University of Baghdad
working to be active partner at the
Proposed Initiative of MIT LINC,
Blended
Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies
BLOSSOMS
Learning
International Networks Consortium
http://linc.mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA
We envisage an MIT-sponsored Open
Educational Resource (OER) repository, searchable and world-class,
containing blended learning modules for high school science
and math students and their teachers. Each module would be designed
pedagogically to run in harmony with the regular in-class teacher, the
subject matter covering a specific area of mathematics or of a physical
science. Each module would build on prerequisite material studied but would
present a math or science concept in a mind-expanding and exciting form.
The goal would be to develop deeper and richer skills in the students and to
enhance their critical-thinking skills. Simultaneously, we want to excite
them in pursuing a science, math or engineering career.
We have created an illustrative video
prototype for tenth grade geometry students. The problem is as follows:
A
yardstick is broken at two ‘random points.’ What is the probability that a
triangle can be created from the three pieces of yard stick so obtained?
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This problem brings applied probability
into a strictly deterministic class on geometry. And the problem addresses
triangles, a key focus of Euclidean geometry. The ‘solution’ is shown in a
blended learning video module we have created (available on request) and
also on the web in animated form at
http://web.mit.edu/urban_or_book/www/animated-eg/stick/f1.0.html. The
CD-based prototype is used as a video that the students watch in segments,
none longer than 5 minutes. Then after each segment, the in-class teacher
guides the students with an active learning exercise building from the video
segment. After the learning objective is accomplished, then the video is
turned on again for another short segment. This iterative process continues
until the exercise is over, usually lasting a full class session. This type
of module expands the classroom experience in two significant ways; it
enables a student to see how high school geometry can have broad
applications in the real world and it extends the reach of a teacher to more
creative classroom presentations and critical discussions. While the broken
stick experiment does not have immediate applicability to real world
applications, it has been found to be a pedagogically compelling challenge
problem to do in high school geometry classes. That is, we have pre-tested
this problem many times, but only using live teachers. And, on the ‘drawing
boards,’ we have other problem situations drawn from various real-life areas
such as urban living (e.g., car traffic, shopping, mail delivery, energy
consumption), problems that can be framed and formulated and solved with the
knowledge that the students are acquiring in their high school math and
science classes.
The goal of this initiative is to have
a large repository of video modules created by volunteer teachers from
around the world, seeded initially by MIT faculty members and by other
founding faculty members from the Middle East and elsewhere. With MIT
providing quality assurance, uploads onto the streaming video web site would
occur as easily as those to the widely popular YouTube. A transcript of the
module to facilitate translation of it into other languages would accompany
each blended learning video. Also, metadata tags for ease of searching
would accompany each. Finally, each would be submitted with a two-page
teacher’s guide, for the in-class teacher to review before offering the
module for the first time, so that the important role of the in-class
teacher is seen and understood. The teachers’ guides would be in a
password-protected part of an otherwise totally open web site. Certified
teachers would be assigned user names and passwords to obtain access to the
teachers’ guides. For the vast majority of high school classrooms worldwide
that do not have access to broadband Internet connections supporting
steaming video, the content of the web site would also be available to
teachers in other formats: CD, DVD and videotape. Content in these formats
could be mailed to teachers upon request.
As the repository grows, we would
expect that many of the modules would be translated (again by volunteers, as
with Wikipedia) into other languages. Since ‘voice-overs’ are difficult to
create, most likely these translations would be in the form of translated
subtitles shown on the video of the native-language original
speaker/teacher.
Finally, the proposed Open Source
repository of blended learning modules would have – for each module – space
for a threaded discussion group, with the discussion focusing on in-class
experiences using that module, and a rating system by users -- not unlike
Internet ratings for movies, books and restaurants. In that way, those
modules providing the best learning experiences – as reported by users --
would become known more quickly.
