We reworked two major student projects this year, one for tenth graders and another for twelfth graders, to further incorporate AAI. (Academy students had previously completed similar projects, but without the explicit AAI content.) As we said in our introduction, the work we do with students is perpetually evolving; progress comes sometimes in leaps--often in steps--and sometimes in "directed" spurts as a new idea of new process takes hold. The tenth-grade project is an introduction to the industry in the first year; the twelfth-grade project is a demonstration of mastery prior to graduation. The projects have different goals and require different approaches to using an AAI framework. We chose to consider the Senior Project in greater detail, not because it shows the "best" application of AAI, but because it shows some of the dilemmas of applying AAI to something which also has many other purposes.
We begin this section by presenting reasons why projects are important to the learning culture of the academy and why project-based learning is a powerful methodology in which to have students develop AAI skills and knowledge. We then present the organization and sequence of projects throughout the three years. We provide descriptions of small projects that students develop in particular classes, as well as the major crosscurricular student projects for each year. Finally, we present our work on the Senior Project as a more detailed case study. This order of material also allows us to show the progression of projects in our program, from the first year to the third, from simpler and shorter to longer and more complex, and from where we started to where we are now.
Themes that we feel are critical to successful projects reverberated throughout our work over the course of the year: industry partner participation, student choice/ ownership, emphasis on quality and craftspersonship, connections with community, and belief in the importance of active learning and opportunities for reflection.
One of the keys to creating projects with AAI content is to bring industry partners into the process. They can provide knowledge about industry that teachers may not have and they help students know that what they are learning and doing has relevancy. Throughout this section, we try to suggest the variety of ways in which this can be accomplished.
Learning through projects is powerful, in part, because it allows greater scope for student choice than more traditional assignments do. At the same time, there are often particular student outcomes (such as knowledge of AAI) that we want to encourage. A positive interface between student choice and project criteria requires careful planning and design. Tasks that are too hard or too easy, too open or too closed, rarely stimulate maximum learning for students. What needs to be negotiated, in what areas, with what requirements is always key in project design. Again, we will try to suggest a variety of different possible approaches.
Reasons for Projects
The Oakland Health and Bioscience Academy began turning to large-scale student projects, weeks or months in the making, for a number of reasons:
At its best, project-based learning, which includes a strong component of reflection, increases students' effective problem-solving skills, develops lifelong learning skills (students learn how to learn), increases students' sense of personal and collective power, promotes higher-level thinking (students engage in systems-thinking, including analysis, synthesis, and conceptualization), and links academic skills to direct student experience.
Project Sequence and Organization
We have a sequence of major projects spanning the three years of the program. Students complete several large projects during the tenth grade, including HealthWorks, a major introductory project; Health Educators, a major project in the eleventh grade; and a yearlong intensive "rite of passage" Senior Project. In each case, student choice and ownership are encouraged and reflect the varied workplace and life experiences of the students. In addition to large projects, there are many small interdisciplinary projects as well as projects specific to particular courses. These, too, provide excellent opportunities for exploring AAI concepts. Experience working on many smaller projects and with their service-learning placement prepares students for success with the major, self-directed projects.
Ideally, all academy student projects, small and large, fit together as a gradual and natural progression of knowledge and skills for students. Some of the axes of this progression are the degree and type of student choice, the degree of student choice and ownership, the degree of independence and responsibility, the ways in which industry partners are involved, and the usefulness and professionalism of the final product.
Organization of Small Projects
Small projects take many forms. In Biology, students create elaborate evolution timelines on several meters of paper. (This is an individual rather than a group project.) In Biology Lab, students engage in a career search and create a pamphlet or newsletter about the health career of their choice. In Physiology, students begin the year by interviewing relatives to develop a family medical history. In English, groups of students prepare dramatic responses to health care scenarios. In senior Economics classes, student teams work with city-planning graduate students to produce redevelopment plans for actual city projects.
Student experience with projects can be a springboard to community service projects. For example, we are currently developing a health-focused, service-learning literacy project which will engage academy students in working in elementary classrooms and at Children's Hospital as readers, actors, puppeteers, and storytellers. A student-run Health Education Center is also in the planning stages.
