PBU FAQ's
How do the teaching strategies used during PBU Implementation differ from traditional teaching?
For tri-city PBUs, the teacher serves as a facilitator or guide to encourage and support students as they complete PBU activities and projects. Learning is student-focused with the emphasis on collaborative student groupings. Student groups work together, devising solutions to problems that, often, even the teacher cannot anticipate. In this way, both teachers and students assume the role of learners, with the teacher modeling problem-solving strategies to students who are synthesizing Internet-based information in an attempt to create successful final projects. Since each student group processes information differently, each group will most likely produce a different “final project” outcome.
Consequently, PBUs are not designed so that students in the class collectively arrive at the correct answer; many correct answers are and should be possible during student PBU exploration. Whereas student silence often signifies a successful traditional classroom that has as its focus the teacher dispensing information to quiet, listening students, constructive noise signals the successful PBU classroom, where students are engaged with their peer groups as they research and problem solve together.
How long will it take to implement a PBU?
The teacher component of each PBU will indicate the length of time it will take to implement a selected PBU in its entirety. Depending upon staff, time, and access to technology, segments of a PBU can be implemented without completing the whole unit; however, in many PBUs the elimination of sections will make it difficult, if not impossible, to complete the final integrated project as planned and described. The Teacher teams designed PBUs to be an enriching, interdisciplinary curriculum, the more PBU sections that can be completed, the more enhanced the learning experience for the students.
How many computers do I need to implement a PBU?
Various internet accessible computer configurations from a one-computer classroom to a multi-computer laboratory can be utilized for PBU implemention. The optimal computer set-up allows each student collaborative team to have access simultaneously to one computer (i.e., five student teams = five computers). The teacher component of the selected PBU will offer suggestions for PBU implementation for different levels of computer access.
Internet access is required.