The learner-centered, constructivist classroom gives students the opportunity to problem solve and develop higher level thinking skills. The modern employee must be more highly educated, better informed, more flexible than ever before. He or she must be, because what we are paying for is the ability to think, to solve problems, to make informed judgments, to distinguish between right and wrong, to discern the proper course of action in situations and circumstances that are necessarily ambiguous. Changes in society brings a need to change the way we teach. No longer will the educational model of the agricultural or industrial age work.
Project based group work provides students the opportunity to take ownership of their own learning.
When students have the opportunity to analyze the structure of a product and then decide on the priority of attributes of any given product, they then can go about the process of deciding a grading practice. Once this is done, students decide on what practices they personally want to fulfill- they begin to grade themselves, an internal and intrinsic value rather than external and uncontrollable feature. A student-determined rubric has students more involved with their learning. If students can practice this often, they become more logical and critical in their thinking. They take control of the process and therefore, take ownership of their own learning.