Blog Post for February 2012

You may have never tried project-based learning, or you may teach in a purely PBL environment. Whatever your background, you’ll find that PBL can be a powerful instructional approach. Here are ten reasons why.

1. Adult life is project based. Most tasks that adults complete are projects, from simple duties like doing laundry and baking cookies to major endeavors like finding a job or renovating a home. Adults rarely listen to lectures, take notes, and pass tests. Instead, they take on projects. Project-based learning helps students learn content while they practice the skills they need as adults. For a great explanation of this connection, watch this video from the Buck Institute for Education.
2. Projects prepare students for future work. Any project that can be done the same way over and over with consistent results will soon be outsourced, automated, or digitized. Any project that requires nonlinear thinking, decision making, and problem solving requires a human being. It’s a job—the best kind of job for the future. Watch Thomas Friedman's remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, in which he covers these points from minutes 18:00-34:10.
3. Projects teach content and 21st century skills. The only way students can learn to collaborate is to collaborate on something. Yes, collaboration can be messy, but that’s all the more reason students need to learn to deal with the messiness. Projects require students to develop the 21st century skills that they need, such as thinking critically and creatively, communicating and collaborating, and consuming and producing information.