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Benefits of Nobel Explorers’ Online Internship

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Why should you choose a Nobel Explorers’ internship? No one could answer this question better than our interns themselves. That’s why we interviewed Michael, one of our interns, and here’s why he’d recommend this internship to his friends.

Flexibility and comfort

When you think about online internship, the most obvious first benefit is that you can work from the comfort of your home. This lets you save money for gas and any time that you’d spend on travelling. Also, you have complete control over your working environment.

Plus, with Nobel Explorers, there’s a flexible schedule, so you can organize your time and work however you want to. A flexible schedule means that you don’t miss out on anything important to you, whether it’s someone’s birthday or a basketball game you’re planning to watch.

Developing new skills

The goal of a Nobel Explorers’ internship is to teach interns the skills that lay the foundation for their careers.

On one side, they learn hard skills – STEM knowledge. These include web design, web coding, etc. On the other, they gain soft skills – skills that are highly sought-after by employers but are not job-specific. Some of these are teamwork, time management, problem-solving, and communication. Hard and soft skills go hand in hand and make NE interns future-ready!

Learning hard skills

You wonder why learning hard skills is emphasized? Friends of our interns didn’t have internships where they learned actual skills. They were doing a lot of manual work. As Michael said, the job of one of his friends was only to turn the computers on and off  all day. Sounds really boring, right? And we’re pretty sure his friend didn’t learn much.

Our internships are designed for our interns to work by themselves –  with the help of our hard-skills experts, of course. This way, Michael had a chance to be programming by himself although he’d never had training on javascript, node js, or any other programming language he was using. And today, Michael finds coding fun!

It’s like a puzzle, try to figure out the most efficient way to build something using the least amount of code.”

Website our interns made

The hard skills Nobel Interns Generation I learned during their online internship are website design and website coding. As time moved on, they became pretty comfortable, started to be more efficient, and ended up with an awesome website we couldn’t be more proud of!

Check out the awesome website our interns made

Soft skills

Besides these hard skills, they learned a lot more! Michael didn’t expect this at all! He thought that he’d just be coding, but he also learned soft skills. The two he found the most valuable are communication and teamwork skills.

Communication skills

Miscommunication can lead to frustration, missing meetings, as well as a less productive team, so communicating effectively is a vital skill to master. NE interns become good listeners and accomplished at explaining and clarifying their thoughts and ideas. The end result is the team accomplishes more work together than if they’d all worked alone.

Real Teamwork

In school, students learn teamwork but is it really teamwork? Michael said that whenever he had a group project he kind of hated it because his grades depended on how his team members behaved. So we asked him how the teamwork at Nobel Explorers differs from the teamwork in school.

I’ve never thought about teamwork the way Nobel thinks about it. I’ve never thought it was a positive thing.”

During his internship, Michael learned the importance of being able to work with other people. He found that part of working together is not just working with the perfect partner but working with people who aren’t perfect and learning how to deal with them. It’s important to learn how to talk to your teammates to make you all feel more comfortable and, of course, get a good result at the end.

Are soft skills soft?

When Michael was introduced to the term soft skills, he felt that designation didn’t really do justice to the value of these skills. It implies they’re not as important as hard skills, and therefore get little respect.

Hard skills make you qualified for the job, but soft skills are what helps you write your resume, interview to get that job, and help you stand out.

soft skills

We agreed that the term “soft skills” underplays their importance in the modern world. So we’re weighing in on the term – what do you think about teamwork skills? Maybe people skills? Or social skills?

Professional development

At Nobel Explorers, you have an opportunity to be part of a real software development team. Not many high-school students have this kind of experience. A lot of people have this chance only when they get their first job. Having this kind of experience can help you adjust to the work environment faster, get better insight into the workplace, and boost your confidence at work.
A real software development team is also an international team. Working within an international team means a lot when it comes to preparation for the future of work, as it seems more and more companies will be looking into remote work and international teams.

