The Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research project has been conducted worldwide by Microsoft together with SRI International. The following excerpts come from the coding manual which helps data coders to interpret the field research data.

The question that is being asked when considering real-world contexts is:

“To what extent does the learning activity require problem-solving based on authentic situations and data from outside the classroom, and are students’ solutions implemented in the real world?”

Definition

Learning activities require problem-solving when students must

1. develop a solution to a problem that is new to them OR
2. complete a task that they have not been instructed how to do OR
3. design a complex product that meets a set of requirements.

Learning activities that require problem-solving do NOT give students all the information they need to complete the task or specify the procedure they must follow to arrive at a solution.

A problem is a task with a defined challenge for the student. For example, in the humanities, the task of analyzing a novel from the perspective of one of the characters is an example of a problem-solving activity. In the sciences, a “problem” could be to design a bridge that can support a certain weight or to predict what will happen when two unfamiliar chemicals interact.

Real-world problems refer directly to genuine situations and needs that exist outside the school context. Real-world problems have the following characteristics:

• They are experienced by real people (for example, an ecological imbalance in a rainforest in Costa Rica or the desire to have lunches that don’t spoil without refrigeration).
• The solution to the problem has a specific plausible audience besides the
  teacher as grader. For example, designing equipment for a playground with
  limited space could benefit inner-city children. In the humanities, writing a persuasive essay to encourage people in the community to support their elderly neighbors, or re-writing a Shakespearean play to be more accessible to a teenage audience, would be considered to have a real-world purpose. If students are told to write so that their audience (“the reader”) will understand their point, this is too general to be considered a specific plausible audience. A student might develop a design for decreasing energy use in the school (a real-world problem).
• The specific real-world context of the problem is made explicit to students. Students are not just applying principles in the abstract. For example, solving a problem related to how the HIV virus affects cells in AIDS patients is a real-world situation and application; this is different from solving a problem related to how viruses affect cells in general.
• Students would use actual data (for example, real scientific records of earthquakes, or first-person accounts of an historical event) to solve the problem.