communication with their collaborating partners at other schools. While perhaps lacking the intimate face-to-face communication collaborating via webcam will give the students the feel of what its like to work in the business world in which long distance collaborating is becoming more common to save on travel costs.

With the goal of having students successfully use the design process in design teams the new technologies the students will use will make long distance collaboration a smooth operation. If the students only had access to basic email or blogs to communicate back and forth lots of time would be wasted in determining workloads and goals for the projects. But having webcams to Skype back and forth students can get instant access to group members to troubleshoot problems that will inevitably pop up over the course of their design work. Developing the skills to collaborate electronically via webcam will give these students a leg up as they enter the workplace and are able to show their bosses they can be effective communicators in a variety of mediums.

The goal by the end of this project will be for the students to understand the design process and how design problems are solved in teams. To truly be effective the content that students will be learning needs to be experienced. A student will not be able to recite a lecture word for word, or a passage from a book word for word, but if you ever ask a student what he or she did over the weekend you get a minute by minute breakdown of everything that happened. That is because they were living it and experiencing it. Content needs to be experienced in the same way and that’s what this project does. Instead of me telling the students “in the real-world you would be working in design teams” they are actually collaborating with a group with defined goals and workloads much like what would be taking place in the business world. Instead of taking a written test about what design teams do in the work place when the project is done and the students reflect on their experience they will be able to describe what they did when problems arose or how they created their final presentations.