Skills transfer

Skills you learn at Nobel aren’t necessarily for work only– they can be very useful in your private life too.  It’s about how you communicate with other people, and that’s definitely important in every relationship we have. You learn how to improve your work when things don’t go well. Also, you learn how to plan your time and how to effectively split tasks up, and that’s the best way to avoid procrastination.

Which of these skills do you think is the most important? Leave us a comment!

 

If you like what you’ve read, we only have one more thing to say to you: We can’t wait to meet you!

 

Project-Based Learning Explained

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Instead of endlessly memorizing facts and using pen and paper to take extensive notes, students learn about a subject by actively exploring real-world problems through project-based learning. This type of learning is becoming increasingly necessary in the global world, as it focuses on the individual and helps people learn while engaging in investigation and applying their knowledge to solve actual problems. But what is project-based learning exactly, why do we really need it and how does it work? Read on to find out!

Not an ordinary project

When you think of projects in an educational context, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the concept of “projects” solely based on facts in a unit. For example, in history class that could be a poster depicting certain historical events and in biology class students might get to give a lecture to their peers about human metabolism. Simply put, they would repeat facts that they have read about elsewhere, without analysis or deeper comprehension [3].

When faced with these types of projects, students often think “When will I ever need this in real life?”, and this is where project-based-learning (PBL) comes into the picture. Its content is predicated on real-world problems that need to be dealt with creatively [3]. So, instead of making a poster on women’s rights based on facts they have learned from a textbook, students can organize a campaign to promote them and talk about their significance or make a documentary interviewing people involved in the issue, or discuss the importance of suffrage with people they know.

Even though the entire concept of PBL sounds new and is often mentioned in the context of “honing 21st-century skills”, it actually stems from strategies that were used by classical Greek philosophers, who talked about “learning by doing” and focused on critical thinking and not just repetition of information. Later on, other philosophers also accentuated the importance of learning based on experience and not purely verbal information, and half a century ago PBL emerged as a practical teaching strategy that can be used in various disciplines [1]. In this form it involves, as we said, student is learning in order to overcome real-life problems, while educators serve only as coaches who relinquish control to students usually working in pairs or groups [6].

If this concept sounds a bit too fluid and perhaps not as efficient as good old-fashioned rote learning, you are not alone. It was often criticized for not being rigorous enough and there are still people who doubt that students can learn everything a curriculum may require this way. But, “proper” PBL actually has many rules that need to be followed in order for students to learn something successfully, so there is usually no space for skipping certain steps or accidentally avoiding a certain facet of a problem that is being taught [6]. By having these practical rules, PBL as a teaching strategy ensures that students learn what they are supposed to learn while being fully engaged in the process [7].

But why is it so much better? Benefits of PBL

Some benefits of PBL were mentioned earlier where we explained what it actually is, but there is more to this story. PBL is so talked about recently exactly because of its many advantages over the traditional type of learning:

  • PBL makes learning more grounded in real life and students have the feeling that they are learning something useful, and not merely facts they will never need in their future lives [2]. This knowledge of the relevance of the project usually engages them more in the entire process of learning and they “learn by doing” instead of just finishing yet another school assignment [7].
  • Research has shown that PBL also increases students’ motivation [3]. The contextualization of the studied material and the authenticity of this type of learning together with its student-centered approach and individualization of the entire process motivates students to learn for the sake of learning, and not just to get a good grade [6].
  • In order to solve complex problems posed by PBL, students have to engage higher-order thinking skills and problem-solving skills. These types of skills are necessary for almost all jobs and by practicing them in an educational environment, students not only prepare for their future careers, but also for tackling diverse issues throughout their lives [1].
  • Collaboration is one of the main characteristics of PBL, and in order to work on a project students also have to learn how to work in a group efficiently and overcome any problems they might have within the group. Working in a group and solving all kinds of interpersonal struggles, teaches students both people skills and project management skills that are more than necessary in order to work in today’s society [2].
  • It has been shown that PBL as a method affects students’ achievement in a positive manner. Students who learned by working on projects proposed by PBL usually learned better than students who used more traditional ways of learning. The reason for this could well be the fact that students generally achieve more when they have a greater desire to learn, and as we have seen, PBL usually increases this desire [4].
  • PBL is also thought to improve long-term retention of knowledge, meaning that students who learn using this method remember the things they learned longer than students who learned in the traditional manner [6].
  • PBL is an interdisciplinary method so it gives students a chance to use the knowledge they gained in many other classes while working on a project, and shows them how that knowledge can be relevant in real-life situations [5].
  • Today’s students are more than familiar with technology and its various uses, and PBL is a perfect opportunity to use it in an educational setting and think about its different benefits. Using technology also allows students to connect with many people around the world while working on a project which, of course, gives them an even wider knowledge of the subject they are working on [7].