Many of the most useful of these small projects for teaching AAI are supported by occupational simulations or actual case study methodologies as ways to infuse content; students are asked to take on the role of a particular health practitioner, to review the kind of information they would actually look at, and then to make the kinds of recommendations for care and treatment that a practitioner would. In Biology, students complete a genetic disease case study which includes interpreting standard diagnostic tests on an individual and counseling the parents about the prospects for subsequent children. In English, students role play and write their response about what to do in a situation in which they are a medical records clerk, and another employee is violating patient confidentiality. In Physiology, students read a case study of a child with lead poisoning, interpret the results of a blood test for lead, and create a medical management plan as though they were public health nurses. Having learned something about lead poisoning, students then perform a risk assessment for lead poisoning in their own neighborhood, as though they were public health outreach workers. In Advanced Biology, student groups work on a "simulated patient" exercise originally designed for medical students. These simulations and case studies, if structured well, present many opportunities for students to learn about AAI, about particular health occupations in relationship to other specialties, about community impacts, and about managing patient situations rather than simply understanding technology.
Organization of Major Projects
Major projects which cut across the curriculum and last several months require some organizational structure. Depending on the school's master schedule and other program needs, the teachers involved may or may not have a common conference period. We rely on working out the major elements of the project in advance, as well as on meetings with one another; with industry partners; and with students over lunch, after school, during inservice days, and at conferences. Some of our best thinking is done in hallways or during fire drills. We know one another's phone numbers by heart.
In our experience, major projects work best when there is at least one home-based class or a double-period home-based block of classes in which a significant amount of class time is regularly devoted to project coaching and work. Here, the basic sequence of the project is organized; notebooks are kept, deadlines are posted, and permission slips for community-based research and meetings with industry coaches are written. Students also work on major projects in other academy classes and outside of school. This baseline of time, expectations, and criteria coordinated in a particular class (or block of classes) allows opportunities to meet with team members or an advisor on a regular basis and creates the circumstances needed for the best projects. In the tenth and eleventh grades, the home-based classes are usually in science, English, or the science lab courses. In twelfth grade, a double period English and Government/Economics block serves as the project base. We also build in some special Project Days when all academy students have full days--or 80% of their day--devoted to project work.
Particular phases of an overall project are often completed, and sometimes independently graded, in other classes. In tenth grade, English classes survey students schoolwide about teen health issues in preparation for the HealthWorks project while academy math classes learn various means of graphically displaying the survey results. In eleventh grade, students hone research techniques and word smith their health education newsletter stories in history and English. Scientific research for Senior Projects earns credit in senior science classes. Each and every academy teacher is encouraged to participate and to allow some class time for work on major projects. Student groups need time to meet; to consult with project coaches and research resources from our industry partnerships; to use the computer lab; to produce their project displays; to practice their presentations; and to brainstorm, process ideas, plan, and reflect. We all learn to be flexible and to maximize opportunities.
Sometimes life in the academy feels a little like a high energy circus--with action, flash, and color in every ring--and we yearn for more coordination time. In our particular academy, teachers have no added academy resource periods, nor do we all share conference periods. We all have extra responsibilities connected with academy work-based and community-based learning, mentoring, parent contacts, student support services, and so on. Our weekly academy staff meetings are agenda-heavy and our Bay Area location attracts frequent outside visitors. We manage by having a clear idea of our overall project design and by emphasizing the importance of planning.
We do receive outside help with student projects. No teacher can be an expert on even half the topics students wish to investigate. We are collaborators, co-learners, coaches, resources, and facilitators. Especially at the beginning of a major project, students need more ongoing support and coaching than we can always provide. We draw on both industry partners and college student tutors. As much as possible, we involve parents. Industry partners, college students, and parents can be part of the classroom dialogue, can be interviewed at work or by phone, and can coach individuals or groups. Once a list of major project topics is finalized, contacts at partner institutions help to match students and/or student teams with volunteer Research Resources (i.e., expert-practitioners). Meeting with students about their projects can be extremely positive experiences for our industry partners, and the requirement that each major project have a Research Resource makes a critical difference in the quality of the student work which results. Industry, community, and postsecondary partners, as well as parents and faculty who serve as judges for project presentations, make adult and professional standards tangible.
