Constructivist group work

Today I (tried to) embrace a constructivist view of teaching Excel.

All last week students have been collecting information about their particular career. Last Friday, I demonstrated the basics of how to write a formula in Excel and setting up a spreadsheet.

I wrote up instructions for the assignment and placed it on Moodle:

• As a group you will select data from your career research to analyze in Excel and graph the results.
• Choose which data you are going to analyze in Excel (ie, national salary, Oregon salary, years of education, etc..).
• Set up your spreadsheet with your data.Include a descriptive title and column labels.Choose several functions to analyze the data (SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT)
• Format your spreadsheet in an attractive manner.Select one set of data to graph.Look up resources for making graphs (charts) in Excel. See: http://p6compapps.wikispaces.com/Excel
• Choose a graph that best represents your data (line, pie, bar, etc)Be sure to include Chart Title, labels, and make full page.
• Print one copy of chart and spreadsheet.
• Turn in by Friday, February 23rd.

I gave the students 3 resources:

1. Excel wiki page: contains notes and directs students to pages in the textbook for help
2. Excel help menu
3. WINK tutorial showing how to make a graph in Excel

... and then I let them get together in their groups and plan how they were going to accomplish their goal (and I left them alone).

Observations:

• Groups immediately started talking about their plan
• Many groups divided up the task and each person is graphing one aspect.
• Groups realized they did not have all the information they needed and I observed several going back to their sources to find facts
• Many asked for clarification of how I wanted them to set up the spreadsheet - and I turned it around and told them to decide as a group.
• I was suprised how many kids were working independently.
• Two groups were very social and talking a lot (which included some chatter and some instructions.)
• I observed two students going back to the book for specific instructions.
• 4-5 students were able to make their graph in one period - but several reported that they were missing data.

I will definitely need to check for understanding in a couple of days and plan more activities with graphs to make sure ALL students understand the steps.

If I was truly embracing a constructivist view I wouldn't give them any specific directions at all ... (baby steps .. baby steps)