Study guide for Environmental Systems project

The students in my IB Environmental Systems course can benefit most from specific help in their laboratory work and their reviews for tests. Many wait until the last night (or later) to review the material. My course project is an attempt to get them to review earlier before the test, organize their understanding of the key concepts, reflect on their learning, and collaboratively prepare a document they can use individually to review for the test, and later, for the IB exam.


Using the concept of Understanding by Design or backwards design, with the above objective in mind, I made a list of expectations and specifications I would hope to see from students. I wanted the project to be collaborative, use technology out of need (rather than because it was there), address students’ needs, allow for evolution and improvement, and use the technology tools we learned in this course.


The development of a study guide is collaborative in that students each contribute to the production of the document. With ten topics to write about, each student is given ample opportunity to contribute a unique, creative product. I anticipate good students will be first and most thorough in their contributions, so I requested students who were not confident about their understanding to make their contributions first. I expect the better students will all benefit from each contributing to the product and having each other’s work to benefit from.


The use of wikispaces and its ability to have side discussions is an excellent tool for this project. Students are already contacting me on the discussions to clarify what is expected of them. Kim helped me realize the site would be cumbersome if the ten main topics were not divided up into individual pages, so students could be working on the site simultaneously—kind of like Google.docs.


I have already made a number of changes on the site to make it more clear, improve its relevance, and improve its usability by students.