Research Guides: Project Based Learning: What is PBL?

What is Project Based Learning

What should students learn for the 21st Century? A Four Dimensional Education

The mission of the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) is to answer this timely question, and openly propagate its recommendations and frameworks on a worldwide basis. - See more at: http://curriculumredesign.org/

Readings to get started

Gold Standard PBL: Essential Design Elements
What is Project Based Learning?
What is the difference between doing a project and project based learning?
Preparing Students for a Project Based World
This publication is the first in a three-part series about the new economy and inequities in the preparation for student success in college, career and citizenship.
The purpose of these publications is to promote equity and access to deeper learning as an outcome for all students
Preparing Teachers for a Project Based World
Preparing Teachers for a Project-Based World highlights how teacher preparation and professional learning can be aligned to—and modelled after—the types of project-based and deeper learning environments we seek to create for students.
Preparing to Lead in a Project Based World
Preparing Leaders for a Project-Based World will illustrate examples of leadership development programs and leadership sustainability in diverse communities across the United States, highlighting leader projects and ways leaders are fostering
deeper learning outcomes at scale.
Overcoming System Inertia in Education Reform
Like a supertanker, the education system is large and powerful, but requires a correspondingly large amount of force to change its direction.
Why do we need Enquiry and Project Based Learning?
Hype vs. Reality:
A Roundtable Discussion on the Impact of Technology and Artificial Intelligence on Employment
Meta-Learning for the 21st Century:
Knowledge, Skills, Character, and Meta-Learning

Acknowledgement

Aquinas College acknowledges the contribution of

Mrs Jo Critch,

the original creator of this guide.

Project Based Learning - getting started

What Project Based Learning Isn't

Websites

Engaged Learning
This comprehensive site is outstanding including:
Project Examples, rubrics, assessment and critique, project planning, articles, websites.
Project Based Learning Space
Although not an attractive site it is full of good basic Project Based Learning background knowledge, Projects and teaching concepts
Edutopia
Our Foundation is dedicated to transforming K-12 education so that all students can acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to thrive in their studies, careers, and adult lives. Founded by innovative and award-winning filmmaker George Lucas in 1991, we take a strategic approach to improving K-12 education through two distinct areas of focus: Edutopia and Lucas Education Research
What is PBL?
Project Based Learning 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 authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge.
more...less...
Excellent resources available from this site.
Critical thinking skills
A way of thinking about particular things at a particular time; it is not the accumulation of facts and knowledge or something that you can learn once and then use in that form forever, such as the nine times table you learn and use in school.
Three types of Project Based Learning
Project-Based Learning is a flexible method of anchoring curriculum around authentic projects that can then support so many other promising trends in learning, from Game-Based Learning and Blended Learning, to gamification and the Flipped Classroom.
How PBL helps students engage in the world around them
A review of a book Teaching for a Living Democracy including a guide to Designing your Own Projects
Using PBL to encourage Interdisciplinary work
Project-based learning units that include different disciplines allow students to apply what they learn to new situations, leading to deeper learning.