Project-Based Learning

What is project-based learning?
Project-based learning is a teaching and learning strategy that engages students in complex activities. It usually requires several steps and some duration-more than a couple of class days and up to a semester-and cooperative group learning. Projects may focus on the development of a product or performance, and they generally call upon students to organize their activities, conduct research, solve problems, and synthesize information. Projects are often interdisciplinary. For example, a project in which students draft plans for and build a structure, investigate its environmental impact, document the building process, and develop spreadsheets for the associated accounting would involve the use of skills and concepts drawn from courses in English, mathematics, building trades, drafting and/or design, and biology. Although projects as a methodology are not a new concept; it is an approach that supports the many tasks facing teachers today such as meeting state standards, incorporating authentic assessment, infusing higher-order thinking skills, guiding students in life choices, and providing experiences that tap individual student interests and abilities. Furthermore, the student products created during projects provide the means by which teachers can include authentic assessment in their instruction.

Why is it important to incorporate project-based learning into classroom instruction?
If we believe that standards are the expectations of what students should know and be able to do in any given discipline, then linking them together within disciplines and across disciplines, just as they link naturally, gives students a reason for mastering them. When students are presented with a group of standards in a project-based learning experience, concepts are not taught in isolation. As a result, students have the opportunity to practice and develop their ability to function in complex thinking environments that reflect the type of work environments they will encounter in the twenty-first century.

What does project-based learning look like in the classroom?
Consider the concept of friction, an essential content element in any physics course. If friction is presented as content in a project-based learning experience, it appears as a problem or a solution for students to explore. The problem offers a reason to learn about friction so that students must either devise ways to control it or to use it to an advantage. Also within the project, career exploration such as determining who might be faced with controlling or using friction in their work can be incorporated. As a project extension, individuals employed in such occupations can help students gain an awareness of various careers, their benefits and consequences, and the educational requirements for career entry. Students, teachers, schools, and communities stand to greatly benefit from the personal connections that can be made by bringing workbased experiences into the classroom. A particularly effective strategy can be to link projects to worksite learning so that a part of the project involves activity at the worksite. This connection obviously requires a higher degree of planning and organizing and is dependent on the availability of worksites that can complement the projects. However, the benefits related to student motivation and experience in real contexts are powerful and justify the effort required. Even one or two such experiences in each year can give your students a perspective that is not achievable in a traditional school setting. As students move though a project, teachers can provide many opportunities for learning higher order thinking skills. Using friction as the content again, the teaching of the critical thinking skill of causal reasoning can be used to discover when friction can be used to one's advantage. For example, if a project calls for students to design a vehicle that moves people from one place to another using an alternative fuel, then the effect of friction on different parts of the vehicle may cause the vehicle to slow at different speeds.

How can projects be assessed?
Because projects place students in a hands-on demonstration of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for them to master, authentic assessment is a natural option. Teachers can design assessment instruments such as structured observations, checklists, rubrics, and portfolios to match the activities the students will use to demonstrate content mastery.

What are the various ways project-based learning can be incorporated in a school?
Students projects can be prepared in collaboration with multiple teachers or by a single teacher. Interdisciplinary teams of teachers can develop project plans that include students they have in common or the entire student body. The number of ways project-based learning can manifest itself in a school are as endless as the imagination of its teachers and students.