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P A P E R A I R P L A N E S I N C L A S S : A
C O L L A B O R A T I V E , G U I D E D , I N T E R
-D I S C I P L I N A R Y T A S K I N A N A L Y S I S A N -D
U S E O F E V I D E N C E
Bim Angst, Penn State Schuylkill
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
Low-stakes group activities requiring students to follow directions and to collaborate in a fun, play-like task have rich potential for instructional follow-up based on observable evidence that students accept easily and enjoy analyzing, discussing, and writing about. This task can be used across disciplines and with astonishingly varied course content, as it serves very well to acquaint students with the challenges of following directions, collaborating, managing projects, writing and revising, and using scientific methods. This task is for resident courses, as physical presence is required.
The low-to-no-stakes assignment in experiential learning and the follow-up described below take one class period of fifty to seventy-five minutes and can be used in any content area, as focus is on collaboration, critical reading, critical thinking, and reflective self-assessment, not subject matter, although for some courses content could be important. After having seen students perform the task or hearing them talk about it, my colleagues locally have adapted this exercise for math, physics, library science, sociology, psychology, criminal justice, education, natural sciences, engineering, and leadership. (I use it with undergraduate writing classes, training peer tutors across disciplines, student orientation and study skills seminars, and with student nurses and English Language Learners.)
The assignment can be used as an icebreaker early in a course at any level. Used in the early weeks, the task provides students with a vivid demonstration of the scholarly concept of evidence and the varied forms and analytical uses of evidence, but the exercise works at any time and is especially useful in analyzing directions and how they are used both by those following them and by those assessing their performance. Course content can be tied in directly, before, during, and after the task. Varied follow-up can extend as long as the instructor finds productive. Referring back to the shared activity can allow an instructor to focus teaching and learning goals several times and ways.
INSTRUCTIONAL PREPAR ATION
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Introducing this task very briefly is best, with just a quick review or reading of the description and rules below. Taking a very hands-off approach as students work is essential (resist butting in), though monitoring of activity is key, as your observations will be important to student success in reflection and discussion. Making notes and taking photos or video of what you observe can be very helpful to student discussion later; what you produce as students work can be used in analysis, writing, and activities such as adapting project management methods, adjusting collaborative techniques, and, perhaps, revising the original directions.
Included here is the assignment description to be presented to students, offered on the board via projection, on the computer, or on paper. Also included are ideas for reflection, discussion, and follow-up.
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION GIVEN TO STUDENTS
Please note that the “competition” conditions (Rule Number 2 below) should be announced before students begin construction, as should the time limit for their preparations. Students should be encouraged to refer to these instructions as they plan, build, practice, release, and reflect. Many will use these instructions as their opening evidence in analytical and reflective follow-up.
INSTRUCTION FOR STUDENTS
In groups, create a paper airplane or other object that can be released to fly (be airborne) a distance. Teams have twenty minutes to create a “paper airplane” they will release in competition. The “airplane” that flies farthest wins.
RULES
1. Airplanes must be made of materials currently at hand in our work area.
2. Teams can release just one airplane in competition, under conditions set by the instructor.
3. Only members of the team that constructed the airplane can release it.
4. After an airplane is released, it may not be touched again until competition is over.
5. Each team may release the same airplane twice, once in each of the two heats. The longest distance counts.
6. No airplane deemed damaging or injurious will be released, and construction of such an airplane will be halted at the direction of the instructor.
INSTRUCTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
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Students get noisy doing this task. Account for possible disturbance to others in planning the location for aircraft testing and competition. Most classrooms don’t have enough space for aircraft release. Hallways can work, but noise is usually a problem. Outside practice and competition release is best—and has the advantage of attracting observers, a situation students relish. (Take pictures! And make note of observer comments. All of this may be useful to you later.)
If you want to preclude release of a simple, wadded sphere pitched by a ballplayer or launched from a rubber band, adjusting or limiting the “materials” list, or further qualifying restrictions on what an “airplane” or is—or isn’t—may suit your instructional purposes better than the generic instructions above. (I do not mind the weighted paper ball thrown by the baseball star, as it allows us to discuss concepts of fairness, always a lively discussion that often results in the request that they be allowed to rewrite my rules. Go, students!)
Actual release of flying objects takes at least ten to fifteen minutes for classes with four to six groups launching in two heats. Heats allow students to “see who the competition is” and to rally team spirit.
