GBSs are effective because they enable students to do something meaningful. Every aspect of a GBS design the mission, cover story, focus, and operations rests on this. By making the pedagogical goals of the GBS explicit at the outset, the remainder of the design process is simplified.
Specifying a set of meaningful target skills is relatively easy to do in corporate training, because the focus of such training is to prepare students to fill well-defined roles with clear associated skills. In K-12 education, it is more difficult to say what a student should be empowered to do in the future. However, it is just as crucial.
One way to produce a set of target skills is to examine the competencies of a professional in the domain. To teach about plants, focus on the work of a botanist or weekend gardener; to teach about current events, look at how an intelligent adult can "read through" a speech or form opinions about government programs; to teach business, interview stockbrokers and CEOs.
Where am I in the content of the book?
