Authenticity and real-world links

Maintaining authenticity and real-world links 

Authenticity is key to the PBL approach.  John Larmer, Chief of the Buck Institute for Education, states that “PBL means students are doing work that is real to them - it is authentic to their lives - or the work has a direct impact on or use in the real world.”  This emphasis on authenticity must run through the whole project, from the planning to the final product and showcase.   

PBL projects can be not authentic, somewhat authentic or fully authentic.  In those projects which are somewhat authentic, students are doing work that simulates what happens in the world outside of school. In a project that is somewhat authentic, students play a role such as scientist, engineer, or website designer, in a scenario that reflects what might actually occur in the real world, or create products that will not be actually used by people but are viable products which could theoretically be used. 

Fully authentic PBL means students are doing work that is real to them and is authentic to their lives, or the work has a direct impact on or use in the real world. This could be school, their local community, or a workplace.

Larmer, Mergendoller and Boss (2015) described authenticity in four ways: 

1. It meets a real need in the world beyond the classroom or the products students create are used by real people. 

2. It focuses on a problem or an issue or topic that is relevant to students’ lives—the more directly, the better—or on a problem or issue that is actually being faced by adults in the world students will soon enter. 

3. It sets up a scenario or simulation that is realistic, even if it is fictitious. 

4. It involves tools, tasks, standards, or processes used by adults in real settings and by professionals in the workplace. 

Stockwell (2015) identified three different aspects to authenticity in PBL:  authentic task, authentic output and authentic audience. 

Authentic task projects are linked to the real world that students either already experience or will experience in later life.  In one project, the PBL team used pupil voice to establish the authentic scenarios pupils wanted to work on, and “they came up with things, you know, how to open a bank account, how to get a mortgage, how all of that works… And so we used some of that feedback as well to incorporate into the projects and really it was looking at a different way of learning and inquiry based learning where the children are the ones who take the lead, and staff became more facilitators”.   

Authentic output projects require students to produce something which can be used in the real world.  Several of our projects had authentic outputs, from creating meal plans and recipes which could be used by authentic “clients” and served in the college refectory as part of the menu, to a child-friendly version of the computer misuse act which could be used by Northumbria Police in their work with children and young people.  One PBL teacher explained that creating an authentic output “makes it real for [the students], it's not just a piece of creative writing they are completing for homework or a worksheet”. 

An authentic audience could be as diverse as Northumbria Police, real clients with specific dietary needs, a community in need of a Christmas market to reduce isolation, or a group of younger students within a school.  Designing a project with a real-life audience in mind helps the students to connect with the local community and understand both their role in the wider world, and the role of those they come into contact with.  It increases the buy-in and the attention that students give to the project, as they see it as more meaningful and more valuable than work directed solely at their teacher. 

However, Barab and Duffy (2000) suggest that PBL illustrates the richness of real life, as authenticity can neither be pre-planned, nor pre-authenticated by teachers. “Rather in true constructivist fashion, the students must find their own authentic learning answers, in other words there should be many variations of right answer… The authentic task must be of value to students personally and of value to a real community of practice.” (Roach, Tilley and Mitchell, 2018). 

References and further reading

https://www.gettingsmart.com/2017/10/making-project-based-learning-authentic/ 

Stockwell, M. (2015) Authenticity in Project Based Learning: Building Community. The Asian Conference on Technology in the Classroom 2015 Official Conference Proceedings 

Roach, K., Tilley, E. and Mitchell, J. (2018) How authentic does authentic learning have to be? Higher education Pedagogies 2018, Vol. 3, no. 1, 495–509 

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/authentic-project-based-learning-john-larmer#:~:text=people%20do%20use.-,Fully%20Authentic,use%20in%20the%20real%20world.&text=The%20project%20meets%20a%20real,are%20used%20by%20real%20people. 

Larmer, J., Mergendoller, J.R. and Boss, S. (2015) Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning. 

Barab, S.A. and Duffy, T.M. (2000) From practice fields to communities of practice 

January 2000. Conference: Theoretical foundations of learning environments