Project-based learning

This article gives and introduction to project-based learning" in the framework of more open-ended projects that are typical of [[socio-constructivism | socio-constructivist approaches]. Please, see project-oriented learning for a more general introduction.

Introduction

The notion of project is central to socio-constructivism and other related activity-based approaches. A project allows learners to identify and formulate their own problems. The goals they set as well as the unexpected discoveries they will make during their interaction with the environment serve as guides (Collins et al, 1989). It is therefore important to divide scenarios into sequences and to divide problems into sub-problems so that learners perform only one task at a time and that these tasks are flexible enough in order for learners to be able achieve them whatever their basic level. Project-based learning is a model which distinguishes from traditional teaching since the focus is put on the learner and his project. Learners have the opportunity to work more autonomously and build their knowledge.

Synteta (2001) defines project-based learning as follows:

1. Engaging learning experiences including learners in complex and concrete projects through which they can develop and apply skills and knowledge
2. Leading learners to turn to various sources of information and disciplines in order to solve their problems
3. Learning with identified and formulated goals but towards which challenges and the results of knowledge acquisition processes are neither predefined nor totally expectable.
4. Experiences through which learners get to manage and handle resources such as time and various material

Difficulties

Projects are complex endeavours involving many different activities. In particular students have trouble for (a) initiating inquiry, formulate coherent research questions; (b) define a research project; (c) direct investigations; find resources, (d) manage time; keep deadlines, estimate time needed to do a task, (e) collaborate and give feedback; articulate work of others and give regular feedback, (f) follow-up the project; revise products. In addition to the difficulty of setting clear goals for various phases, students have trouble relating data, concept and theory. A teacher should orchestrate a project into several more or less sequential scenarios who in turn can be broken down to smaller phases. This will insure that learners will focus on smaller sub-problems, will do things in the right order (e.g define research goals in the beginning of the project and not in the middle).

Implementation Levels

Activity-based, collaborative, and construction-based pedagogies can be implemented at three levels: (1) the micro-level, i.e. smaller pedagogical scenarios or projects which can be components for larger projects, (2) long term projects, i.e. project-based classes and (3) the general study environment favoring student initiative and community building on which we will come back later.While micro activities (lasting only over a single or a few lessons) can not reach the same goals as true project-based teaching, they nicely can complement traditional instruction and are often the only realistic alternative in today's organization of the school and university system.We now will examine particular instructional design issues, first at the level of smaller scenarios and then for larger project-oriented classes.

Scenarization

A key feature of structured socio-constructivist teaching involves sequencing scenarios and therefore breaking the "problem" into parts so that students are challenged to master as much of a task as they are ready to handle. From a more abstract perspective, scenarios evolve in cycles. Atypical teaching/learning phase has more or less the following ingredients (in whatever order):

1. Do
2. Deposit
3. Look
4. Discuss As the figure shows, resources, tools and products play an important role. Each time a student does something, there should be a product (even as small as a little message) that is deposited somewhere and that can be looked at and discussed. Below is an alternative but very similar loop showing that there are variants of the same principle: Things are looked at, things are produced and discussion happens. It is the principle of information seeking, production and interaction that counts.
5. Look (discovery)
6. Discuss (interaction)
7. Do (production)
8. Deposit (sharing)
9. Feedback (discussion of results)

The teacher's manager role is to make sure that such loops are productive, e.g. that the students produce something, that it is task related, that they engage themselves in meta-reflection (look critically at their own work) and that they discuss and share with others. The teacher's facilitator role is to help students with their tasks, e.g. help them to select resources and tools, explain difficult concepts and procedures, "debug" when they are stuck etc. The teacher's orchestrator role is to implement (or most frequently also to create) the scenarios or scripts as they are also called. This means basically to define a scenario as a sequence of clearly identifiable phases in a way that learners focus on a smaller amount of tasks at the same time and that these tasks are not too difficult to be solved at some point. Let's have a look at a simple example. Imagine that for a given purpose, students need references for a project. We can turn this into a pedagogical activity with a scenario that includes the following steps:

1. The teacher introduces the theme, gives clues and asks students to consider the different aspects of the subject (Discuss).
2. Students search the web with various search engines and bookmark the links they find interesting (Look, Deposit).
3. Students then try to work out a certain amount of categories and sub-categories for this theme (Look, Do, Deposit).
4. The results are put in common and a hierarchy is worked out (Look, Do, Discuss).
5. The approved categories are entered in a common space (e.g. the classroom wall, a sheet of paper or an electronic links management system) (Deposit).
6. Students classify, enter and describe their links (Do, Deposit).
7. Teacher provides an evaluation (Discuss).

The role of Tools

As this example clearly shows, most activity-based, constructive and collaborative pedagogies do not necessarily need any special tools, but work can be made more efficient (after some adaptation period) and certainly more powerful by adopting some support technology. Walls in a classroom run out of space, paper is lost and collaboration within the classroom is under heavy time constraints and "home work" lacks the sort of support that classroom activities have. Content needs to managed, knowledge exchange must be organized, discussion tools must favor exchange of arguments, projects must run, and generated knowledge must be managed. Such scenarios are suggested in the "TECFA SEED Catalog" in terms of scenarios (activities), its constituant elementary activities and supporting technology. As we said before, scenarios should not be "over-scripted", the student should in general be its own master of the tasks and tasks should have some flavor of authenticity. Along similar lines, the teacher should not directly interfere with student's products, but only give feedback and evaluation and let the student fix things himself. Defining a scenario therefore is a workflow design problem, but with the idea that pedagogical workflows are different from the ones in industry. In industry the goal is the product, in education the goal is apprenticeship, i.e. what the student has learnt from performing a set of activities

References

Thomas, J. W., Mergendoller, J.R., & Michaelson, A. (1999). Project-based learning: A handbook for middle and high school teachers. Novato, CA: The Buck Institute for Education.

Notes

This is a copy/paste text from our TecfaSeed Catalog. A "real version" will be written once we are done with describing other project-oriented / activity-based designs. DKS/nov/2005