Project Based Learning (PBL)

Hello everyone! Today’s topic is going to be about a method that is a huge help for students regarding their grades and information intake, to be precise project base learning. So what is it you might ask?Project based learning, also known as PBL, is a teaching method that encourages students to take education into their own hands. The academic definition I found on google is, “A teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an engaging and complex question, problem or challenge”.

Students are guided through this process using carefully designed instructional materials and workshops to help learn the material, then are given the tools and skills needed to come up with their own creative and unique solution or response to the challenge. Teachers work closely with teams to help guide their creation and push students to a deep level of understanding of course content. Projects may look VERY different from one class to another, but all projects follow a general process or patterns. Similar to the one below.

Many schools around the world are based on students receiving homework and tests to further their knowledge to be successful. So why do that, if students will be more engaged and learn better with project based learning, as it will create rich, perceiving models of the topic presented to them, it does not relinquish control of the classroom or students learning but rather develop an atmosphere of shared responsibility. By using PBL teachers act as mentors and facilitators. As we all know traditional classroom learning involves the teacher lecturing and having little or no interaction among students. Who honestly wants to sit in a classroom bored all day and not to move around? Schools need to stop making classes such a boring environment for kids. PBL method allows such thing, as it has a definite edge in pathos. It will help kids feel more excited about doing their work, because as I mentioned before students focus on a complex question or problem, then answer the question or solve the problem through a collaborative process of investigation over an extended period of time. During the process, they learn valuable skills and habits of mind as well as learning content, information and new facts.

There is a lot of factual evidence that can prove my point about project based learning. Some studies that I have seen from edutopia.com and ascd.org, show that students using PBL based learning have a higher success rate and lower dropout rates rather than the typical lectured learning.  

My ethos appeal for this method is that every time I hear that we have to do a project, I have enhanced motivation to get the job done in order to get a good grade. On the other hand, when hearing that we have a test coming up decreases my motivation and the big sigh from every other student does not help at all. One big problem that we all know is the social anxiety that many students deal with and how hard is for them to speak up. One time I came across a girl that would not talk at all in class.  She would not communicate with other students and refused to work in groups. She would always choose to work alone, but with PBL she learned to work with other people and she opened up and communicated with other students. When our teacher partnered her up with other students, she became very talkative. Students will be much more comfortable because they are not getting taught by teachers and they get to answer questions from their everyday life. The students get to be creative and outgoing with their projects, they can create anything and everything. They can create a community garden, a habitat for animals, and they can plan a dinner for classmates or their teachers.

Overall advantages:

• Engages students in exploring their world through the inquiry process.

• Structures subjects around a question or a real world problem to solve.

• Teaches students to research, plan, design and create a product or presentation of what they  learned.

• Includes collaborative student work on projects, in small teams, guided by the teacher.

• Offers a choice to the currently used model of direct instruction.

To conclude I will just quote a sentence that caught my eye while researching: “PBL is not just a way of learning, it's a way of working together. If students learn to take responsibility for their own learning, they will form the basis for the way they will work with others in their adult lives”. It helps students to communicate with each other and think critically about the things that they are surrounded , because after all students are not only learning, they are preparing for the world around them and their future. 

Thank you for your attention!

See you all in my next post   :)