1. What other project-based activities do you do with your class? Do you focus on other workplace environments?
Usually about springtime we start a project that usually lasts two to three weeks on planning your ideal summer vacation. People have budgets to work with. We have trips to the travel agency to pick up brochures. We've also done a planning a company party [project]. When we work on percents in the classroom--decimals, fractions, [and] that sort of thing--we usually throw in a plan a company picnic problem. That doesn't take as long, no more than a week or two. Sometimes our projects start off with one idea in mind and quickly take a side road. That's how a couple of our projects have developed. We do a very small three-day project once a semester on putting you in charge of a small business with a certain amount of employees and everybody wanting a particular holiday off at the same time. Your challenge is to decide who will take the holiday off and why. And we give them lots of materials like employee rosters with personal information and such. That particular problem was the direct side effect of the company picnic problem. The question came up about are you going to shut down the factory, do people have to work, or how is that going to work? And that became a direct tangent problem from that particular problem-based activity. You ask, "Do they focus on other workplace environments?" That's a swell idea. On the average, most of our students either have had or might have experience in the food industry so at this time most of our workplace problems have had to do with the food industry. The makeup of the class changes every semester, and you can alter pieces of any of these projects to develop a new project more suited to your class.
