# Feedback for PBL/CBL/DI Moderation

Don't assume people know what "DI" learning is. You should at least mention "Direct Instruction" once before resorting to abbreviations.

Overview MAP of what you'll cover how helps put this together much better.

## PBL

- Why have medical schools opted toward problem based learning?
- If at the end you want people to make choices of strategies - it might be helpful to provide a story/rationale for the circumstances of the learning goals that medical school has - and WHY problem-based learning was a good match. This will help your peers gain more understanding of what the important criteria and contexts are that might lead to this choice.

"This graph" process:
So here you talk through each step and what it is. The knowledge you provide is mostly procedural but with some elaboration.

I think your presentation (how you present/communicate) can benefit from better transitions from one idea to the next. For example, you just gave the procedural steps of what PBL looks like. You come from the previous slide of medical school.

It might help then AS you talk about each step to give an example in the medical context around a particular kind of concept that a given problem is around, then the kinds of things students might do to self-direct their inquiries and learning - how they think and build their knowledge to more fully illustrate. THEN - you can TRANSITION by saying - let's look at another example.

PHOTO example:
Not everyone is a photography major so just jumping into the problem statement is abrupt and might not set in their heads. For example: WHY is such a problem "which focal lenght... good for taking... cellphone" is an important or meaningful problem that warrants problem-based strategy.

I might EASE into this by talking more about the context of photography as art discipline to give non-artists more context of the larger purpose, goals, struggles, challenges of learners (and teachers) approaching this. Then you could justify why a TEACHER might pose such a problem. It's important for the audience (your peers) to understand WHY they chose PBL and WHY the teacher chose to make THIS problem (as opposed to any other) the focus of this PBL endeavor. This also ties to the idea of what are you going to have your students do in your activity? Is ANY/EVERY problem whimsically generated a worthy problem for a PBL strategy (which is very time/resource instensive?) Personally I don't know exactly why you chose this problem as the center-piece to start a PBL sequence. I think your audience will also have trouble since they do not know what the PBL experience is aimed at targeting for the learner in the PBL experience.

For example, I think it would be best to give a little background about the photographic CONCEPT that a PBL problem and activities would surround before you start talking about the concrete implementation.

In fact - I would design your example around a specific concept like aperture/shutterspeed relationship in terms of LIGHT and depth of field. Then for each thing (problem, facts, hypothesis) you can create a more specific and directed example and talk about how that problem, fact, hypothesis leads to the conceptual understanding.

Point being - people in our class do not know the concept - so just telling them what a problem is, what happens, what do teachers/students do - will have very little meaning.

1. Tell the audience about the basic concept of how focal length and depth of fields relationship works. Or whatever the main concept is that you think this PBL exercise would help learners discover/learn. (This assumes constant aperture which is also part of the concept if you are talking about the larger concept of understanding how light and the physics of camera features produce the causal end product / photo but we can keep it simple.) Point is, most people in this class won't know when you talk about "what focal length is good for..."
- Example: in medical school if the PBL problem is something like: "Patient x comes into the ER after a car accident feeling nautious but otherwise, no cuts, bleeding, MRI head scan okay so he is discharged. 30 min later he falls into a coma and dies." This isn't an abritrary problem. It's a problem specifically designed to get learners to investigate the concept of the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems and to further explore and understand these systems to come to the conclusion that the patient died of internal bleeding that was missed in the examination. Now that you know what concept i'm after, if I talk about PBL procedurally you'll have a better idea of where each step and activities within fit.
3. Tell the audience why this concept is important for photography learners and what is so challenging about it. For example, if your problem is "which focal length is _good_ (which is vague) for taking half-length portraits by cellphone" there are ideas packed in here that your peers won't know how to make sense of. Give an example of what kind of knowledge and understanding (or MIS-understanding) would lead to different results and why a particular understanding leads to good choices that lead to the good result (show - cause your peers won't have this in their heads as reference.) If you can show what the challenge is in understanding and how that leads to the better photo given this specific circumstance, THEN talk about the example in terms of PBL procedures - each step will not only be more clear - but you'll also be able to talk about what each step does cognitively in the learners head toward that end goal.
4. Show more concrete examples for each step of PBL - what the learner or teacher or both would do to ILLUSTRATE what it looks like in action. Refer back to the main conceptual understandings the PBL session is targetting and how that informs learner and teacher actions/interactions. You have some examples but remember - PBL process cannot be illustrated in 5 step bullet points. Talk about how student conversations might lead to the hypothesis. Or how teacher support might have led to understanding knowledge deficiencies. What kind of contexts and supports would help each step and what's it look like? Illustrate the endeavor more richly.

Right now your PBL example as you present it is somewhat shallow and I think what the culprit is is that you give a surface example of each step but that example isn't tied to the contextual rich actions and happenings that should be happening in each procedural step of PBL. The summary of what a step is does not indicate the actual cognitive work that goes into each step. It's like students will magically be able to fill in examples for each step. For example, what do discussions look like? What do arguments look like that lead to people negotiating understanding and directing research? How do troubles arise and where that lead to teachers intervening with support to guide students?

