National Academy Foundation Collaboration Network

Definition of PBL

PBL has been defined in many different ways over the years, usually as one form of “inquiry based learning.” The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) defines standards–focused PBL as “a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.” This definition encompasses a spectrum of projects, ranging from brief projects of one to two weeks based on a single subject in one classroom, to yearlong interdisciplinary projects that involve community participation and adults outside the school.

The BIE distinguishes carefully planned projects from other extended activities in the classroom. In PBL, a well-designed project:

• Supports and advances students’ inherent drive to learn, capability to do important work, and need to be taken seriously. Projects do this by putting students at the center of the learning process.
• Engages students in the central concepts and principles of a discipline. The project work is central rather than peripheral to the curriculum.
• Highlights provocative issues or questions that lead students to in-depth exploration of authentic and important topics.
• Requires the use of essential tools and skills for learning, self-management, and project management, including technology.
• Specifies products that solve problems, explain dilemmas, or present information generated through investigation, research, or reasoning.
• Includes multiple products that permit frequent feedback and consistent opportunities for students to learn from experience.
• Uses performance-based assessments that communicate high expectations, present rigorous challenges, and require a range of skills and knowledge.
• Builds in collaboration in some form, either through small groups, student-led presentations, or whole–class evaluations of project results.

Why Use It

Research shows that PBL enhances the quality of learning and leads to higher-level cognitive development through students’ engagement with complex, novel problems. PBL teaches students complex processes and procedures such as planning and communicating. Well-designed and well-implemented PBL has been shown to improve student achievement and lead to more long-lasting, in-depth understanding. At its best, PBL can help you establish a high-performing classroom in which you and your students form a powerful learning community focused on achievement, self-mastery, and contribution to the community.

Teachers report that PBL is an engaging instructional model that supports authentic inquiry and autonomous learning. Besides encouraging academic proficiency, reports indicate that PBL:

• Overcomes the dichotomy between knowledge and thinking, helping students to both “know” and “do.”
• Supports students in learning and practicing 21st-century skills such as problem solving, communication, teamwork, and self-management.
• Encourages the development of habits of mind associated with lifelong learning, civic responsibility, and personal or career success.
• Integrates curriculum areas, thematic instruction, and community issues.
• Assesses performance on content and skills using criteria similar to those in the work world, thus encouraging accountability, goal-setting, and improved performance.
• Creates positive communication and collaborative relationships among diverse groups of students.
• Meets the needs of learners with varying skill levels and learning styles.
• Engages and motivates bored or indifferent students.

Project based learning can also work well in low-performing schools. PBL offers students the opportunity to investigate authentic topics of interest to them, thus engaging them in the learning process in ways that traditional instruction does not. For students struggling with basic skills, it may be necessary to include more direct instruction during a project, design shorter projects, or tie projects closely to fewer and more specific standards.

The Teacher’s Role

When you apply PBL in the classroom, your role changes from that in traditional teaching. You’re still the content expert, but you’re also a coach and facilitator as you guide students toward successful completion of project tasks.

As you work in this role, consider the following suggested guidelines:

• Before beginning a project, reflect on your teaching style and skills. How will you operate in a PBL environment? Are you comfortable with students moving around a classroom, or with the ambiguity that characterizes a more open-ended learning process?
• If you are hesitant to release control over your students, you may want to start small until you feel comfortable and skilled in project leadership.
• Do not start projects on the first day of the semester; wait until you’ve had time to assess students and prepare them for project work.
• If students have not had experience with projects, they will need training in such skills as collaboration, research, project management, and oral presentation.
• Monitor students closely until they have mastered self-management skills.

At the heart of successful Project Based Learning is your ability to support and direct students (or conversely, your ability to let them struggle with a problem or information as they search out answers and solutions). This requires interpersonal and communication skills, as well as the ability to define the agenda for the class and push through a project to a successful conclusion. It also includes being sensitive to the fact that students finish work at different rates and have different abilities, aptitudes, and learning styles.

Implementation Recommendations

The BIE makes the following recommendations for successful implementation of PBL:

• Spend an adequate amount of time planning and preparing for a project. Coming up with an idea on Sunday to implement in the classroom on Monday does not work for PBL.
• Plan projects using a comprehensive design model that includes clearly identified goals, a range of assessments for both individuals and groups, and a driving question to focus the project. Map out the project’s timeline, resource needs, and instructional strategies.
• Whenever possible, plan projects that involve your community, local businesses, outside experts and mentors, parents, other staff members, and organizations linked to online.
• Have students work in ways that are authentic to the kind of work done by professional adults or in the “real world.”
• Provide rubrics early in the project, to guide students in producing high-quality work.
• Have students present their work to an audience beyond their teacher and peers in the classroom, which will raise the stakes and their level of achievement.
• Begin a project with an engaging “grabber” to hook students’ interest–don’t make the project appear to students as just one more (and perhaps more difficult-sounding) assignment. An effective grabber could be a field trip, guest speaker, a simulation with a call to action, a video, or a lively discussion of an issue to investigate or problem to be solved.
• Do not hand students a “complete packet of materials” with step-by-step instructions on the first day of a project–this can take away their initiative. Let them play a role in planning how they might approach a task, identifying what resources they need, and deciding how they can demonstrate what they learn.
• Develop work processes so students spend class time effectively. Arrange resources, checkpoints, feedback loops, and clear short- and long-term “deliverables.”
• Conclude projects with reflection on both process and content.
• Don’t forget to celebrate what you and your students have accomplished!