When students are challenged to get to work solving real-life problems, the whole world becomes a classroom. Here we offer a guide for getting started.

Walk into team teachers Mike Smith and David Ross's interdisciplinary classroom at Napa New Technology High School in California and you will see students at work-writing in online journals, doing research on the Internet, meeting in groups to plan and create Web sites and digital media presentations, and evaluating their peers for collaboration and presentation skills. This setting and these types of activities have a name and a purpose. It's called project-based learning, and it's designed to engage students and empower them with responsibility for their own education in ways unheard of in traditional classrooms.

Getting Started with Project-Based Learning

Criteria for PBL

Elements of a Great PBL Project

How to Pick a Project

Steps to Creating a PBL Project

Advice to Teachers, Technology Coordinators, and Administrators

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In project-based learning, students work in groups to solve challenging problems that are authentic, curriculum-based, and often interdisciplinary. Learners decide how to approach a problem and what activities to pursue. They gather information from a variety of sources and synthesize, analyze, and derive knowledge from it. Their learning is inherently valuable because it's connected to something real and involves adult skills such as collaboration and reflection. At the end, students demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge and are judged by how much they've learned and how well they communicate it. Throughout this process, the teacher's role is to guide and advise, rather than to direct and manage, student work.

PBL means learning through experiences. For example, high school students design a school for the future and learn advanced math concepts and engineering along the way. Elementary students study single-cell organisms in order to provide data to researchers in a lab. Others build and race electric cars and learn about energy efficiency. Many projects focus on environmental concerns, such as testing pollution levels in local waters and researching methods for cleanup and then reporting findings and strategies for improvement to community officials. What do these projects have in common? All engage students through hands-on, serious, authentic experiences. They also allow for alternative approaches that address students' individual differences, variations in learning styles, intelligences, abilities, and disabilities.

The real-world focus of PBL activities is central to the process. When students understand that their work is ultimately valuable as a real problem that needs solving, or a project that will impact others, they're motivated to work hard.

Ed Gragert, director of iEARN, which offers PBL projects that address local, national, and global issues, believes that collaboration, interactivity, and a clear outcome that "improves the quality of life on the planet" really speaks to kids.

"By demonstrating that they can make a difference in even a single life, students are motivated and empowered to carry their experiences into lifelong community and global service," he says.

In addition to teaching core content and raising awareness, PBL projects train students to take complex global issues and break them down into specific local action steps. For example, the Schools Outfitting Schools program contributes to international efforts to make education available to girls worldwide. By working to provide supplies to one school in Afghanistan, students see how they directly affect the lives of individuals. And Afghan students contribute as well by helping kids in the United States become aware of their culture.

Technology enables PBL. Students use tools such as word processors, spreadsheets, and databases to perform tasks like outlining, drafting essays, analyzing numerical data, and keeping track of collected information. E-mail, electronic mailing lists, forums, and other online applications facilitate communication and collaboration with the world outside the classroom. The Web provides access to museums, libraries, and remote physical locations for research. Students can create electronic compositions of art, music, or text collaboratively; participate in a simulation or virtual world; and work together to accomplish a real task or to improve global understanding. And all work can be published on the Web for review by real audiences, not just a single teacher, class, or school.

Technology plays a role in assessment and evaluation too. For example, students in schools such as Napa New Technology High compile their work electronically for an ongoing portfolio of their creations. At given points, they cull the best from this collection for adult and peer review to demonstrate their learning over time.

Introducing and implementing PBL in a traditional school setting can be a complex challenge, requiring a significant change in teachers' approaches to teaching and students' approaches to learning. Communication, teamwork, and time management join math, language, and other subject-area content as new essentials for students. And the teacher's role no longer includes just delivering instruction or expecting students to repeat facts on tests. Instead, it is to offer resources that help students investigate and develop content purposefully and creatively.

According to Al Weis, founder of the ThinkQuest student Web design programs, "When a project promotes serious academic skills, evaluation, assessment, information structuring, and other elements of PBL, students end up working hundreds of hours. With the multiple demands of curriculum and standardized testing, it is hard to fit in work that develops and models a real-world working environment and the skills needed there."

Because of these challenges, many schools that actively promote PBL also support a culture of school reform. Bob Pearlman, director of strategic planning at the New Technology Foundation, says that because PBL requires both a commitment and a clear understanding of exactly what it is, a broad restructuring of policy decisions, leadership, and professional development are essential. A tall order for institutions traditionally resistant to change? Yes. But national projects and models are available as support for schools and districts interested in taking the first steps toward integrating PBL into the curriculum.