FYI - I could design a PBL experience for a photo class around the concepts of LIGHT and the aperture/ss/iso. I think PBL is actually a really interesting way of approaching it and could be a great strategy. But since you're presenting it - you need to think of it from the shoes of someone without understanding of 1. the PBL concepts, 2. the domain (photo) concepts. Watch the Medical school PBL example to get an idea of how they talk about and provide a rich idea of how PBL works.

ALSO - another thought. I'm not against you using resources like Youtube videos that can do this work for you. For example, if you can find a rich video that shows PBL in the context of your photo concept - show that to the class (can't be super long though) then refer to it to elaborate on what was seen that's another way you can paint a more meaningful picture.

## Case-based Learning

So for this section - I really want you to consider the feedback I provided on the prior section as ways to better embed this example in more meaning - for our peers who might not have a lot of domain understanding of photography.

So for your slide showing the case-based procedure diagram:

This diagram shows how people THINK their way through cases. I think it would help to talk about what an example THOUGHT might look like as they go through the case based REASONING process. This might be something you can illustrate with your example (and you would REFER to this diagram to help your audience understand where in the reasoning process they are at.) BTW - the text you have beside the diagram and the diagram itself don't really relate to each other except in theme. If this slide is about case based reasoning - what can you say or summarize so they understand more about reasoning? If it's about the nature of stories how can we help give people better understandings about the power of stories?

Your EXAMPLE:

You just talked a lot about how case-based learning is about the power of stories. But your example isn't really about that. You could argue that a photo+metadata about that photo is a small(very small) case, but I think that doesn't really hit home the point of case-based narratives and how learners would COGNITIVELY engage with it. To just use an example to show what the difference is between focal length and angle of view might not necessitate an entire case. However, if you're talking more about the complex thinking that goes into the decision of why people might come to different decisions about this concept...

IDEA: If we were learning about photography, particularly the concept of depth of field, angle-of-view as it relates to the mechanical aspects of aperture and SS - how might a case (a STORY) help people to learn more about it?

Instead of just an image - I would provide an example of... a story case that makes photography learners think about these concepts.

Case scenario: Blah blah blah - two photographers - blah blah blah - photographer B's photo was chosen for the cover of nerd magazine.

Case Photographer A: "When I took this photo, here's what I noticed... what I wanted to achieve... my decision... how I felt about the end result... etc."

Case Photographer B: "I wanted to achieve X in my photo so the way I thought about it was this... Obviously it's a balance between... and I deliberated on it... but at the end I chose to _______ because _______ (as it relates to concept.) I think it turned out all right although it might have been cool to do _______ because it would have led to _______. etc."

So now we have two rich stories of the photographers' POV and THOUGHT PROCESS THOUGHT PROCESS THOUGHT PROCESS. (Back to this later.) This is something that then a case-based learning experience could use to guide the reader/learner through in various ways. How would we get students to think about the cases in various ways to help understanding of the concept? How would the teacher help learners understand the concept with the use of these cases? etc.

I think with each of your examples if you can think more beyond what the STEP in the strategy looks like, and describe how that step looks beyond the surface step in terms of learner THINKING/COGNITION, or activities that trigger more THINKING - how do learners think think think through these procedures? It will help fill out what these strategies are really about. Long story short - I think if you can paint a richer picture of how a story would be used to facilitate discussions, the kind of discussions, the kinds of questioning, the kinds of debates, the kinds of teacher supports that lead to understanding, as well as production of more mental cases for future reasoning - that would help.

BTW - in both examples you use the term "photo GOOD/BAD/BETTER" but this is another very difficult concept for learner photographers (not to mention people not learning to be photographers) to grasp. It goes beyond just knowing this kind of depth of field is "good" but more about WHY a choice of shallow depth of field might have X effects on the viewers attention, emotions, etc. Larger idea of composition and rationale. E.g. a common concept students use in photography is thirds composition. But knowing to place subjects at 1/3 or 2/3 of the frame isn't necessarily always "good." It depends on whether they want to emphasize the subject, or balance it out with the background, or accentuate the invisible motion, line directions, etc. to create a larger message etc. We don't have to go this deep but I think just saying good bad - the class won't know what you're talking about unless you contextualize it a bit.

PS - Are all of you somewhat knowledgable about photography as a domain or are you relying on the domain knowledge of particular people in your group? Just mentioning becaues I think designing examples in a domain when you're not a domain expert can always be challenging.

Case-based Summary Slide:
I think this can be a good guide for you to think about.
- Case based learning provides opportunities for deeper exploration (can you illustrate that in prior example? What does deeper exploration look like?)
- Students: Analyzing/applying concepts (can you illustrate that in prior examples?)
- Teachers: requires careful preparation and facilitation (can you illustrate what careful facilitation looks like? when/how?)

PS - I think for many of these - thinking of what do 1. students, 2. teachers do and why as it relates to student THINKING >>> understanding might be another good way of making these richer.

Case-based learning vs Problem-based SLIDE
I think this helps wrap up the two different approaches. With the things you're saying here - use this as a guide on your other prior sections.
- Do your prior sections sufficiently illustrate what you're saying are the differences in this slide?

