Reflection #7

EDCI 336 Reflection #7

Reflection on group projects and presentations. 

This semester I’ve had a group project in nearly every class. I had an interesting conversation with a professor when I asked him if he has any insight as to why this program has so many group projects.  He responded that it wasn’t that group projects were the goal but rather that we needed to do presentations and it simply wasn’t feasible to do them individually.

This got me thinking about how many of the things we do in education result from other unrelated choices.  This encompassess not just minor issues but broader ones like how we separate students by subject area and age.  Age organized class obviously provide a help administrative function, but also inherently limit learners.  Likewise, distinctive subject areas are helpful in many ways, but might unduly dictate the direction of learning.

The lesson I take from this is that it is sometimes difficult to ascertain cause and effect in the classroom and education.  Untangling this web seems like an ongoing and never ending process for educators.