Project Based Learning (PBL)

BENEFITS

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• Engaging for students

 

• Leads to sustained learning of content

 

• More authentic and relevant

 

• Builds “soft skills” – team work, problem solving, collaboration

 

• Increased persistence and responsibility for learning

 

• Development of research and discussion skills

 

• Improved attendance

 

• Improved academic outcomes across subjects, grades and household incomes. Saavedra & Rapaport (2024)

 

 

 

HOW TO

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• Determine authentic, challenging problem, project or question.

 

• Teach research techniques.

 

• Practice team collaboration skills. Students need to learn how to work in teams.

 

• Encourage student voice and choice.

 

• Promote sustained inquiry where. students learn to use a project management process that enables them to proceed effectively from project initiation to completion.

 

• Students work is publicly displayed, discussed, critiqued, and given feedback with dialogue.

 

• Reflection, critique, and revision. Student reflect on work, process and ultimate task completion.

 

• Ensure aligned professional learning support for all teachers.  Create a school wide PBL culture. Boss & Larmer, (2018)

 

• Use Narrative and Role-Play – Create an overarching narrative or theme for the class, like students becoming astronauts exploring space or spies on a mission.

 

• Have students take on roles and personas related to the theme. Decorate the classroom accordingly.

 

• Link learning goals and activities to this narrative for an immersive experience.

 

• Implement Badges, Levels and Progress Tracking –  Set specific goals or “quests” for students to complete and earn badges/achievements.

 

• Use progress bars, leaderboards or levels to track student advancement visually.

 

• Badges can unlock privileges like homework passes, choice of work environment, opting out of tests etc.

 

• Incorporate Time Pressure – Add time limits or countdowns to activities to increase challenge and adrenaline.

 

• This fosters cooperation within teams and competition between groups.

 

• Use regular reminders or digital timers to enforce the time crunch.

 

• Encourage Creativity and Choice – Allow students to be creative by designing characters, worlds, stories related to the learning.

 

• Provide options for students to choose their own pathway to complete badges/quests.

 

• This promotes student agency, self-direction and accountability in their learning.

 

• Use Collaborative and Competitive Elements –  Incorporate both collaborative group challenges and competitive dynamics.

 

• Students can play against each other or work together towards shared goals.

 

• Cooperation and friendly competition can increase engagement.  Link

 

 

 

PBL PROGRAMS / CURRICULUM

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• International Baccalaureate (IB) Link

 

• Knowledge in Action (KIA) Link

 

• Generation Citizen (GC) Link

 

• New Tech Network (NTN) Link

 

• Street Law “Rule of Law” (ROL) Link

 

• PBL Works Link

 

• Democratic Knowledge Project (DKP) Link

 

 

CHALLENGES

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• Tension between breadth and depth – the tension schools and teachers feel to “teach” the breadth of district and state learning standards.

 

• Keeping projects central – whole school and not 1-or-2 classrooms.

 

• Misalignment of standardized assessments – most educators see the biggest gains in metrics not as easily measured such as “soft skills.”

 

• Financial requirements – Teaching PBL requires materials and professional learning support long-term. Saavedra & Rapaport (2024)

 

 

 

WHAT NOT TO DO

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• Don’t bolt on a poster, model, or slideshow at the end of a traditional unit and call it PBL; in high‑quality PBL, the project is the central vehicle for learning, not an afterthought.

 

• Don’t design activities that are fun but only tangentially related to core concepts.

 

• Launching an ambitious, open-ended project without building your (and students’) PBL routines and systems first.

 

• Assuming PBL automatically guarantees deep learning, regardless of task design and scaffolds.

 

• Not backward-planning from clear standards, content goals, and success criteria.

 

• Designing products that emphasize aesthetics (posters, slides, “creative” crafts) over intellectually demanding thinking and explanation.

 

• Avoiding explicit instruction, modeling, or worked examples, even when students lack the background knowledge or strategies to investigate meaningfully.

 

• Trying to infer individual mastery only from group products, which hides who actually understands what.

 

• Skipping systematic formative checks (quick writes, exit tickets, conferences) that track progress.

 

• Expecting full student self-direction from day one without teaching collaboration norms, roles, timelines, and help-seeking routines.

 

• Ignoring structural constraints (time, curriculum pacing, class size, parent expectations).  link