Influence of Project-Based Learning in Informatics on the Mental Condition of High-School Students

Abstract

The paper describes a research conducted on the Faculty of Education of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in 2010 and 2011. The research aims to map the influence of project-based learning in Informatics on the mental condition of high-school students. Importance, pros and cons of project-based learning have been discussed several times within professional public; however, the area of project-based learning in connection with Informatics is still to be mapped to a full extent. The pilot research, which was conducted due to social demand of high-school Informatics teachers in the Czech Republic, clearly shows that the implementation of project-based learning directly into Informatics lessons is even more difficult. As a part of our research, we are focusing on the possible added value of project-based learning in the area of experience acquisition in the process of education. The age composition of the evaluated sample of responders was chosen intentionally, while we believe that subjective perception of mental condition in education is the key factor in the process of learning, mainly for adolescents. Our assumptions are based on the statement (Štefanovič a Rosina, 1960; Magdin et al., 2011), that person’s mental processes and attributes can be recognized and observed, for example, by means of psychological analysis of the constructs of their activity. The research consists of a preparatory part and a research and implementation part. As a part of the preparatory stage, projects that were specifically aimed on Informatics were created to be implemented as parts of educational process in selected high schools. To provide the best possible respect for specific principles of project-based learning and its delimitation in relation to theme-based or problem-based education, the projects were drawn according to the methodology of the Buck Institute for Education. They were being implemented into the educational process in five to seven weeks. In the research and implementation stage, the mental condition of the students was observed, during which time the scope of components of mental condition being detected was oriented on the spheres of comfort – discomfort and acquisition of experiences versus activity. For the purposes of the observation, a standardized psychometric tool focused on the evaluation of the structure and dynamics of subjective experiences and conditions – SUPSO - was used due to its validity and reliability. SUPSO is the outcome of factor analysis of precisely delimitated and pragmatically formulated scales formally including 92, in the next stage 72 (SUPSO 8) and then 28 (SUPSO 7) adjectives describing individual particular symptoms of psychological experiences, emotions and conditions of an individual (Mikšík, 2004). The results were processed according to the manual for the standardized psychometric tool and compared to the results of control groups. The control groups consisted of students of parallel classes of high school, i.e. of the same age and the same educational content, which did not implement the project-based learning. The research was conducted in cooperation with the Department of Computer Science and Educational Technology and the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Education of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.