Challenge-Based Learning Pushes the Envelope at Middle School

It’s definitely not your everyday class at the .

In Rick Olson’s challenge-based learning environment, you will not hear him reciting long lectures or handing out the usual homework to all the students in his room. Instead, Olson serves a guide for his eighth-grade students, who work independently on practical, community-oriented projects they are responsible for brainstorming and executing.

While other classes at the school have used some elements of challenged-based learning, this is the first year that the Inver Grove Heights Middle School is offering it as a course of its own. And the class is having an impact on its students.

“I really like that it’s project-based, and that you can solve something. I like that I can actually do something with this,” said Nathan Raab, a student in Olson’s class.

This fall, Raab has focused on politics, and plans to write several letters to Congress and presidential candidates as put of his studies.

Raab’s project is representative of many of the self-driven tasks that students take on during the course. This year, a group of students is working to design safer football helmets, while another group studies the impact humans have on aquatic ecosystems.

“What I like is that you take a theme, research it, identify problems, come up with solutions and implement technology,” said Olson, a veteran teacher who took a challenge-based learning training course last year. “It’s entirely student-driven. It’s giving them almost total autonomy … they can come in and choose a topic that they’re passionate about.”

Challenge-based learning also develops research, technology, presentation, marketing and teamwork skills, Olson said. The learning technique also incorporates community involvement as an action step, according to Olson. Open to all eighth-graders, the class meets every other day for the entire school year.

At the beginning of the challenge-based learning process, the class chooses a broad theme. The students then brainstorm questions related to the theme until they have narrowed the issue down to one central question. Once the class has that, students plot a course of action—determining what they can do to address the issue.

It’s a question that students Carley Biggs, Alli Honchell and Lea Stang, sitting in front of computers and staring intently at pages of information, asked themselves at a recent class session.

“We’re looking at Hurricane Katrina and focusing on that and other natural disasters,” she said. More specifically, Biggs said, the group is looking for answers to the question: “How can we react to natural disasters?” 

Classmate Laura Kurr decided to dig into the issue of homelessness.

“We’re zoning in on why they’re homeless, average rates [and] what we can do to help,” Kurr said.

The students are graded on a research paper, summary paper, a bibliography, notes, and their daily progress, Olson said. Students then publish their conclusions using digital software, cameras and web design.

"In traditional classroom settings, many students either learn to do just enough to get by or do well on the test. With ubiquitous access to technology, new models of teaching and learning are possible, and engagement is paramount to meeting the needs of more students,” District Superintendent Dr. Deirdre Wells said.

According to Olson, this style of learning encourages self-motivation and student engagement through their personal interests, instills the love of lifelong learning, and focuses on 21st-Century skills.

“I jokingly say it’s all the things I wanted to learn when I was in school, but my teachers wouldn’t let me,” said Olson.