CBL - My First Attempt - Epic Fail (Post 1 of 2)

Last year, I had the interesting experience of experimenting for the first time with a Challenge Based Learning project, also known as a CBL.  My experience was, to put it mildly, an epic failure.  We accomplished little, and my students learned little.  I hope that I learned a lot because I am about to try it again.

For those who don't know, a CBL is a project in which students solve a real-world problem.  They are required to communicate, collaborate, think critically, and think creatively.  My experience last year was a failure on every level.  Let me start at the beginning.

Step 1: Present the Challenge - I already had a physics project related to our chapter on electricity, so I thought I would replace it with a CBL about electricity.  I brought in a guest speaker, our IT director.  He had lived in Haiti for several years, and he shared his experiences with them about inconsistent power delivery.  He shared how it was really important for a family to keep their refrigerator running to avoid food spoilage and to keep fans running to blow off disease-carrying insects.  I only had nine students, so I kept them as one group.  I told them we would split into two groups if there were two viable ideas that came out during the brainstorming time.

Step 2:  Begin Brainstorming - Houston, we have a problem.  As my students began to make suggestions, I heard things like:
- "Steal electricity from the Dominican Republic"
- "Go to war with Cuba, and take electricity from them."
- "Let America solve it."
- "Electric eel tank" (I thought he was joking when he brought it up, but he was quite serious.)
- "Tap into a volcano for geothermal energy."

I had hoped that we were just getting the silliness out of the way, so I set a deadline for some serious guiding questions (part of CBL) and suggestions for real plans during the following week.  Then I began hearing from other teachers.  One of them said that a physics student had come to her, distressed that Miss Hawks was trying to get them to "solve the energy crisis."  Huh?

Step 3:  Reboot - Apparently, what I had thought was clear was not clear.  I sent the following e-mail.













Hoping we were at least now clear on the problem, I reset some dates.  We started over.

Step 4:  Communication and Collaboration
Our school schedule is different on Wednesdays because we have chapel services.  For that reason, I have physics the last period of the day.  Since it is harder for them to pay attention to me, I try to make project presentations, work days, and videos on Wednesdays.  For seven weeks, every Wednesday was a project work day.  They could use it for research, collaboration, figuring out timelines, or actually building something.  For the first three weeks, it was silent in my room.  I don't mean it was kind of quiet.  I mean it was exam-time-graveyard-is anyone here today quiet.  These were nine people who were supposed to be collaborating.  At the end of the third week, I asked them about it.  "You want us to talk in class?" was their response.  I told them that most people, when given a project work day, did talk about what they were doing and what they were going to do.  It got a little better.  I started hearing some murmurings about something with a lawn mower motor, so I considered that progress - until the following Wednesday.  One of my students showed up with a bag full of lemons and a pile of wires.  He sat at the table, stripping the insulation off of the wires.  When asked what he was doing, he said, "stripping wires."  Some of the others were baffled because they had a plan with a lawn mower motor that had nothing to do with lemons.  Some were baffled because they hadn't even known there was that plan.

As a teacher, it was naturally my first instinct to jump in and solve this for them.  I knew that wouldn't be best for them and that they needed to have this bizarre conversation, so I wrote a blog post about not helping just to keep myself from getting involved.

Step 5:  Execute Your Plan
As we got further along in the project, I asked the students what their plan was for building this generator device.  "Wait, what?  We have to build it?"  I reminded them that while we were having the electric eel tank / war with Cuba discussion, I had said several times that I didn't think we could do that as a class.  I had told them we would be building their idea, not just having an idea.  They collected some money as a group.  On the last day of the project, one of them had attached a two-inch solar panel to the world's smallest fan.  Another brought in a handheld steam generator, which lit a 10W light bulb.  Needless, to say, I felt like my experiment with CBL was a bit of a failure.

Step 6:  How to I Grade This?
Despite the obvious failure of this attempt, I didn't feel like I could just chuck the entire experience.  I needed to give them some kind of credit for what they did do and, more importantly, require them to reflect on the experience.  I created a list of questions based on those four C's I mentioned earlier - Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. (Apparently, I can't attach a document to this post, so comment if you would like my list of questions.)  They had to take a hard look at themselves.  If they gave it some honest, deep thought, I gave them credit.  If they gave the answer they thought I wanted, they lost points.  I don't know how this will impact them in the future, but I know that John Dewey said, "We do not learn from experience.  We learn from reflecting on experience."

My next post will be more hopeful.  It will tell you what I learned from this experience so that it can go better this year.  We start on Friday, so I will keep you updated.