The ultimate goal of college professors is for their students’ work to be purposeful and applicable to their lives. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The information gained appears to evaporate at the end of classes as students shift their focus to vacation, travel, and other endeavours. So how can classroom learning be more intuitive and meaningful? Let the students make it and take it home.
The “Make and Take” practice was used primarily in primary schools where students engage in hands-on craft products such as holiday decorations, milk carton bird feeders, and decorative pen holders. At the college level, Make and Take projects are designed to engage students in a deeper level of learning outside the classroom; Specifically, for students to collaborate, create a product and take it home.
Guidelines
- The project must be relevant to the classroom. Some class group activities are organized in the form of icebreakers, bonding activities, or impromptu discussions. Your project can have any of these elements, but the main focus of the work should be original and have a core component of your classroom.
- The project should be a shared experience with contributions from everyone. It is essential that the whole class participate in the project. The teacher must also be willing to contribute, guide and encourage.
- The project must be usable after the end of the semester. The project design should be something that incorporates class knowledge that is useful and accessible outside of the classroom.
Types of making and taking projects with examples
individual to group
In this model, each student contributes an equal portion of the assignment, which is compiled and distributed to the class. This allows students to share something special and enlighten their classmates with their contributions.
Example: as part of Issues and influences in education In class, students are directed to prepare an annotated bibliography of their educational and cultural influences represented by research, literature, film, and other media. Each student is required to contribute a certain number of professional influences.
Takeaway: the Our Effects Archive It is written by the students, compiled and organized by the teacher. The benefits of this project include the students’ ability to work independently, share work that they consider influential and, ultimately, have a document that might spark curiosity.
group to group
In this model, students participate in groups in order to organize and solve a problem. Each group has its own responsibility, or piece of the puzzle, to contribute to the larger project.
Example: in a Use of multimedia The class, after searching for multimedia resources, directs groups to create a guide for reviewing electronic media platforms and software. Responsibilities include cover, page, and introduction design, group editor, table of contents, and finishing editor. Each group acts on its own responsibility and coordinates with the next.
Takeaway: the Multimedia guide It is a comprehensive handbook of various multimedia software. The benefits of this project include increased awareness of the informational programs available in a document that can be shared with teachers, parents and administrators.
collective to collective
This form includes more than one class, ideally in different disciplines. Teachers collaborate to design a joint investigation that requires contributions from each discipline. The results of student work are combined in each class to create new group learning that students can use outside of the classroom.
Example: Community college faculty collaborate on a project to assess on-campus fitness efficiency during an ordinary school day. Students in an engineering class measure the distances between campus buildings and the heights of the campus hills. Students in the health class measure walking distances and calories burned between buildings, while students in an algebra class work to develop an algebraic matrix equation to tabulate measurements of distances and calories burned during a given school day.
Takeaway: the campus fitness information pack, A set of guidelines and formulas designed to calculate distances traveled and calories burned on campus. Ideally, the information pack It can also be applied to other places from the local garden to the supermarket.
What related products from your class could your students make and take away?
Tony Monahan, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education, and Dance at Queensboro Community College, City University of New York, and Assistant Professor in the International Graduate Teaching Program at Framingham State University. He has taught a variety of education, health, and physical education courses throughout his career. He had a fortune working in education programs in New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, California, Canada, Austria, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominican Republic, and Brazil. He has been involved in high-impact practices of academic service learning, global and diverse learning, learning communities, and shared reading. He is a Faculty Fellow at the Salzburg Global Symposium, and a permanent member of the QCC Study Abroad Advisory Committee.
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