Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Project-Based Learning (PBL)

1. is a method of structuring curriculum around projects

   • there is a difference between just working with projects and Project-Based Learning: mainly that PBL focuses on the process, and projects are normally about the final product

2. students are asked to solve a real life problem. Then, they have to cooperate with their classmates to determine what steps are necessary to find a solution to that problem and then take the steps to get there. PBL is about working together, solving problems, and presenting solutions to an audience

3. requires from students

   • Collect resources.
   • Organize work.
   • Manage long-term activities
   • Cooperate with peers
   • Design, revise, and share their ideas and experiences with authentic audiences and supportive peer groups

4. PBL VS TBL

   • PBL shares many aspects with TBL, but it can be even more ambitious. As TBL, PBL can make a project or a task the central focus of a lesson, or dedicate only a certain amount of time to it. In other cases, PBL is used on short courses or ”intensives”. What is more, PBL can be used as a basis of a whole term or academic year. Some schools even try to base their whole curriculum on PBL

5. 4 essential elements

   • 1. A central topic from which all the activities derive and which drives the project towards a final objective
   • 2. Access to means of investigation (the Internet has made this part of project work much easier) to collect, analyse and use information.
   • 3. Plenty of opportunities for sharing ideas, collaborating and communicating. Interaction with other learners is fundamental to PBL, and it promotes cooperative learning
   • 4. There should be a final product (often produced using new technologies available to us) in the form of posters, presentations, reports, videos, webpages, blogs and so on.

6. advantages

   • motivating and fun, especially for younger learners
     • involves real life communicative situations, (analysing, deciding, editing, rejecting, organizing, delegating, etc.)
       • entails multi-disciplinary skills which can be brought from other subjects
         • it promotes a higher level of thinking than just learning vocabulary and structures
           • is a flexible method that supports so many other promising trends in learning, as for example gamification or the flipped classroom