## Direct Instruction

:::danger
I'm *really* concerned that you're not using the correct term for one of the main idea of your presentation.

***Direct* Instruction vs. Design instruction?**

It'd be one thing if it was a one-time typo. But you call it "design" everywhere.
:::

That said - and this is independent of my prior comment. I think PBL and CBL are probably more interesting overall with regards to being more new to you-all. Focusing more time on just PBL and CBL might be a reasonable and practical way to cut down the breadth of content you're trying to cover and give you more space/time to focus deeply on PBL and CBL - especially if you spend the time going through my feedback and incorporating those suggestions. I think the larger presentation and activity will benefit if you spend time really making the PBL and CBL sections strong and focusing the activity also around just these two. FYI - this has nothing to do with the quality of this section. It summarizes DI sufficiently. But design is often about evaluating things once we get a sense of what the larger picture looks like and right now - I think if I had to make cuts (and I always do in my own designs) this is how I'd go about it. It might be okay to talk a little about the three and make the DI portion a really short summary at the beginning - but then to tell the audience that you'll be focusing specifically on PBL and CBL.

This choice of course is up to you - but I'm just saying how I think about it. Having too many topics can be overwhelming and I like the possible direction that the PBL and CBL portions might take if you spend the remaining majority of your efforts pushing those sections forward exclusively as a team.

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# Activity

I think your activity is still very premature.

> A senior HR is giving a lesson to novice HRs about how to selecting the right person for the position.
> Make some decisions about which strategy you might use to design a learning experience around that target.

One thing you need to think about is - how do you imagine this conversation/discussion in groups unfolding?

A discussion will happen no matter what kind of prompt I provide. But what kind of specific thinking about PBL or CBL (or DI) would you want people to have?

Does this prompt automatically provide such a support to GUIDE the pending discussion about the critical aspects of PBL or CBL you want them to have?

Also - similar to some of the other feedback I provided - not everyone here is going to be an HR expert. So your audience/peers won't know what the learning aspects - goals, objectives, etc. should be in order to make decisions or talk about this scenario in the context of PBL / CBL / etc.

Are you going to provide them with more information? Some structured materials to guide them from each step of thinking? Or where to think?

As it is - there is an ASSUMPTION that pointed and meaningful discussion will happen if you just put them into a breakout room. But I think you need a more specific strategy as moderators as to what you want to cover in the discussion and how.

Historically (not just this year) some groups have come up with:
- Bullet points of things they want to make sure each discussion covers.
- Fill-in worksheets to guide discussions.
- Specific cues/prompts they would use in discussion.
- References to slides that will help the discussion at certain points.

Your after-class question:
- What is favorite approach?
- I like A more than B. Because it's easier.
- Is this the kind of answer you want? What kind of answer are you hoping to get?
- How do you get it? (through what specific guidance, supports, etc.?)

Generally asking what your favorite is elicits superfluous opinions. You'd be better off asking:
- What strategy did you use and why?

Maybe the way to do the activity is... SUGGESTIONS:

You can use your HR scenario. But what I would do is narrow this down to a few particular concrete learning concepts in HR. If you don't know much about this domain - I'd pick something where you do and something that won't be too difficult for your audience to understand. If you think they won't understand, you need to provide background that they do.

I think your scenario should have more details about the scenario context. Organization, environment, learner, manager, teacher, resources, etc. Actual information about what kind of challenges the organization is having that is leading to this need to create a learning experience.

Without this specification articulated - you're asking your audience to make decisions in a vacuum which is hard. If you all have this solidly in your head you can provide it through moderation on the fly but I find *for most students this is too much to juggle* and I highly recommend you actually write out the scenario so all members of your moderating team are working from the same anchor.

Your scenario when you create it - you should have the concepts that could be learning goals and objectives relatively clear in your mind so that it is represented in your scenario. This will also help you to moderate discussions around case or problems since you know what the design of a case or problem experience should specifically target.

So - I recommend you come up with a specific GOAL (using last week's material) and perhaps some OBJECTIVES as well and articulate it CLEARLY as part of the scenario before discussion. This will also improve the discussion as your peers will know what they are solving concretely (i.e. the decision of PBL or CBL and why). For your objectives, I'd think about - what kind of objective might be a good one in a PBL context? What might be a good one in a CBL context? What might be a good one either way? so that again - you're supporting your peers analysis and your own preparation of how you can talk about the scenario in the discussion toward the ends you want to reach.

I think some end-goals for us (the discussion) might be:
- Students can provide sound reasons for why they'd choose PBL or CBL as a strategy for particular learning objectives.
- Students can provide examples of specific prompts, cues, supports, etc. to describe how the implementation of the strategy chosen might look when designed an deployed.
- Specifically: students should also be able to give examples of what kinds of things teachers and students would do during the process of a PBL or CBL experience. What, how, and why.

At the end of the day if your peers can negotiate your materials, the discussion, to reach the end points above - it would be a good day.

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Last point - polish the surface presentation of this up.