Each year, depending on funding and changing district directives, we try to hire college students (usually former academy students) who can assist in classrooms, especially with students who may need encouragement. Other college students come as volunteers. On Project Days and in class meetings, postsecondary students coach individuals and groups. Additionally, they may arrange to meet at times that teachers cannot. They also help with linking students to industry experts and usually meet with the academy teachers involved on a weekly basis.
Tenth-Grade Project: HealthWorks
In the introductory tenth-grade project, called HealthWorks, students explore health care delivery systems by planning various aspects of a "utopian," school-based health clinic. Activities and projects in all academy classes focus on improving access to quality health care at Oakland Technical High and in the larger Oakland community. Each student team must name their clinic and create a logo, complete actual health needs and health resources surveys, develop management plans, design the clinic facilities, form health and environmental safety plans, deal with marketing issues, and choose from a variety of other tasks. (See "School-Based Health Clinic" in the Oakland Health and Bioscience Academy section of the Support Materials.) Biology Lab served as the home-base class for the project. Teen health surveys were organized in English class; students researched ethnocultural health issues in world cultures class; students worked on clinic drawings and models in math; and they developed health education pamphlets in English and biology. Industry partners were invited to school to address key aspects to both small and large groups of students.
Because HealthWorks is an overview of the industry, it needs to be comprehensive. Where would this clinic be? How would it be laid out? What teen health problems would it need to address? Who would work there? What would it cost? How would you convince parents to support it? How would you convince students to use it? How would the clinic deal with patient confidentiality issues? Students are given some choice of which aspects to address, but within fairly prescribed limits; this allows us to require a degree of comprehensiveness about all the aspects of industry which will become less possible as we "scale up" to projects which address specific aspects in-depth and to action-based projects that involve students working in our (soon to open) school-based health clinic and student-run Health Education Center.
An actual clinic opened at Oakland Technical High School in fall 1995. Academy students are involved with health professionals, parents, faculty, and community members in planning for the clinic and Health Education Center, and are part of the ongoing implementation. HealthWorks serves to ground them in a global understanding of all that is involved in planning and running a clinic and enables them to clarify how the particular health task force/research team with which they work is related to the overall clinic design. When the clinic opens, academy students will staff the Health Education Center, and some will be involved as health interns in the day-to-day operation of the clinic. Formal orientation for these clinical positions will become part of the introductory project and already many of the career and technical skills required are part of the academy Biology Lab curriculum.
Eleventh-Grade Project: Health Education Products and Presentations
The eleventh-grade health education project asks student teams to choose a health problem or issue about which they think teens (or another target group--e.g., elementary students or senior citizens) need to become educated. They research their topic; meet with industry and postsecondary experts; receive training in effective health education strategies; prepare a newsletter; develop an interactive presentation; and present to classes at other schools, including our feeder schools, or to an appropriate community audience.
In many industries, student enterprises, where students create real goods or services, can be an important part of an AAI strategy. In health care, we face some challenges in that, while they might like to, our students cannot yet open their own hospital or perform corrective surgery. They can, however, create real health education products and provide a variety of health-related services. Health education projects call on a range of broad academic skills--research; written, oral, and visual communication; as well as a broad knowledge about health care. Our students are well-placed to do effective health outreach; they live in medically underserved communities and are, in many cases, already the "health experts" for their extended families. Health education projects can be productive in introducing AAI themes as community impacts and health planning are central to the projects; and other themes, such as history or underlying technology, usually apply.
From the first years of academy operation, community organizations working on health issues, especially teen health issues, have been interested in having our students do health education and community outreach. A health educator from the American Red Cross trained several groups of students as AIDS peer educators. Each student group worked to develop an interactive, multimedia AIDS education presentation, and on deepening its knowledge about HIV and AIDS, so that the members would have appropriate answers to difficult questions. They then served as AIDS Health Educators for a wide range of audiences and even trained other teens as AIDS Peer Educators. Some of these students continued to do HIV/AIDS presentations for several years, and several have made careers for themselves in health education. The American Lung Association and a local foundation train academy students as anti-tobacco educators. EcoRap, a group trying to raise awareness of toxic waste and other urban environmental problems, arranged a student "toxic tour" of Oakland and then worked with students for several weeks as students produced posters, raps, and dances that were featured in a local EcoRap performance. We are collaborating with the Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program to develop internships to follow up on the lead poisoning projects mentioned in the previous section. Programs in health and in other industries that are considering these kinds of "student outreach" projects should explore possible partnerships with local advocacy groups, which can often provide information, speakers, and help in coaching student groups, as well as insight into many community needs to which student projects can respond.