When taken into consideration together, all of these benefits of PBL lead us to the conclusion that PBL is essential in developing something called 21st-century skills that we all need in order to succeed in the fast-paced global world [2]. It is no longer enough to have basic knowledge and skills; we need to be able to solve problems quickly and effectively, work in teams, adjust to changes, think critically, manage ourselves and communicate ideas – PBL helps in bettering all these skills [7].

How to make it work [8]

In order to make PBL work, it is not enough to just think of a fun, relevant project and let the students work on it. If that happens, it is more than likely PBL will become just another means to an end, the end being a grade. It is important to set learning goals, which would concentrate both on the skills that the project can help develop and also on the content that has to be learned by the end of the project.

It is easy for students to think of PBL as another school assignment, so it is important to choose a project that is firmly grounded in reality, with clear relevance to the students. Reminding the students from time to time of what the project can help them do later in life is also not a bad idea.

In PBL, asking questions and discussing the problem is half the work, so it is extremely important to encourage the discussion, without leading it. A teacher or a parent who has taken the task of PBL on her/himself should only serve as a guide and help students reflect on their progress and the learning process. Students are the ones who should be making decisions.

Setting an end goal that it is tangible or demonstrable is also a smart way to make PBL more effective. It is a good idea to have the students work on a product that they can later talk about in front of an audience or to make a presentation describing the problem they solved.

We are launching an online STEAM summer camp, Nobel Explorers, where students will be working on solving complex and engaging challenges through project-based learning. So, now’s the chance to find out hands-on how project-based learning really looks like! Join us! 

References:

  1. Boss, S. (2011, September 20). Project-Based Learning: A Short History. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-history.
  2. Boss, S. (2011, September 20). Project-Based Learning: What Experts Say. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-experts.
  3. Gonzales, J. (2016, June 26). Project Based Learning: Start Here. Retrieved from https://cultofpedagogy.com/project-based-learning/.
  4. Helle, L., Tynjälä, P., Olkinuora, E., & Lonka, K. (2007). “Ain”t nothin’ like the real thing’. Motivation and study processes on a work-based project course in information systems design. The British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 397–411. http://doi.org/10.1348/000709906X105986
  5. Karaçalli, S., & Korur, F. (2014). The effects of project-based learning on students’ academic achievement, attitude, and retention of knowledge: The subject of “Electricity in our lives.” School Science and Mathematics, 114(5), 224–235. http://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12071
  6. Vega, V. (2012, December 3). Project-Based Learning Research Review. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/pbl-research-learning-outcomes.
  7. What is Project Based Learning (PBL). Retrieved from http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl.
  8. Why Project Based Learning (PBL). Retrieved from http://www.bie.org/about/why_pbl.

Our new online summer STEM camp, Nobel Explorers, is starting soon! We prepared 11 cool projects for students aged 10 to 18 who want to meet international friends and get a head start on their future careers. It is worth checking out if you are interested in providing your child with a summer full of learning and fun.