Designing the Learning

What is Project Based Learning?



Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge.


Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.


Students work on a project over an extended period of time – from a week up to a full term – that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience.

As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills. Project Based Learning unleashes a contagious, creative energy among students and teachers.

How do we design Problem Based Learning?

There are 7 essential design elements that we should consider when developing our Project Based Learning:

  • A challenging problem or question

  • Sustained enquiry

  • Relevance

  • Learner voice: personalisation and choice

  • Reflection

  • Public product / presentation / sharing

  • Evaluation

The project is framed by a meaningful problem to be solved or a question to answer, at the appropriate level of challenge

A Challenging Problem or Question

Intoducing the Driving Question -

  • What is the problem you are going to tackle?

  • What is the hook to engage the learners?

  • How are you going to launch this? - trip / visual / visit / text

Learners engage in a rigorous, extended process of posing questions, finding resources, and applying information

Sustained Enquiry

Build knowledge, understanding and skills to answer the driving question -

  • What do we need to know in order to answer the driving question?

  • What do we need to find out?

  • Develop communication through group work - share your knowledge and ideas with one another

  • Introduce research tools

The project involves real-world context, tasks and tools, quality standards, or impact, or the project speaks to personal concerns, interests, and issues in the learners’ lives

Relevance

  • Can we explore experiential learning to bring the problem to life?

  • What local partners can we collaborate with?

  • Can we bring in an Expert to build knowledge and understanding in a real life context?

  • Can we see the problem for ourselves? Visits / talks / film

Learners make some decisions about the project, including how they work and what they create, and express their own ideas in their own voice

Learner Voice and Choice

  • How are we going to work?

  • What are we going to create / produce?

  • Share our views, opinions and ideas

Learners and teachers reflect on the learning, the effectiveness of their inquiry and project activities, the quality of learner work, and obstacles that arise and strategies for overcoming them. Students give, receive, and apply feedback to improve their process and products.

Reflection

  • Look inwards - How are we doing?

  • Look outwards - What is going well / room for improvement?

  • Look forwards - Where do we go from here?

Learners make their project work public by sharing it with and explaining or presenting it to people beyond the classroom

Public Product, Presentation, Sharing

  • Who will we share our work with?

  • What are we going to share?

  • Where shall we share our work?

  • Why are we sharing our work?

Learners and practitioners give, receive, and apply feedback to highlight outcomes, benefits and value of the project against the success criteria and identify any future change. Audience share their views on our work

Evaluation

  • What are we wanting to find out?

  • Success criteria / skills framework

  • Evaluation tools

  • Self / Peer / Teacher / Audience

Bring the learning to life