practitioners have developed a set of typical charac-
teristics for well-designed projects, and several
expert organizations maintain lists of proven
projects that they make available to the public.
L E A R N I N G P ROJ EC T F E AT U R E S
When evaluating and selecting possible learning projects, keep in mind the features considered essential for a well-designed, effective learning project:
1) Project outcomes are tied to curriculum and learning goals. 2) Driving challenges lead students to the central
concepts or principles of the topic or subject area. 3) Student investigations and research involve inquiry, problem-solving, and knowledge building.
4) Students are responsible for designing and managing much of their own learning.
5) Projects are based on authentic, real-world problems and questions that students care about.
6) The learning project is designed to help students build 21st Century competencies.
7) Students receive feedback at each stage on the status of the project and quality of their work.
8) Students publicly share their knowledge through demon- strating a product and/or a presentation.
L E A R N I N G P ROJ EC T E X A M P L E S
Following are brief descriptions of a few projects drawn
from the BIE database that will give a sense of the flavor
and diversity of well-designed projects:
Designing Better Nutrition: This interdisciplinary visual design project brings together topics from government, English, health and digital design for real world analysis. Students study the effects of food choices on personal health, the
environment, the economy and the influence of marketing and
packaging on those choices. Students learn that what they eat not only affects their health, but the health of the world.
Partners from the design and health care field coach students
as they develop and design their food package.
www.slideshare.net/NAFCareerAcads/designing-better-nutrition
The Hunger Games Challenge – Avoiding the Path to Panem: How did North America become Panem, the post-apocalyptic world of The Hunger Games? How can we avoid a similar path in our world? ConnectEd Studios and Educurious have joined forces to create an exciting project that applies the The Hunger Games premise to real-world dilemmas. Fully loaded, the project contains Common Core aligned lesson plans, media resources, and performance tasks, ready to be deployed by educators. It’s all available on ConnectEd Studios.
www.connectedstudios.org/url-zuVqjaz-MX8iWWv3kA
The Greater Good: Economic leaders from two island nations pursue trade possibilities by analyzing data on production
and discovering the benefits of specialization. After a trade
their actions in the face of protests against job loss and envi- ronmental damage. Topics include absolute and comparative advantage, exports/imports, free trade, protectionism, scarcity, tradeoff, and opportunity cost.
www.socialstudies.com/c/product.html?nocache@0+s@ viw0U2NKhk2zg+record@TF43288
Improving Transit Access, Opportunity and Equity for Riders in
Oakland: As a primary group of “non choice” riders, students are important stakeholders who rely daily on public transpor- tation to go to and from school, home, internships, and other extracurricular activities. 11th grade students from MetWest’s junior class researched solutions to improve bus service for their client, AC Transit, the public transit agency serving the San Francisco Bay Area’s Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
y-plan.berkeley.edu/impact
Teen-S-Team-Plus “Pathways to Success” Anti-Bullying and
Project Managment Skills Program: Students participating in the program, in Elk Grove, California, conducted in partnership with the PMI Sacramento Valley Chapter and PMIEF, develop and present an anti-bullying program to their school and then pass it forward to a middle school and implement it there.
www.teen-s-team-plus.org/“Unbullyable” video: youtu.be/C-M5e- soAfr4
The Ultimate Design Challenge: The world is filled with design
challenges. Some of these challenges are environmental because of the disposal of them. Some are due to functionality for the consumer, business or transportation. Students take on the role of designers. They work to create a new and improved container of their choice that resolves a current problem
(environmental, financial or function). Students connect these
designs to mathematical models. They use these models to improve the design of the containers.
bie.org/object/document/the_ultimate_design_challenge
Wind Turbine Design and Build: One class at the Academy of Engineering and Green Technology at Hartford High School in Connecticut worked with a utilities expert and neighboring corporate partner United Technologies to design and build a solar-powered wind turbine that would generate electricity for a rural school in Saldang, Nepal.
naf.org/in-the-news/project-based-learning-brings-wind-turbine- school-nepal-0
There are many other resources available where teachers and
project managers can find learning projects that have been
thoughtfully designed and implemented before. For example, the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) has more than 500 tested learning projects in its database alone (bie.org/project_search). See the Toolkit resource document “Helpful Project-Based Learning Resources for Educators” for several other relevant website addresses.
CO N C LU S I O N
The key messages above offer a very brief primer on project management and PBL, alongside a set of persuasive facts and statements about the value of PBL. Since they use language familiar to educators, they will be very useful in explaining the
concepts and benefits of these frameworks to that essential
audience. Also in the Toolkit is a separate document, “Helpful Project-Based Learning Resources for Educators,” that lists a set of resources where educators to learn more about these concepts and which can be shared directly with educational and other contacts.
C I TAT I O N S
Project Management Toolkit for Teachers. Project Management Institute Educational Foundation, 2013.
21st Century Skills Map – Project Management for Learning. Partnership for 21st Century Learning and Project Management Institute Educational Foundation, 2014.
National Academy Foundation Guide to Work-Based Learning: A Continuum of Activities and Experience, 2011.
“PBL and Common Core – and Next Generation Science Stan- dards”. Resources, Buck Institute for Education, 2013. [excerpt from PBL for 21st Century Success: Teaching Critical !inking, Collaboration, Communication, and Creativity, Buck Institute for Education, 2013.]
“Project-Based Learning and Common Core Standards”. Thom Markham, The Whole Child Blog, February 21, 2012.
www.wholechildeducation.org/blog/project-based-learning-and- common-core-standards
“8 Essentials for Project-Based Learning”. John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller, Buck Institute for Education, 2012.
“Project-Based Learning: Engagement, Rigor, and Relevance”, mul- timedia presentation. John Larmer, National Academy Foundation, 2011. naf.org/resources/project-based-learning-engagement-rig- or-and-relevance