[Week 4]

After learning more about representation, I am confronting a common theme in IST - things seem simple on the surface, but the more you dig in, the more complex things become! Thinking about my previous concept - that there should be minimal text, I think that good infographic should go further. As the 'Do's and Don'ts of infographics' website points out, the graphic should convey the information, text should hardly be needed.

Considering my infographic topics, I feel rather stuck. To compare multiple teaching methods in one poster seems rather daunting. In fact, displaying the characteristics of even one seems daunting! There is simply a large amount of information needed to convey the ideas.

Yet I find that there is one topic that keeps coming up in conversations with fellow IST students - the difference between Problem and Project - based learning. The confusion is one that everyone who wants to learn about either must confront, since they unfortunately are both called PBL. While it may have seemed like a nice, subtle distinction at the time, and a way to tie the two together, they are now constantly confused with one another, not only in what people think about them, but also, in conversation, it is not uncommon to lose track of which PBL you are talking about!

So, despite the seemingly complex task of it, this will be my infographic topic: Problem Vs. Project Based learning.

The issues of representation:

1) Delineating the similarities and differences between the two - what kind of representation will be good for contrasting two things that are similar in many ways? While both seem to be a type of inquiry based learning, project-based learning teachers view their practice as a point of separation from problem based learning. In contrast, Problem-based learning teachers seem to view project based learning as an extension of problem based learning.

2) My audience is IST students, but I imagine that this infographic will be good for telling other people (family, friends, teachers, etc...) what PBL is - whether that means problem or project based learning. Because of the contrasting audiences, I will have to consolidate two levels of information into one graphic!

3) Much has been written about both types of PBL. To distill the ideas down to their most important theoretical points is not really an option. Instead, I will focus on the practical results: what is the role of the student, the teacher, and the community? What do the students actually do? How long do they take to do it? How do they go about doing it?

My current idea is to have a poster with two sides. One side will represent Problem based learning, the other will represent project based learning. I am imagining I will use a graphic, such as two people facing off, as if to fight. With one hand they will have boxing gloves that meet each other in the middle of the poster, and  the other hands will be giving each other a hand shake. I feel this will represent the philosophical stance of the divide - both methods share similar values, but each has its own method of execution.

I am also tempted to include information from some studies that compare PBL (project AND problem) to lecture based education. Since most of these studies show that both methods compare favorably to lectures, it makes sense to include them. After someone learns the difference between the PBL's, their next natural question would be, 'ok, so why do I care?' or 'ok, how do they stack up?'

I'm sure my plan will change as time goes by, but this is the current plan!