Project Based Learning Pathways
What's New?
If you visit this site regularly, you'll notice that it is in the process of a long over due upgrade on content. I have decreased the number of links above to five to make the site easier to navigate. New content is now available in the How To tab to help you learn how I create projects. I have also added a logistics area so that you can learn how I administer projects in face to face and online classes.
On most pages you'll also find links to feedback forms. Use these forms to provide me with your thoughts on the web pages, projects, and any other issues you might find here.
PBL Pathways is designed to help faculty at community colleges and other institutions incorporate realistic problems in their courses that challenge students and help them to develop critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills. Although this site is geared toward mathematics, the strategies could be applied in almost any discipline
What Is It? This section describes many of the approaches to PBL including my own.
How To describes my approach through the development of a project in Brief Calculus.
Logistics describes how I am able to teach the learning objectives in my courses and use projects to assess the student learning of those objectives. A calendar is available for the Students and Teacher 2 Project under the links on this page.
Projects contains an evolving number of projects that can be used in mathematics courses at all levels of community college. Each project page contains a student letter, data and any scaffolding resources for the project.
Browse the site and "steal" ideas! I encourage you to use any of the documents. If you do, please let me know . A little appreciation goes a long way toward keeping the website dynamic and useful.
This site is motivated by a simple standard in Crossroads in Mathematics: Standards for Introductory Mathematics Before Calculus published by the American Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges (AMATYC) in 1995:
Mathematics faculty will provide learning activities, including projects and apprenticeships, that promote independent thinking and require sustained effort and time s o that students will have the confidence to access and use needed mathematics and other technical information independently, to form conjectures from an array of specific examples, and to draw conclusions from general principles.
I was also inspired to include real applications and technology in the projects by the
CRAFTY Project. In particular, the chapter on Business and Management recommends
- Realistic business problems. We do not expect mathematics faculty to develop problems on their own. We envision a partnership, in which business faculty contribute.
- Solutions that make use of business technology, such as spreadsheets.
- Real (or realistic) data sets.
- Problem motivated modeling.
- Development of students’ abilities to express ideas symbolically.
- Sensitivity analysis.
I hope that the projects on this site fulfill the recommendations set forth in these two important documents.