Having a tape measure handy makes for very interesting results and provides numerical evidence, though visual adjudication can suffice.
STAKES
The assignment should be kept at very low-stakes. Small prizes can be presented to winners, but the bragging rights that come with winning the competition are often enough incentive and reward. The assignment works best when no grade is attached to it.
The instructional rewards of the task can be many and rich as the information gathered during the primary task and follow-up can encourage later discussion and collaborative practice, critical reading, critical thinking, process, reflection, analysis, self-assessment, writing, and course content, including research both primary and secondary. These are discussed below.
STUDENT REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
DURING CONSTRUCTION AND COMPETITION:While students undertake the activity, observe and take notes, photos, and video of what students do and how they work. The reflection and discussion topics you think important to offer students should guide your observations.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER COMPETITION: Guide student reflection by offering a series of questions, one at a time. Ask students to reflect individually in writing for no more than two or three minutes per question. Brief discussion following reflection can come after each short period of writing or after a series of related questions.
Here are some questions that can encourage individual reflection productive to open discussion:
About collaboration:
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What did you notice other teams doing that looked interesting?
About critical reading:
What were your initial thoughts on receiving the rules for the task?
What are your thoughts about the assignment and rules now that you’ve completed the task?
About critical thinking:
What were your initial thoughts about paper airplanes and other flying objects before you started this task?
What are your thoughts about paper airplanes or other flying objects now? If changes occurred in your thinking, what caused them?
About self-assessment and process:
What was the key major factor in your team’s results with the airplane today? What was a significant minor factor in your team’s results with the airplane today? If you were given this assignment again, what would you do differently? What would you
do the same? Why?
Questions asking students to reflect on course content topics can be added. (Mine often begin with use of the term airplane and whether, and how that word influenced student thought and approach to the task.)
Consider collecting student writing, especially if you want to integrate the task and reflection later in the course, something that can be vividly useful to guide students to broader learning goals such as holistic analysis, development and recording of iterative brainstorming, inclusion of outside information, and revision. These student comments become more fodder for continued analysis and comment later.
Consider asking students to post their comments to a class electronic discussion forum, access to which you can open (and edit) as needed. Comments collected or posted now and later can be signed or anonymous.
LATER: It is often illuminating to both instructor and students to ask students to reflect again when they
return to the classroom in the period following performance of the task. Instructor-guided discussion can continue, and once again student writing should be collected, especially if it may to be used in analysis later.
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Returning to the task may be helpful at any point when students are grappling with skills or concepts it touches upon, especially those involving collaboration. Additionally, subsequent student writing (and aircraft, should you offer them another competition) will provide the instructor with a rough gauge of the evolution of student thinking and other developing knowledge and skills, a continuous source for action or discussion throughout the course.
EXAMPLE OF REVISIONS DRAFTED BY STUDENTS
Probably because I use this task in composition courses, where exactitude of language and the effects of connotation and denotation are examined, my students often point out that my instructions, while clear, misled them—that the language put some ideas in their heads or banished possibilities they might have thought of sooner—and that this misapprehension delayed their broader consideration of the scope and possibilities of the task. Individual students, teams, and once a whole class, have suggested revisions, some sampled below.
Instead of airplane, substitute aircraft or a phrase such as an object that can be launched into the air without use of motors.
A whole technical writing section heavy with engineering students concurrently taking physics suggested instead of “airplane” or “aircraft,” this careful phrasing: a found, constructed, or composite object released or launched to air or along ground, powered with not more than human strength or ingenuity and aided only by the natural forces of sun, wind, and gravity. This last was eventually rejected by the students when one of them pointed out that I might interpret it as disallowing the use of rubber bands as launch tools.
No classes have ever suggested to me that the conditions, circumstances, or rules of competition be altered, though many sections lobby, sometimes repeatedly, for rematch later in the course.
AFTERWORD AND PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
My teaching focus when I use this task is usually on encouraging students to identify, record, analyze, and use evidence; your teaching focus may be quite different, and the task easily adapts to meet many teaching goals—everything from basic principles of physics to filming group activities. For my composition students, the task allows practice with varied types of evidence (getting far beyond what they see in police procedural and legal narratives in pop media). The task fosters analysis and demonstrates to students how scholarly content and thinking might be developed, observed, recorded, organized, discussed, tested, and presented to others. All this is in addition to what the task offers in the teaching and learning of collaboration, following directions, communication, analysis, writing, and the direct course content an instructor ties in.