For the eleventh-grade project, student teams choose whatever health topic or issue they want, as long as they can justify its relevance to a specific audience. We ask for a comprehensive approach to that particular health topic. Each project has similar specifics and requirements (e.g., scope of the problem, basic medical knowledge, human interest stories, audience participation, preparation for difficult questions, research and presentation responsibilities, and so on). Each team of health educators gets the same flexible cookie-cutter and applies it to their own dough. What needs to be done, and how the resulting work will be assessed, can be made clear at the same time to all student teams, even though their diverse health topics will take them in different directions and will result in varied products and presentations. A talk by an industry partner about effective health education strategies is relevant to what every group must do.
Groups go to the worksite for one or two short meetings with an industry expert. Their final product is presented to their chosen audience, and the best of the resulting products (e.g., pamphlets, displays, and so on) meet professional standards and are displayed and used at school and by community clinics and health organizations.
Senior Projects
We piloted a new Senior Project design this year, and we want to use it to discuss some of the issues that arise in planning projects and in trying to use them to teach AAI (See "Student Projects and AAI" in the Oakland Health and Bioscience Academy section of the Support Materials.) In creating guidelines for a Senior Project, we had to consider some additional expectations for a final project.
In 1993-1994, we felt that "demonstrating mastery of all aspects" could not really be required in the Senior Project, since this particular class of students was only explicitly introduced to an all aspects curriculum recently. The students had completed both small and large projects in their tenth and eleventh grades but had done so prior to a strong infusion of AAI into our curriculum. We could not and did not want to require that students explore each aspect of the industry with respect to their project. We wanted Senior Project guidelines that would encourage in-depth exploration of some aspects without limiting student choice or making AAI a rigid, artificial add-on.
Senior Project Progress
Early staff discussions on Senior Projects went slowly, reflecting the lack of time and less-than-perfect conditions for launching a major project. Senior year is the least uniform year in terms of what classes students take. Normally, almost all Health Academy seniors are in the two academy English and Government/Economics sections. They are in a variety of science classes, depending on career and academic goals. In 1993-1994, due to a master schedule error, only about half were in the single Health Academy Government/Economics section, leaving English as the only potential core class. In addition, the senior teachers at that time (there have been staff shifts over the years) did not have much experience working with one another. We held an academy faculty retreat before school started to plan major grade-level projects; however, two of the critical twelfth-grade teachers were unable to join us.
The two teachers who did meet about Senior Projects over the summer wanted to start with a smaller bioethics research project to get more experience working together and to increase participation by other teachers. In the end, they were convinced that a trial-scale run of what we really wanted to do was better than a full-scale run of a smaller project that might have to be curtailed as we evolved to full-year or semester-long Senior Projects.
Three of us (the academy director, an English teacher, and a science teacher) agreed that it was worth trying to do a major Senior Project, even though it would be constrained in terms of time (it was already November) and involvement in other senior courses. We agreed that we would modify the C-TAP project design for this project because the academy director and academy senior English teacher were already working with Far West Laboratories and had already agreed to field test their C-TAP project materials. We modified project guidelines to include more reflective learning, a requirement that the final product be of use and/or that project activities benefit the community (however the student defined "community"), and added to or modified other standards. After almost every meeting, delay, new barrier, missed deadline, and disagreement, we would say, "This is only a pilot; we'll learn how to do better next time."
