Project Based Learning

Project-based learning is an instructional approach designed to give students the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills through engaging projects set around challenges and problems they may face in the real world.

Project-based learning, or PBL, is more than just projects. As the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) explains, with PBL students "investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex problem, or challenge" with deep and sustained attention. ArchForKids LLC put it even more succinctly: PBL is "learning by doing."

The truth is, many in education are recognizing we live in a modern world sustained and advanced through the successful completion of projects. Or, as Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget put it, “knowledge is a consequence of experience.”

It’s true! Your weekend chores, an upcoming presentation, or organizing a fundraising event—they’re all projects.

For most modern workers, it will be a series of projects that mark their career rather than years of service to a specific organization. “Solving real-world issues that matter is important to us as adults—and it’s important to our students,” explain Lathram, Lenz, and Vander Ark in their ebook, Preparing Students for a Project-Based World.

In short, if we are to prepare students for success in life, we need to prepare them for a project-based world.

What are the Essential Elements of Project-Based Learning?

Although definitions and project parameters may vary from school to school, and PBL is sometimes used interchangeably with "experiential learning" or "discovery learning," the characteristics of project-based learning are clear and constant.

In essence, the PBL model consists of these seven characteristics:

• Focuses the student on a big open-ended question, challenge, or problem to research and respond to and/or solve.

• Brings what students should academically know, understand, and be able to do into the equation.

• Is inquiry-based.

• Uses 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, among others.

• Builds student choice into the process.

• Provides opportunities for feedback and revision of the plan and the project.

• Requires students to present their problems, research process, methods, and results.

Following fifteen years of literature review and distilled educational experience, the Buck Institute for Education also identified seven essential elements for PBL but focsed them on project design. Collectively these elements are called Gold Standard PBL.

According to the BIE, the key elements to project design include:

• A Challenging Problem or Question

• Sustained Inquiry

• Authenticity

• Student Voice and Choice

• Reflection

• Critique and Revision

• Public Product

All these elements, if combined well, result in students learning key knowledge, understanding, and skills for success.

An example where all these elements come together is in our high school Business Incubator class. Teams of students propose and design a product based upon a challenging need or intricate problem. These young entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to business and community leaders in an effort to gain support for launching their product.

One team of students designed a mobile app providing real-time air quality readings at locations around the world. Raising awareness about air pollution, supporting health-conscious travelers, and making global connections were galvanizing real-world provocations for their project.

It’s worth noting that while project-based learning may seem like some specific or isolated instructional practice, the lists above should look familiar. They are really the elements of great learning experiences. You don’t have to subscribe to project-based learning to incorporate elements of it in your classrooms.

Having said that, there are benefits that true project-based learning provides.