Gwen Solomon is director of TechLearning.com and co-author of Connect Online: Web Learning Adventures (Glencoe McGraw-Hill).

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

According to the Autodesk Foundation, "PBL is at the heart of good instruction because it brings together intellectual inquiry, rigorous real-world standards, and student engagement in relevant and meaningful work." Well-crafted projects:

* Engage and build on student interests and passions,

* Provide a meaningful and authentic context for learning,

* Immerse students in complex, real-world problems/investigations without a predetermined solution,

* Allow students to take the lead, making critical choices and decisions,

* Connect students with community resources and experts,

* Require students to develop and demonstrate essential skills and knowledge,

* Draw on multiple disciplines to solve problems and deepen understanding,

* Build in opportunities for reflection and self-assessment,

* Result in useful products that demonstrate what students have learned, and

* Culminate in exhibitions or presentations to an authentic audience.

* Projects should be based on standards, have clear goals, and promote interdisciplinary content.

* Students should make the decisions for all aspects of the project-from selecting a topic to designing the project to organizing work to presenting results.

* Students should learn collaborative skills, such as team research, group decision making, relying on each others' work, and providing, accepting, and integrating feedback.

* Projects should have a connection to the real world by focusing on issues that affect students' lives or communities, and by using realistic methods such as polling, researching, and experimenting.

* Projects should incorporate a nontraditional approach to time on task. More time facilitates the freedom to experiment and learn from trial and error and opportunities for in-depth study.

* Evaluations should focus on ongoing demonstrations of what students are learning and how well they can communicate it. Peer reviews, teacher evaluations, self-reflection, and community feedback can all play a role.

* Joining or adapting someone else's project is a good way for educators to get their feet wet with PBL. When reviewing sample projects (see "PBL Information Online" at www.techlearning.com), here are some tips to determine which are right for your classroom.

* Ask yourself what you want your students to learn with a project-based approach.

* Read project descriptions to find a match and to determine if they address the necessary standards or other school district requirements.

* Determine how much time and work you can put into a project. Check if the project requires prerequisites, technologies to which you don't have access, or involve more than you can do.

* Make sure that the one you select meets the needs of all of your students and that they all have the skill levels to participate.

* Check to see that all aspects match your goals: for example, note what type of collaboration students will have, if they'll be able to divide responsibilities, and how they will present what they've learned.

Michael Simkins, director of the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project, a Challenge grant to encourage project-based learning, offers six basic steps to conducting your own project from scratch.

* Identify a project idea. Define specific project tasks, the parameters for student decision making, and the outcomes that will provide adequate ways for students to demonstrate learning.

* Determine the time frame.

* Plan activities by reviewing other projects. For example, take a look at WebQuests or TrackStar projects for insights, guidelines, and templates. Identify specific goals, tasks, and outcomes so that students will understand what they are going to learn, what the parameters are, and what the results will be. Check that your goals meet standards and other requirements. If you are working with one or more other teachers, make sure that everyone agrees on all aspects of the project.

* Plan for assessment.

* Start off the project with the students, making sure that deadlines and schedules are clear, and provide guidance, assistance, and encouragement when students need it.

* At the project's end, have students share results and reflect on outcomes.

Backwards planning is the best approach to project-based learning. Begin with the standards and then develop your assessments. Focus on three key concepts:

* What is it that we want students to know and be able to do? (standards)

* How do we make sure that they are able to do this? (assessment)

* What do I have to do as a teacher to make this possible? (high-quality teaching)

More than an end product. The project is more than just the final product, it is all of the pieces: the lesson plans, the activities, the assessments, and even the tests and quizzes.

Start with what you already are doing. Don't throw away all the great lessons you've used in the past. If your existing lessons help students acquire the skills and concepts necessary for the project, then use them.

Begin and end with the standards. Students master the standards when they can apply the skills and concepts they learn. One effective way to check for mastery is to use rubrics to look at performance. Focus only on five to six standards.

Focus on assessments. Use two types of assessment: formative and summative. Formative assessment occurs throughout the project and is used to make sure that students understand skills and concepts; these tests, observations, and student work serve as diagnostic tools. Summative assessments happen at the end of the project and allow students to apply and demonstrate what they have learned.

Make it fun! Project work should be fun and motivating. Whenever possible, provide real-world problems for students to solve.