Starting in December, students chose topics; final proposals were due the second week in February, but one group was still changing and "re-finalizing" its topic as late as April. Available class time for work on Senior Projects during the spring was sporadic, but most groups began their research, and all submitted a formal project plan. At different stages, each group or individual met with academy staff several times. They submitted notes, outlines, and journal entries as "evidence of progress." The process of gathering industry advisors for each group began in February, but was not finished until May. (Some technical projects required more than one advisor.) Some groups worked hard from the beginning; others procrastinated. Two weeks in June were given over to final production. Students completed their products, created visual and other aids, and practiced their presentations. Students presented their projects in lieu of a final exam in Senior English class. The presentations were each judged by a teacher, a student, and an industry partner.
The Senior Project Committee (same three staff, interested senior students, and other senior teachers) met often enough at odd lunch times just to stay barely ahead of working out the details for each stage. Senior academy teachers who missed meetings were contacted about project day schedules and about advising particular groups.
Encouraging AAI Themes in the Senior Projects
Early discussions within the Senior Project Committee centered on how to formulate topic, product, and presentation expectations that encouraged the essential learning and applications of knowledge we hoped for. We all agreed that students should be encouraged to use health care jobs and internships as a springboard for their projects. We also agreed that we wanted the projects to reflect breadth, not just technical material. We agreed that our primary concern was not to exclude valid and interesting topics because of artificial requirements; a major form of argument was to give examples of wonderful projects that did not fit our working draft of criteria and this pushed us to refine and re-refine our benchmarks. We discussed, and fussed, and changed, and reflected, and discussed and fussed and changed some more.
We wrote a loose "breadth requirement" into the set of guidelines we gave to the seniors. We wanted multidisciplinary approaches and wanted to encourage students to explore their topics through more than one lens. In practice, the requirement tended to lapse. We continued, however, in our coaching interactions with students to push for personal and social, as well as technical, explorations of the topic. We now believe a breadth requirement would be useful. We were disappointed with some of the projects when a rich search for resources and a wide understanding on the part of the students had as its product a useful pamphlet that reflected little of that richer understanding. We want to rework our requirement for next year, perhaps to ask for more than one type of product in this type of situation. We will use some of this year's projects that do show breadth as examples.
Three requirements that we did use were very productive. One was that students had to produce a real product that was of actual use to someone else. Their products could be health education pamphlets to be used in our soon to be school-based-clinic's-Health Education Center, pamphlets on possible careers for future Health Academy students, community service projects, and so on. With limited time, however, only some of the final products actually met this standard, but the topics chosen and avenues pursued did reflect this requirement, and it did push students to think about planning, financial resources, and their audience in a more serious way. The requirement also encouraged student contact with people in the field. With more time, most of the projects could genuinely meet professional standards. The "real products" requirement was the richest in guiding students to pick good topics; it also produced some unintended results, allowing the production of narrowly technical final products without much breadth.
A second requirement that students do research using community resources; interviewing professionals and patients; and/or visiting offices, clinics, or advocacy programs was adhered to by every group. Almost every group included material on occupational structure and organization in their projects. The focus of others was shifted from "What are the treatments for this disease?" to "What services are provided to patients with this disease?"--a move away from a simply technical understanding toward one that reflects knowledge of AAI.
Lastly, students were given a series of reflective writing prompts, some required and some chosen, which asked them to think about their process and progress through the project; in the final presentation, students were required to evaluate their projects. Some of the prompts were directed toward one or more of the AAI aspects; the whole process of self-evaluation led to many interesting reflections on the students' own planning, on the nature of the industry with respect to their topic, on the industry resources available to them in their project, and on their learning process and progression.
Examples of AAI Themes in Senior Projects
Many of the projects and products our students produced, even in a limited run of the major Senior Project concept, justified our belief that projects can be used to both encourage learning about AAI and to demonstrate it. (Seniors have completed Senior Projects in the past; these were, however, simpler in design and often lasted six weeks to two months). Topics fell in several broad groups:
Space will not permit simply reproducing the better projects (though we think this is most convincing to teachers), so we will summarize some of them. Remember that these students had neither an explicit AAI requirement, nor much specific experience with AAI. Nevertheless, many AAI themes do come up in their projects. We hope that reading these will help you see the synergy we have been arguing exists between AAI and projects. Students who are encouraged to investigate topics they are interested in and who are given appropriate prior experiences and models, will see for themselves the importance of some of these aspects. As a result, their understanding of those aspects will be much richer than if they had learned about them through a lecture, film, or reading.