Supporting Teachers’ Implementation of Technology-Enriched PBL: What Research Tells Us

Framework

As guided by constructivism and social constructivism learning theories, problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered approach that emphasizes solving problems in richly contextualized settings and encourages learners to actively seek knowledge in a self-directed way (Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Savery, 2019). In PBL, students take charge of their own learning, work collaboratively in small groups, and learning occurs as a result of their efforts to research, analyze, explain, and solve meaningful problems (Barrows, 2000; Hmelo-Silver, 2004).

Research on PBL has shown it is an effective instructional approach that promotes the development of problem-solving skills and can result in better long-term content retention than lecture-based instruction (Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Merritt, et al., 2017). In a literature review of PBL use in mathematics and science classrooms, Merritt et al. (2017) found that in K–8 grades PBL improved student academic achievement and attitudes. As an example, one of the reviewed studies showed PBL had significant positive effects on student academic achievement (F (1,112) = 46.78, p < .001) and knowledge retention.

However, PBL implementation in K-12 classrooms has encountered many challenges (Ertmer & Simons, 2006). One of the main challenges is teachers are to act as facilitators to guide student learning rather than to give direct instruction (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2015). This role shifting from a knowledge provider to a facilitator is not easy for all teachers who want to use PBL. Some teachers are not comfortable with this facilitator role, others lack the facilitation techniques, and also many teachers do not have sufficient resources to do a full PBL lesson. In addition, implementing PBL is time consuming and requires teachers to do extra work in preparation. This places additional time and resource demand on teachers whose daily schedules are already full.

That is, while PBL has been shown to be effective, there is not enough research examining how to support K–12 teachers to deal with the challenges they encounter during their PBL implementation (Kim & Hannafin, 2011). More research is needed on actual examples of technology-enriched PBL implementation in K–12 classrooms (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Ward & Lee, 2002).

Methods

To address the two research questions, this study consisted of two phases and used the same PBL environment as the research context. Phase 1 addresses research question #1: How to support teachers to address the facilitation challenge they encountered through a dashboard? Phase 2 addresses research question #2: What motivated middle school teachers to implement a technology-enriched PBL program in their classrooms?

PBL Program as Research Context

The research context for this study is a technology-enriched PBL program designed for sixth-grade space science as a curriculum unit for about fifteen 45-minute class sessions. Students take on a role of young scientists and are charged with the mission to rescue and finds new homes for six alien species, each with different characteristics, because their homes have been destroyed. To accomplish this mission, students need to engage in a variety of problem-solving activities such as researching the aliens’ requirements for life and analyzing species habitable temperature ranges, and the basic atmospheric composition needed for survival. To identify a suitable home for the aliens, students must discover critical scientific characteristics of the planets and moons in our solar system by querying provided databases and collecting direct observations using simulated probes to test their hypotheses. During this problem-solving process, students engage in planning and decision-making. The PBL program is designed in such a way that not all information is readily available. Students must determine how to use the provided resources efficiently and then recommend an appropriate choice for relocation along with their justification. To assist students’ inquiry process, a set of ten technology-enriched tools are provided (Table of tool descriptions and Figures of tools will be provided in the full paper).

Phase 1:
To address the first research question, we worked closely with middle school teachers who have used the PBL program previously to create a dashboard utilizing emerging technologies so teachers can view their students’ progress in real time, monitor their students’ progress, and facilitate or intervene as needed.

The process of creating this teachers’ dashboard was iterative and went through several steps. We first observed how students and teachers used the technology-enriched PBL program to get ideas of what to include in the dashboard. We then created prototypes to get teachers’ feedback and made necessary changes and adjustments. Currently, this teacher dashboard is fully implemented and integrated with PBL program.

When teacher start this PBL program with their students, they can access the dashboard at any time. First, the dashboard displays a tiled screen that shows overall statistics on a teacher’ classes such as which of the built-in tools a class has used and for how long, the average of tool usage for each day and average time over the entire period of use. A “Class View” page displays students’ overall activities for each class and the progress of the class including which students have submitted their final solutions to the problem (Figures illustrating these dashboard features will be provided in the full paper). This allows a teacher to get a quick glance of her class’s overall progress. By clicking on each student, the teacher can view the detailed information on how each student uses program features and information a student has entered to find out where she is during the problem-solving process. For example, clicking on the program feature “Notes” for student Amy will show the notes Amy has taken, and clicking on the program feature “Probes” will show how many probes Amy has sent to which planet and her rationale. This way, a teacher can not only know how her classes are doing in general, but also know how each student is progressing at any given time. This facilitates teachers’ monitoring process significantly and enables teachers to know in real-time which student is behind and needs help.

