Projects - michael-rowe/openPhysio GitHub Wiki

Projects are the organising principle of this physiotherapy curriculum. Most traditional curricula use modules (or papers, or subjects) as the smallest discrete units of the whole thing, but in altPhysio I'm suggesting that projects are the smallest units that we use to aggregate learning tasks. Characteristics of projects are taken from Reeves, et al. (2002).

  1. Real-world relevance: Activities match as nearly as possible the real-world tasks of professionals in practice rather than decontextualized or classroom-based tasks.
  2. Ill-defined: Activities require students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity.
  3. Complex, sustained tasks: Activities are completed in days, weeks, and months rather than minutes or hours. They require significant investment of time and intellectual resources.
  4. Multiple perspectives: Provides the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives using a variety of resources, and separate relevant from irrelevant information.
  5. Collaborative: Collaboration is integral and required for task completion.
  6. Value laden: Provide the opportunity to reflect and involve students’ beliefs and values.
  7. Interdisciplinary: Activities encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and enable learners to play diverse roles and build expertise that is applicable beyond a single well-defined field or domain.
  8. Authentically assessed: Assessment is seamlessly integrated with learning in a manner that reflects how quality is judged in the real world.
  9. Authentic products: Authentic activities create polished products valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else.
  10. Multiple possible outcomes: Activities allow a range and diversity of outcomes open to multiple solutions of an original nature, rather than a single correct response obtained by the application of predefined rules and procedures.

Learning tasks / activities

In this curriculum, students develop competencies as part of roles, through the process of completing projects. Projects can be completed (or not, actually) by helping students work through learning tasks. A learning task is any activity that we ask students to complete. Characteristics of learning activities are that they should require students to think and behave as we expect them to think and behave in the so-called "real world". Activities could be short assignments (these would usually be milestones that are achieved in the run-up to completing full projects), research projects, essays,