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=Presentation on November 17, 2009= = = =PROJECT - BASED LEARNING (PBL)- 400 SEED=

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 * centrality- central to curriculum
 * driving question- orchestrated to service an important, intellectual purpose
 * constructive investigations- involve tranformation of new understandings or skills
 * autonomy- student-driven, choice, unsupervised worktime and responsibility
 * realism- not school-like, authentic/real life

Here is the website from Texas A&M University that gives some good information as to what makes an outstanding PjBL strategy successful. []


 * Project-based** **learning** typically begins with an end product or "artifact" in mind, the production of which requires specific content knowledge or skills and typically raises one or more problems which students must solve. Projects vary widely in scope and time frame, and end products vary widely in level of technology used and sophistication. The project-based learning approach uses a **production** model. Example might be to **build** a product that uses a non-linear fluid. By its very nature, Projects tend to take longer than Problems.

Here is another quite useful site by Houghton Mifflin: [] Students pursue solutions to nontrivial problems by There are two essential components of projects:
 * asking and refining questions
 * debating ideas
 * making predictions
 * designing plans and/or experiments
 * collecting and analyzing data
 * drawing conclusions
 * communicating their ideas and findings to others
 * asking new questions
 * creating artifacts (Blumenfeld et al., 1991).

1. A driving question or problem that serves to organize and drive activities, which taken as a whole amount to a meaningful project 2. Culminating product(s) or multiple representations as a series of artifacts, personal communication (Krajcik), or consequential task that meaningfully addresses the driving question. (Brown & Campione, 1994)


 * A project is an extended inquiry into various aspects of a real-world topic that is of interest to participants and judged worthy by teachers. Because of its real-world appeal, students are motivated to investigate, record, and report their findings. The hallmark of project learning is greater independence of inquiry and "ownership" of the work on the part of students. When contrasted with more formal instruction, it allows students a greater degree of choice and capitalizes on internal motivation.**

Lessons from the past suggest that without adequate attention to ways of supporting teachers and students, these innovative educational approaches will not be widely adopted.

Here is one on a composting project specifically: []

Here is some more basic information: [|http://www.uoregon.edu/~moursund/Math/pbl.htm]

Here are some general ideas about Project-Based Learning


 * 1) Project-based learning is learner centered. Students have a significant voice in selecting the content areas and nature of the projects that they do. There is considerable focus on students understanding what it is they are doing, why it is important, and how they will be assessed. Indeed, students may help to set some of the goals over which they will be assessed and how they will be assessed over these goals. All of these learner-centered characteristics of PBL contribute to learner motivation and active engagement. A high level of intrinsic motivation and active engagement are essential to the success of a PBL lesson.
 * 2) From student point of view, Project-Based Learning:
 * 3) Is learner centered and intrinsically motivating.
 * 4) Encourages collaboration and cooperative learning.
 * 5) Requires students to produce a product, presentation, or performance.
 * 6) Allows students to make incremental and continual improvement in their product, presentation, or performance.
 * 7) Is designed so that students are actively engaged in "doing" things rather then in "learning about" something.
 * 8) Is challenging; focusing on higher-order skills.
 * 9) From teacher point of view, Project-Based Learning:
 * 10) Has authentic content and purpose.
 * 11) Uses authentic assessment.
 * 12) Is teacher facilitated--but the teacher is much more a "guide on the side" rather than a "sage on the stage."
 * 13) Has explicit educational goals.
 * 14) Is rooted in constructivism (a social learning theory).
 * 15) Is designed so that the teacher will be a learner.
 * 16) Teacher plays a major role in setting the learning goals of the project.
 * 17) Teacher and students provide formative evaluation.
 * 18) Teacher, students, and others may help in the summative (final) evaluation.
 * 19) Rubrics created by a combination of teacher and students. These facilitate self-evaluation, peer evaluation, evaluation by the teacher, and evaluation by outside experts.
 * 20) From a research point of view, Project-Based Learning is supported by work in:
 * 21) Constructivism
 * 22) Situated Learning Theory
 * 23) Motivation Theory
 * 24) Inquiry & Discovery-Based Learning
 * 25) Cooperative Learning
 * 26) Individual & Collaborative Problem Solving
 * 27) Peer Instruction
 * 28) Problem-Based Learning

This site is an "edu-wiki" and gives an abundance of information regarding educational philosophies that relate to PjBL: [] it also has a link to the history of PjBL.