Phase 2
To address the second research question, we employed the qualitative research design (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2013) and interviewed eight middle school teachers (female= 6, male = 2) who used the technology-enriched PBL along with the newly designed dashboard. We wanted to find out what they thought of the dashboard and what motivated them to implement technology-enriched PBL in their classrooms. These teachers are from four middle schools in the southwestern part of US and three of the schools have a high percentage (over 60%) of low-income and minority populations and one mirrored the typical ethnicity distributions in US middle school student populations as reported by Hussar et al. (2020).

The data were semi-structured interviews with the participating teachers and each interview lasted about 30-mins. Each teacher used the technology-enriched PBL program when he/she was scheduled to teach a space science unit given their school calendars. The teachers used the program as their primary teaching material for the space science unit. Interviews were conducted after teachers finished using the environment. Interview questions included:

1. What is your experience in using the dashboard of this PBL program?
2. Why do you use this PBL program?
3. What do your students say about their experience with PBL?
4. What do you, teachers, think of PBL as a way to teach space science?
5. How do you compare using PBL with the regular way of your teaching space science?

Interviews were first transcribed. They were analyzed following the qualitative data analysis framework by Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2013) and the constant comparative method (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Each interview was coded by two researchers. Each researcher coded the responses independently and created a list of codes and definitions of each code. Then two researchers compared the coding and revised/refined the coding. The disagreements were discussed until 100% inter-rater reliability was reached.

Results

The teachers overwhelmingly welcomed the presence of the dashboard. They indicated it helped them monitoring their students’ progress efficiently and also assisted them to do assessments. Many teachers recognized the importance of problem-solving process and wanted to be able to assess the process, not just assigned one final grade for a PBL lesson. The information displayed in real-time from the dashboard helped teachers to know where their students were at and what features the students used. One teacher stated: “I loved to see the information students submitted in the program, as a project grade I need to see their results at every step. This definitely helps.” Another teacher said, “It’s very easy to use. Very helpful.” Teachers also commented on using the dashboard helped their facilitation. For example, one teacher commented, “Some of the kids are struggling with sending probes. In the past we cannot see how the kids designed the probe after a failure of data returned. Now I can see everything and it’s easier to teach if we had evidence.” Another teacher said, “I looked what my students entered and say have you thought about that, or what if you consider…” By having the information easily available to the teachers, they can intervene at appropriate times. One teacher mentioned it took her a while to find some specific features in the dashboard.

The interview data revealed three main factors that motivated these teachers to use this technology-enriched PBL: (a) PBL pedagogy aligns with teachers’ beliefs, (b) they observed their students’ learning using PBL, and (c) use of technology.

Teachers were motivated because they believed PBL emphasized student-centered learning and was effective approach to teach problem-solving. It offered opportunities where students were “doing their own discoveries” and take charge of their own learning and collaborated with others. For example, one teacher said, “I found this was a great way to teach space science. Students were able to learn about celestial bodies without any type of lecturing.” Another teacher stated, “We really like it - it is great for problem solving because it is a real-world application. It is a collaborative effort. It really shows the kids that if you don't do your individual part, then you are letting your group down.” One teacher further explained:

Students have to learn at the highest level of inquiry because they have to actually come up with what the problem is on their own after watching the introductory video. It simulates what real scientists have to do to learn information to make informed decisions. … and it was amazing to see them teach one another during this step about the solar system and what they knew about the aliens.

These teachers commented that although they spent extra time in preparation for teaching using the PBL program, they were motivated when they saw their students really enjoyed using the program and learned science concepts and problem-solving skills during the process. Teachers indicated their students liked the experience as “it is so fun. Hardly seems like work.” One teacher shared an example:” I had a child with cerebral palsy. During this PBL lesson, he hasn't gone to an aide, he says that his biggest thing from the three-week program was not having the aide, and really liked to work on his own. He appreciated that. I mean it's amazing. It makes me cry.“ Another teacher said, “The students really enjoyed it! 28% of 90 students said that this unit was their favorite of the year. Out of all the things, students enjoyed learning about the aliens and sending probes the most.”

However, using this PBL program requires significant amount reading, and not all students progress at the same speed. One teacher shared, “Those who are strong readers and like challenges really get into it. But those who struggle more in general tend to lose some initial excitement during the individual research time - although this is a small group of students.”

The teachers also pointed out their students liked using technologies and the media rich environment with graphics, video, audio, music, and simulations. “[The program] is using technology and provides an engaging way for students to learn and believe they are actually designing probes. The information about the aliens provides them a more engaging simulation to make the learning more fun and interesting,“ according to the teachers.

Importance

This study is significant in that it fills the research gap by presenting a solution to the PBL facilitation challenge teachers have encountered using modern technologies (Kim & Hannafin, 2011). It provides an example of how teachers implement technology-enriched PBL in K–12 classrooms (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Ward & Lee, 2002). It also reveals students who read at a lower grade level need additional help. The findings also showed important factors that motivated teachers to use PBL. This research should be of wide interest to ISTE audience such as teachers, technology specialists, and curriculum developers, who are seeking concrete technology integration examples and are interested in implementing PBL in their classrooms using technology.

References

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