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PBL Teacher Questions & Answers 

1. Can you provide an overview summary of this PBL Lesson?    

In this lesson, students in small teams will be asked to identify one publicly shared resource in their community or country and to analyze its current usage in terms of "Tragedy of the Commons," that is, potential of actual overuse leading to deterioration or even collapse of the resource. They are to make ameliorative recommendations.

Students will be expected to collect and analyze data, make simple math models relating to the "physics" of the resource use, include elementary ideas of economics and social science, work collaboratively, and to present their results orally and in writing.

2. What is the "bridge" between the kick-off BLOSSOMS video lesson and this PBL lesson?

The BLOSSOMS video lesson, "Tragedy of the Commons," presents the problem as a metaphor. To reinforce the cows grazing on the "Commons" as the basis of the metaphor, the lesson is filmed among cows grazing grass on a dairy farm in Massachusetts. The BLOSSOMS lesson sets the stage as the kick-off for the follow-on multi-week PBL activities. In addition to describing the problem with cows and grass, many other applications of the logic of public resource overuse and depletion are given. Also, the web site of the BLOSSOMS lesson contains animated simulations of several alternative mathematical models of "the system" as resource use goes from little, to moderate, to overuse and eventual system collapse. (simulation is currently disabled)

3. What is the driving question of this PBL lesson?

At one level, the driving questions are, "To what extent is this particular publicly shared resource being overused or in threat of overuse; what are the likely or even current attributes/consequences of overuse, and how to we ameliorate overuse?"

At a deeper level, the question is, "How can students work collaboratively, both in class and after school, to apply their knowledge and emerging abilities to frame and formulate an approach to a complex problem having no right or wrong answers, to create at an analysis, and present their results in a compelling manner?"

4. What key knowledge and understanding will this lesson cover?

While a course in Algebra I is recommended as the only prerequisite, the key "knowledge and understanding" relates to the student’s ability to apply logical reasoning to a complex problem, and – thinking like a scientist and engineer – to "get on top of the problem," identifying the scientific reasons for overuse and using engineering principals to design a better system. But these are all first-order reasoning skills, not requiring more formal prerequisites in any given science or branch of engineering. In fact, one may view this as an early interdisciplinary assignment, where social science, history and knowledge of local culture are just as important as math and science.

5. What products will students be turning in to assess their progress and understanding of the subject?

Each student team is to produce two "products": (1) a signed written or web- based report not to exceed ten pages detailing their work; and (2) a five-to-ten- minute oral presentation summarizing their work, preferably before resource stakeholders as well as classmates and teacher(s). These products may include short videos and/or PowerPoint slides.

Each product is to demonstrate non-superficial understanding of the local or regional resource overuse problem, collection or finding of data and other information that depicts the problem, introductory level knowledge of the science and engineering of the specifics of the problem – for amelioration of the overuse, a simple mathematical model that depicts the usual "unimodal" behavior of the amount of resource available vs. extent of use, and recommendations for improvement. The incorporation of social science aspects would be a big plus.

6. What specific project(s) have you provided for students to work on in this lesson and what optional projects have you suggested?

Each student team selects one and only one project,to be approved by the in-class teacher. Since the local conditions may only involve one or two instances of overuse of public resources, each such case will likely be selected by more than one student team. In our documentation of this project, we list potential projects, but the list is far from exhaustive as there are so many instances worldwide of overuse of local or regional public resources. Here are some examples: public roadways; the air we breathe; fish in the sea or lake; open spaces such as parks and preservation lands; farmland; drinking water; forests; unpolluted land; wildlife.