 * 1590-1765: The beginnings of project work at architectural schools in Europe.
 * 1765-1880: The project as a regular teaching method and its transplantation to America.
 * 1880-1915: Work on projects in manual training and in general public schools.
 * 1915-1965: Redefinition of the project method and its transplantation from America back to Europe.
 * 1965-today: Rediscovery of the project idea and the third wave of its international dissemination

__**Project Based Learning**__ is a teaching and learning model (curriculum development and instructional approach) that emphasizes student-centered instruction by assigning projects. It allows students to work more autonomously to construct their own learning, and culminates in realistic, student-generated products. More specifically, project-based learning can be defined as follows : (Moursund, 2002; J. W. Thomas et al., 1999)
 * 1) Focuses on the central concepts of a discipline
 * 2) Engaging learning experiences that involve students in complex, real-world projects through which they develop and apply skills and knowledge
 * 3) Learning that requires students to draw from many information sources and disciplines in order to solve problems
 * 4) Learning in which curricular outcomes can be identified up-front, but in which the outcomes of the student's learning process are neither predetermined nor fully predictable
 * 5) Experiences through which students learn to manage and allocate resources such as time and materials

We consider [|socio-constructivism] as an understanding of learning that stresses the importance of constructing knowledge based on previous knowledge and interaction with the social environment, e.g. theories that have followed from [|constructivism] (Piaget), socio-culturalism (Vygotsky, 1962) and [|situated learning] (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Secondly, we perceive socio-constructivism as a set of pedagogies that use strategies like project-based learning (Thomas, Mergendoller and Michaelson, 1999), [|problem-based learning], [|inquiry-based learning], [|case-based learning] or action learning. We call these new pedagogies « activity-based », since the students learn with interactive technology (instead of from) and since the teacher has to design, to facilitate and to monitor student activities.

According to these criteria, there are not PBL instances (Synteta, 2002): In that sense, //Project-Based Learning is a broader// category than the Problem-based one (Moursund, 1999), as the first includes always inquiry and might in cases address a specific problem but not the other way around.
 * are central to curriculum,
 * long-term (more than a couple of class days and up to semester),
 * interdisciplinary,
 * have a driving question that is challenging and constructive,
 * are student-centered and
 * are based on collaborative or cooperative group learning,
 * are integrated with real world issues and practices,
 * have productive outcomes,
 * have an impact on “life skills” like self-management, group process, and problem-solving skills,
 * and use cognitive tools, usually technology-based (Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, & Soloway, 1994; Marx et al., 1994).
 * the projects that are not central to curriculum but serve as a complementary practice,
 * projects that don’t have an intellectually challenging driving question,
 * projects that can be carried out with already-learned information or skills,
 * projects that are scripted (P. Dillenbourg, 2002),
 * projects that focus on simulated and not realistic questions
 * __Project-based learning__** focuses mostly on a __production model__. Students start by defining the purpose of creating the end-product, identify their audience, they research the topic, design the product, do the project management, solve the problems that arise and finish the product followed by a self-evaluation and reflection (Crawford, Bellnet website, Autodesk website, Blumenfeld et al. cited in (Schneiderman et al., 1998)). So, the driving force is the end-product, but the key to success is the skills acquired during it’s production.
 * __Problem-based learning__** uses an __inquiry model__. Students start with a given problem, make a plan for gathering information, pose new questions and summarize their research by presenting their conclusions (Duch, Delisle, Hoffman and Ritchie, Stepian and Gallacher cited in (Schneiderman et al., 1998)). In this case, the driving force is the problem given and the success is the solution of it (Vu, Van der Vleuten, & Lacombe, 1998).

> Project-based learning is a structure that transforms teaching from **"teachers telling"** to **"students doing"**. Students become active problem-solvers, decision and meaning-makers rather than passive listeners, they collaborate or cooperate forming groups, organize their activities, conduct research, solve problems, synthesize information, organize time and resources and reflect on their learning. > > Researchers have investigated the impact of project-based learning (and related instructional approaches) in a wide variety of educational contexts ranging from early childhood education to medical and legal education. They have generally been shown to be effective in increasing student motivation by engaging them in their own learning, in improving student problem-solving and higher order thinking skills (Stites, 1998). > > > PBL maximizes when there is a focus on learning and mastery- this includes features of variety, challenge, student choice, and non-school problems > PBL maximizes when there is use of experts and novices- this shows the importance of metacognitive and self-regulatory of experts and > also the absence of planning and self-monitoring skills of young and inexperienced problem solvers.