Inquiry-based Instruction

College Tech Prep often serves as the research and development arm of Ohio Career-Technical Education. To promote Project-Based Learning as an effective teaching tool in Ohio schools, competitive grants were awarded to 14 Tech Prep consortia. Consortia are developing demonstration models of inquiry-based instruction in information technology, manufacturing and construction. These curricula instructional units will be piloted during the 2007-08 school year and shared with the broader Ohio Career -Technical community. Click here for grant recipients.

Ohio’s initiative has been supported by the Buck Institute for Education (BIE). According to BIE, Project-Based Learning is a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.

This definition encompasses a spectrum of experiences ranging from brief projects of one to two weeks based on a single subject in one classroom to yearlong, interdisciplinary projects that involve community participation and adults outside the school.

The BIE planning model is based on a number of criteria that distinguish carefully planned projects from other extended activities in the classroom. Outstanding projects:

• Recognize students' inherent drive to learn, their capability to do important work and their need to be taken seriously by putting them at the center of the learning process.
   

• Engage students in the central concepts and principles of a discipline. The project work is central rather than peripheral to the curriculum.
   

• Highlight provocative issues or questions that lead students to in-depth exploration of authentic and important topics.
   

• Require the use of essential tools and skills, including technology, for learning, self-management, and project management.
   

• Specify products that solve problems, explain dilemmas, or present information generated through investigation, research, or reasoning.
   

• Include multiple products that permit frequent feedback and consistent opportunities for students to learn from experience.
   

• Use performance-based assessments that communicate high expectations, present rigorous challenges, and require a range of skills and knowledge.
   

• Encourage collaboration in some form, either through small groups, student-led presentations, or whole-class evaluations of project results.

Resources

Edutopia

Buck Institute for Education