Behind the Project

LAS VEGAS — PBLs are supposed to help students at SCTA learn, work together, and create something meaningful. But this year, the new packet made students feel stuck in a never-ending loop of the same questions and information. 

For Sports & Entertainment Marketing sophomore Kaylynn Arnold, the PBL packet was not exactly the most exciting part of this experience. 

“It made me feel bored & repetitive,” Arnold said.

Although Arnold said she enjoyed parts of the PBL, especially working with friends, the packet made the PBL experience more difficult. She explained that the information was sometimes too hard to understand and felt like it repeated itself too much. 

“It was fun with friends, but it made it worse that it was boring and repetitive,” Arnold said. 

Still, Arnold does not think the PBL packets should disappear completely. Instead, she believes they could be improved by making them easier to understand and more useful, by actually having different questions that say different things, rather than different questions that say the same thing. She suggested putting resources and instructions together clearly without repeating the same information over & over. 

“The package should have the resources and instructions well put without being repetitive,” Arnold said. 

The packet caused a lot of feelings from the PBL, because returning students didnt have to work on the packet last year, but new students had to work on the packet this year. Many voices said the packet was created by AI because it was so repetitive, and the way it was put together overall made it seem like they asked AI to make a layout packet so they wouldn’t have to do all the work. Unfortunately, that made it repetitive for all the students who actually had to work on it. 

Arnold believes packets can be helpful if they are actually helping students instead of making them wonder, “Wait…didn't we just do this?”