How to teach students a course / diploma project or build a "tower" from the second floor

The teacher is faced with the task not only to “read the material,” but also to interest the students. Personal interest is usually the best engine and dope, which allow you to dive into the subject, read articles and books, not just Wikipedia diagonally, take additional courses and pass qualifying exams.

How to ignite interest? How to pick up the material and present it, to help see the prospects of the topic being studied and the relevance of knowledge? The course / diploma project, in my opinion, is more difficult in terms of maintaining interest, compared with mastering a course of lectures, since requires effort. Choosing a student theme, often for various reasons, focuses on minimizing effort, seeing the coursework / diploma as “something unnecessary / for show / unavoidable evil”, and not to increase one’s level of real knowledge.

Contradictions

The teacher is clamped at least between:

• stay within the curriculum;
• knowledge and training of the student and teacher (yes, both of them) should be sufficient;
• time limit.

At the same time, the list of the "hotelok" is very long: and that it was interesting + fashionable + modern, and the themes were not repeated too often, and the practical applicability of the results in the national economy, etc.
')
It is almost impossible to take all this into account, one has to go for some tricks and compromises.

Preparation or from restrictions for bows

Restrictions exist objectively, therefore it is necessary to make a start from them. Given the level of preparation of students (which can vary greatly depending on the specialty, course, specific group), curriculum and preparation / delivery time, we choose the main educational task (scheme and examples below). This is the future second floor of the "tower".

It is not logical to start building something from the second floor, but this will keep the presentation clear.

We are building the "tower" down. When the important stage of choosing the main task is completed, it is not difficult to choose simple [for] tasks that will make up the first floor. The foundation, as you might guess, is the knowledge already available to the student.

We are finishing the "tower" up. The key point, after selecting the task, is to build [a visual and not very far-fetched] projection of the learning task to a certain business function. The transition must be organic and understandable both for the audience and for the teacher himself. This will help, above all, practical experience in the application of knowledge in work and outlook. Under this give the entire third floor of the "tower". The fourth floor can be called popular science, there will be a synthesis of a separate business function to a large business problem, where it is necessary to show development and scaling, the transition from a private solution to something big. The fifth floor is even more popular and descriptive, its peculiarity is the linking of the business task built at the previous stage to real events / companies that [most likely] use similar business tasks. The function of this level is an anchor, which “lands” a business problem, demonstrating its real relevance and, equally important, success.

I note that the upper part of the "tower" - the fourth and fifth floors - is convenient to use as an input immediately for a series of tasks due to projections.

We get the "tower":

five	A selection of topical companies that [most likely] use similar business objectives.
four	Generalization of a separate business function to a major business problem
3	Projection on the business function
2	Main learning task
one	A set of simple tasks
0 foundation	[supposed] student knowledge

Presentation or from the business horizon to mathematics

The presentation of the course / diploma projects is on the "tower" from top to bottom. For brevity, we immediately look at the table:

five	Business problem with examples of demand in the market
four	Decomposition of a business task, it is divided into separate simple business functions, usually available to one specialist / developer
3	Formalization [with the necessary simplification] business functions as a transition to educational / study material
2	Getting a formalized task (and constraints for it)
one	Decomposition of a task into a set of simple [under] tasks

The attention of the audience is concentrated on the first and fifth floors of the "tower". Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize that the highlight in solving a formalized task, which turns a set of simple tasks into a complex and awakens a synergistic effect. This is, in fact, a reverse jump from the first floor of the "tower" to the second.

Within the framework of the presentation, it is desirable to achieve the effect that the learning task is perceived as a lens refracting existing knowledge, aimed by simple tasks, into business applications. Building such a lens is what a proposed project is!

Examples

In the examples, several presentations, very briefly, because Their goal, above all, is a demonstration of the method. It is not difficult to make a reverse transition and restore order to build a presentation from the statement of the main task (second floor).

Instead of conclusion

Constructive suggestions and criticism are welcome. Try building such a “tower” for your coursework / diploma, could such a presentation motivate you better?

UPD

Continuation How the “tower” turns into a “pyramid” - using the example of the DNS analysis and filtering example