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By: Trisha Burns, Middle School Facilitator
CSA Central-Columbus Signature Academy Middle School
Columbus, IN
In the beginning of this school year, we had a team meeting to help us navigate how to teach in the midst of COVID. We were all nervous about trying to do PBL in such an unknown environment. How do we teach collaboration from 6 feet apart? How do we have groups if some students are at home? How do we make everything accessible for those who will be out for a couple of weeks. How on earth are we going to make this work? While we were sitting there thinking about all the reasons this couldn’t work, we decided to make an agreement and commit to a pact. No matter what the 20-21 school year throws at us, we will do PBL. We will be flexible, we will be forgiving, and we will do PBL. Making that decision early on, kept us from talking about why it wouldn’t work, and instead allowed us to focus on solutions to make it work. Here are my three favorite strategies we have used this year for making virtual/hybrid PBL work at CSA Central Middle School.
Strategy 1: Virtual Gallery Walk with Google Sites and Forms
Purpose: Peer & Teacher Feedback
Benefits
Give students the opportunity to give other groups feedback
Puts all the rough drafts in the same place for easy access for everyone whether face to face or virtual
Gives the students a deadline to have their rough drafts completed
How it Works
Do you miss having the students be able to walk around and give each other feedback? Here is the virtual work around that we’ve tried at CSA Central. Did you know that in your Google Drive where you would add a new doc or sheet, if you click on “more” you will see Google Sites. Google Sites are a great place for a virtual gallery walk. You can set them up and then give one person in each group editing access to add their final product to their page. What makes it nice is they can embed videos, pictures and Google documents and slides. It’s very user friendly. One thing to note is you do have to make sure things have been shared with anyone with the link so everyone can see them.
Once your students have their pages built, you can “publish.” However there are some settings to make it to where only people in your network can see them. The nice facilitator management piece for this is that you can check everything before it gets published. So if your students are like some of mine, they run a little behind! After you've checked or graded everything and you hit publish, you will see the new changes that are waiting to be published so you can check/grade the late work, but they can still be included in the site.
Once you publish it, share the link with your students. Then you can set up a Google Form to gather their feedback. Now as we were creating the Google Form, we always start with the first and second question being first and last name. Then question number 3 (this one is important), make sure to list all your groups as a multiple choice question for the students to say which group they are giving feedback to. This is important because when they are finished, you can first sort by last name to make it easier for you to grade things like giving and receiving feedback. Then you can sort by group members so you can easily collect the group’s feedback to give to them. If you have them just type in the group members, it will be more difficult for you to find that group’s feedback because the students might have started with a different group member than the rest of their group chose. Once you have those 3 organizational questions, you add your normal gallery walk questions. Maybe you like “I like, I wonder” or “plus/delta” or want to ask specific questions to help them use the rubric and other solution criteria to give their feedback.
How We Used It
The two times we’ve used Google Sites this year were for a rough draft of final products to receive feedback and the other way was for a campaign page for our CAPS council (student council). The students were all able to create their campaigning piece for each candidate and add them all to the same site. Then they did research and used a decision matrix to help them choose the best candidate for their vote. The screenshot above shows the informational pieces that go with the books we raised money for and purchased to donate to local organizations and charities. Each group chose the organization they wanted to donate their books to, but they had to create an informational piece for parents of the children that would receive the books. You can listen to a podcast episode where I share about this PBL, Literacy 4 Life, as well as see the full scope of this PBL on the episode page.
Strategy 2: Comments on Google Docs for Feedback
Purpose: Teacher Feedback
Benefits
Keeps track of the feedback you’ve previously given groups
Creates a list for them to know exactly what they still need to work on
How it Works
Picture this, a room full of groups anxious to receive feedback from their facilitator. It’s chaotic and stressful. As a facilitator, I want to be able to share my time among all groups, and I need to be able to make sure everyone is staying on task. It’s hard. You give a group feedback, scurry on to the next group and the next. The first group has made changes and is ready for more feedback. If you are like me, you forget what you’ve told them. If they are using a Google Doc, Sheets, or Slides, I’ve found it’s easier to comment to provide them feedback. It helps in so many ways, more than just helping me as a facilitator remember what I’ve said in the past. Of course your virtual students need your virtual feedback, but even for the ones in the class this is helpful. I’m sure they forget the things I tell them a mile a minute in a chaotic classroom. In the comments, everyone in the group can see them. And they can even mark them resolved to serve as a checklist. It also minimizes close contact because you can do it at your desk instead of sitting down with the group. Or even for other students to give them feedback, they don’t have to sit together. They can share their Google Doc and use the option for commenting only. Then they can give feedback whether they are in the same room or at home.
How We Used It:
We use this tool all the time! Anytime we have students submit benchmarks to us throughout the scaffolding of any project, we leave comments on their benchmarks. Our comments include any changes we think they need to make before moving on to the next step in the project. The screenshot at the beginning of this section is feedback that I gave a student. He was researching human reactions that would go along with the chemical reaction that he is going to use to educate the community. His overall goal was to teach out about how to develop more positive reactions to bad things that happen to us. We find this tool to very beneficial in providing specific feedback for each student and group.
Strategy 3: Google Meet for Presentations & Group Work
Purpose: Student Presentations & Group Work
Benefits
Keeps students socially distanced as currently is required
Allows students who are doing virtual learning to still participate in presentations
Allows learners to interact with one another to complete PBL project elements
How it Works
We do integrated projects, and we have two teachers working with two different classes. So since that gives us 60 students, we would normally schedule the large group room for our presentations. However, we do not want our groups of students to mix and make a bigger group of close contacts if someone were to test positive for COVID. We also have students who are learning from home. Using Google Meets makes presentations safe! The students present in one of the classes. The other teacher stays in his/her room to watch the presentations on Google Meet with his/her students. Even with our online learners, we schedule their time to be on presentations, so they jump on Google Meet to do their presentations (or their part of a group presentation).
How We Used It:
In the majority of our projects, students have some sort of presentation. The picture above shows a presentation happening in another room that my students are watching in my classroom. We also use Google Meets to allow online learning students to be in groups with students who are here in school. When our students who are learning virtually this year are unable to make the time of presentations, they are allowed to insert a video of them presenting their part of the group presentation.
We have all had to make changes this year, but while we are making changes, we might as well be efficient too. The amount of virtual learning this year has been exhausting for all of us, but I’m also thankful that it has made me a better teacher. Through the ups and downs of this year, we have learned how to remove barriers that we didn’t even know existed before COVID. I believe so much of our students’ future will be working virtually, so the more we can prepare them for that the better off they will be.
*For other eLearning PBL resources check out this page: eLearning and PBL
Trisha Burns is an 8th grade math facilitator at CSA Central Campus in Columbus, Indiana. She is a certified teacher and trainer through the New Tech Network and certified through Magnify Learning to teach Project Based Learning in Indiana. She has taught in the classroom since 2009 and facilitates for Magnify Learning in the summer. When she is not developing and implementing projects in her class room she loves to hang out with her family and scrapbook their memories!
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