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January 15, 2003
Project-Based Learning: a Primer (cont'd)
Getting Started
Classroom Conditions
An important requirement of PBL is setting up the classroom-both intellectually and emotionally-to support the process. Key is a risk-free environment in which students can use a variety of learning styles, learn from mistakes, and give and get honest, nonthreatening feedback. There should also be time for in-depth understanding and both performance-based and self assessments. What students learn should have value beyond the classroom and should encourage the use of higher-order thinking skills.
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| Students at New Technology High in Napa, Calif., used investigation, design, time management, and other workplace skills in addition to math and science to contruct their working robot. |
First Steps
A teacher considering PBL should speak with experienced colleagues to get a feel for what is involved and how it works. It's easiest to begin by joining or adapting someone else's project rather than creating one from scratch. According to Al Rogers and Yvonne Andres, who provide a registry of such projects on their Global Schoolhouse Web site, a good way for educators to proceed is to check out sample projects in the curriculum and grade level they're teaching to see examples of the kinds of learning experiences their students are likely to have (see "How to Pick a Project").
WebQuests and TrackStar are good examples of popular PBL projects. Both model teacher-created activities with topic-specific Web resources to help students address a problem or situation. One WebQuest asks students to pretend the year is 2050 and the earth has run out of nonrenewable resources. Their mission is to research renewable energy resources by reviewing sites about oil, coal, water, and so forth, picking their favorites. After researching, they write a proposal serious enough to present to the United Nations.
Assessment
Assessment is an integral part of PBL. As teachers plan projects, they determine how to measure student learning-both along the way and at the project's end. According to Michael Simkins, who directed the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project, "Teachers should build in both formative and summative assessment. That is, they need to collect and act on information that will help students improve as they proceed, and they need to have measures that show what students learn overall." Evaluations should assess both individual and group work and represent multiple formats, such as written work (formal assignments and informal journal entries), observations (of group and individual activities), presentations, informal discussions and questions, and the final media product. A variety of people-students, teachers, and community members-can provide feedback.
Rubrics and Feedback
Rubrics make a difference. By letting students know at the outset exactly what is expected, a teacher can require that specific goals be met. Rogers says, "Rubrics look critically at the quality of the work found in the project and hold students accountable for clarity, accuracy, and honesty in reporting to an interested and critical audience."
"Projects like Global Schoolhouse's CyberFair combine rubrics with a strong system of peer review," says Rogers. "By examining the work of others honestly and in depth, students learn important principles of quality as well as clear and effective communication. This experience in critical thinking and evaluation contributes much to the value." Classes that participate in the CyberFair evaluate six other projects, and their reviews guide future student work and influence the final grade. These simple facts move the process from an academic exercise into a real-world activity.
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| Research shows that higher-order thinking skills and authentic, realworld problems motivate students to spend many more hours creating and revising than they would with traditional clasroom assignments. |
Results
What difference has PBL made for student learning? Despite the lack of a large body of data, evidence from the few models studied indicates the effect is positive in several ways. For example, a soon-to-be-released report from WestEd, From Promise to Practice: A National Project-Based Learning Action Agenda Integrating Research and Capacity-Building, states that PBL "has the potential to 'cover the curriculum' while promoting more in-depth exploration of central, standards-based concepts." These result in "meaningful academic outcomes," such as in-depth understanding of issues and concepts, better retention of learned skills, and the ability to apply them in new contexts. It also finds that because PBL engages reluctant students, it can accommodate the needs of a diverse population, creating a learning environment that is more equitable for kids from different backgrounds.
In addition, evaluators of the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project noted that students spent much more time engaged in complex thinking while authoring and designing presentations. They were also likely to spend more time interpreting and transforming research information and attending to issues of presentation coherence and audience attention than were their counterparts in comparison classrooms. As well, students were very focused on a critical activity teachers say they typically try to avoid: revising their work.
PBL and Standardized Testing
Most promising are results that show PBL impacts standardized test performance. Outside evaluators for Co-nect schools, for example, whose reform-based approach relies heavily on PBL and technology integration, found that students who develop PBL skills also perform particularly well on standardized tests. In general, Co-nect schools gained almost 26 percent more in test scores-in all subject areas-than control schools.
At a Title I Co-nect school in Memphis, Tenn., for example, students attaining "proficient" level in writing scores soared from 6 percent to 77 percent in just two years. The connection? According to the study, PBL. In one cross-curricular project, these students planned a trip up and down the Mississippi River by contacting cities, places to visit, and restaurants along the way. They plotted their journey, calculated distances, time, and costs, and organized their virtual trip. In another project, high school students mentored elementary children to create music CDs based on local culture. They researched blues traditions, learned the costs and engineering required to use a music studio, and burned a CD. The students (including the high school mentors) showed increases in math scores.
Another research project, conducted by Jo Boaler, associate professor of education at Stanford University, monitored math students in a three-year study in two English schools.
In one, teachers taught the class as a whole and relied on textbooks. In the other, students worked on open-ended projects. Both groups performed similarly at the outset but developed in very different ways. In the textbook school, students gained mathematical knowledge that they were rarely able to use in anything other than textbook and test situations. In the project school, not only were the students able to apply their mathematical knowledge, but they also scored significantly higher on the national exam. In addition, results show that students at the textbook school soon forgot what they had learned. The project students remembered.
Other findings are similar. In a Vanderbilt University study, for example, students worked for five weeks on a project focused on how basic principles of geometry relate to architecture and design. Students of all skill levels made significant gains in their ability to answer traditional test items covering scale, volume, perimeter, area, and other geometry concepts.
According to John Thomas, author of "A Review of Research on Project-Based Learning," the positive impact on standardized test scores-especially in math and reading-is remarkable in that PBL doesn't directly target the basic skills tapped by these tests.
A Research Agenda
Undeniably, more proof is needed that PBL is the key to improved student learning. Yet the evidence so far is encouraging despite the host of significant obstacles such as fixed and inadequate resources, time constraints, inflexible schedules, incompatible technology, class size and composition, and district curriculum policies. More research is needed on how time is spent and findings must be correlated to carefully designed professional development programs.
PBL in an NCLB World
For the past dozen or so years, the education pendulum has swung toward the types of learning that PBL typifies, with goals being to prepare students for the 21st century-to use higher-order thinking, apply technology, adapt to change, acquire workplace skills, and more. It might be that the major challenge for K-12 education today is to ensure that our children acquire these skills despite the sweeping time and energy demands of the test-driven curriculum forced by No Child Left Behind. Will it be an easy task to institute the necessary reforms? Without a doubt, it will not. But with the meaningful future of American education at stake, it is unequivocally worth our best efforts to try.
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