Accordingly, the sine qua non of designs in this category is to begin instruction with poorly structured problems, questions, and concepts that allow students to examine different perspectives, generate multiple representatives, and invent solutions. For example, the student might have to figure out how Indiana Jones constructed an object to replace a statue so that it would go undetected. They review the video segment several times to deal with such constraints as time and materials. Hypermedia provide ideal macrocontexts. For example, in Immigrant, a database of census information about Irish immigrants in the 1800s, students can map where individual families lived, consider their lifestyles from knowledge of their occupations and goods of the day, and write letters to surviving generations, as historians would do.
Mathematics also becomes a means to solve real-world problems.
Assessment in this model becomes a further means for students to learn. Indeed, to distinguish learning activities from assessment activities in these classrooms is often difficult. Assessment is dynamic, interactive, ongoing, and informal. Often, groups who have worked together are assessed together. Students also learn to assess themselves as part of their role of self-regulation.