For ages 10 and older:

The students will be given the list of projects and descriptions to think about for a few days.  Each one will determine their favorite. Again, if the students are 14 or older, they may propose their own projects within the given guidelines (including deadline) and subject to the instructor for approval or modifications, and these will be added to the general project proposal list. The projects will then be voted on. Any project proposal receiving zero votes is eliminated, but all others are kept with their vote count. 

 

Until now votes and new proposals were individual. Next, however, the students will implement an integral workshop with tasks. With some indirect guidance from the instructor, they will look to combine all the projects, in proportion to their votes, as well as possible in a reasonable amount of time, into one master project. 

 

The nature of this project is that it has at least two stages such as research report and presentation, design and building, game play and observations, sketch and drawing, poetry/skit writing and presentation/acting, etc. This is done as a fractal. 

 

For the first stage, there is a workshop-based development of primary tasks (which might well correspond to the original projects – only now in the form of a connected subsystem). Students choose which primary task they would prefer to work on. If there are too many on one task – that task description – its magnitude – is increased accordingly; if too few – decreased. However, there can’t be less than two students on any primary task, or else it must be incorporated into the lowest populated 2-or-more populated task that makes sense. For the next tier, each primary task population forms their own workshop. Such continues until each branch ends in single-student tasks.

 

As individual tasks complete, they integrate into the next higher task, and so on up to the primary tasks that then themselves integrate into a single result. With stage 1 complete, the class workshop reunites, and follows the same procedure for stage 2, and so forth.

 

A key point is that all subtasks must be in before the next higher task level can integrate and complete – up to the stage of the master project. As a whole, grading will be a rubric based on quality and speed. This will be a class grade. Of equal measure, is an individual grade based upon level of effort in accomplishing one’s own task, assisting others where they request help, and general collaboration – especially in the integration stages. 

 

Appropriate recording methods will be established to accomplish this – possibly on a project by project basis.