Headline

When done well, PBL can change a student’s perspective on life.

By Thom Markham

Project based learning, the rising star in the educational firmament, is on the lips of nearly every teacher and district in the U.S. and in many countries abroad. A newly recruited army of PBL experts march to the front of professional development workshops, evangelizing for project-based work and selling the notion that this is what 21^st Century education looks like.

But we’re not there yet. PBL has not yet fulfilled its potential to liberate the deep, inventive intelligence inherent in children and crucial to mastering the skills and attitudes that carry an adult through today’s world. In fact, unless we move on, PBL will plateau.

This state of affairs is not due to a shoddy product. In fact, a field-tested, solid set of best methods and teaching practices now inform PBL, and a consensus is forming around ‘high-quality’ PBL. The what of PBL is well-defined.

So, what’s missing? It’s the how of PBL. When done well, PBL is lot like a good novel: It changes a young person’s perspective on life. But the secret sauce is not the method; it’s the set of attitudes, beliefs, and skills that a teacher brings to PBL’s process of investigation, collaboration, and synthesis. To support the relationship-driven, personalized, person-focused education necessary to tap the inner life of today’s students, PBL must be rooted in fresh thinking about human performance, design and creativity, collective intelligence, core knowledge, and the symbiosis between innovative schooling and societal needs.

While discarding an industrial-era mindset is critical for all educators, a good PBL teacher inevitably tangles with the assumptions that underlie the entire enterprise of modern education. PBL teachers guide, they do not teach. They listen and observe more than they talk. They are extremely curious about their students, and value diverse expression. They plan for outcomes, but approach a project with a flexible touch that allows for unforeseen results. They respect knowledge, but the end goal is not the test; the primary goal is to form the deep intellectual bond with students that leads to a mutual appreciation for learning.

Successful PBL teachers need to build this flexible, innovative mindset into the heart of every project. That’s when the method gets results. A few critical insights can move more PBL teachers in this direction:

Recognize Why PBL Exists

PBL exists because content acquisition and testing, as we have known it, is done. PBL is designed to teach skills and attitude, not content. That’s a bitter pill, because PBL advocates have spent a decade in a rear-guard effort to convince other educators that students can learn important stuff through projects. But PBL helps students learn a new form of content that encompasses core knowledge, appreciation of concepts, skillful application, ability to inquire further, and reflective self-direction. Essentially, PBL is a response to the changed nature of the world.

It’s Not a Thing, It’s a Design Process

“I’m doing a PBL,” say many teachers. No, not really. PBL may be a noun and projects can be based on a unit of instruction, but it’s a process of discovery driven by design principles. This may seem like a nit-pick, but the mental model matters. Freeing students from the 19^th century box of units, linear instruction, and regurgitating known solutions and answers and holding PBL in the mind as a learning experience encourages the kind of openness that spurs the innovative problem-solving essential to getting at those deeper levels of mastery to which we give endless lip service: Critical thinking and creativity.

Teach to the Iceberg

PBL will bloom when PBL teachers define intelligence as psychologists do today: As behaviors that matter in today’s world. Which behaviors matter most? Empathy, curiosity, openness, and resiliency top the list. These behaviors form the foundation for mastering 21^st Century skills. They are iceberg traits, hidden from easy view and unreachable through testing, but elicited through well-designed, challenging projects that allow for student expression, offer opportunity for creativity, reward the persistence of deep intellectual work, force critical thinking and operationalize the growth mindset. This shift includes accepting that intelligence is a whole-body exercise in which emotions and cognition blend into a coherent pattern of behavior, letting go of outdated views on social-emotional learning versus academic learning, and questioning neuromyths such as learning styles, multiple intelligences, and ‘brain based’ learning.

Stop Thinking of a Teacher as a Teacher

500 years ago, theologians stood at the lectern and shared ‘nearer to God’ content with neophytes. That stereotype clings to the teaching profession, which still focuses on instructional delivery, classroom management, and pacing guides because that’s what teachers do. There is still room for this approach, but we refuse to see what teaching has become: A facilitative profession in which the skills of mentorship, diagnosis, designing, and assessing the deeper aspects of human performance are critical. This is especially true of PBL, which relies on a culture of care and a sincere bond between teacher and student to fuel and support the personalized process of self-motivation and curious investigation that ignites and excites a student.

Personalize and Differentiate PBL

Thinking of PBL as a designed learning experience allows us to connect design thinking, maker spaces, inquiry-based learning, personalized learning, and other forward-leaning ideas into the grand unified theory that will serve as the template for 21^st Century education. The tenets of PBL — a challenging problem, collaborative inquiry, a design and draft and revise process, and a public sharing of learning — provide a fine structure for any investigative process, whether a project on Shakespeare or an engineering problem. PBL can move forward by becoming a flexible design process applied and personalized for audience and subject, whether a case-based PBL focused on helping students become workforce ready, a science-focused PBL that prepares students for the deep analysis on Advanced Placement exams or a global studies PBL centered on research and solutions to pressing issues.

Choose Challenge Before Standards

PBL is a powerful educational model that helps young people master problem solving in a global society desperately in need of solutions. But the power drains out of PBL when standards become more important than the challenge of engaging real issues with real conviction with real consequences. That’s the true impetus behind successful projects. A good PBL teacher pays attention to standards, but never lets them decide the project. It’s far more important to reach for the stars.

Author

Founder of PBL Global and a leading author, psychologist, and respected international school consultant, Thom Markham has assisted over 350 schools and 6000+ teachers across five continents in implementing project based learning, 21^st century competencies, and successful inquiry-based systems of teaching and learning. PBL Global offers a hybrid cost-effective, teacher-effective approach to professional learning for PBL that integrates a powerful library of online courses, staff coaching, and teacher support. Email thom@pblglobal.com or follow him on Twitter

Further Reading

1. The Gazette – Project-based charter school proposal piques D-11’s interest
2. Ed Week – Teaching U.N. Sustainability Goals to Create Global Citizens
3. Lesson Planet – Ease Your Way into Project-Based Learning in Six Easy Steps

Moving from Data Rich, Information Poor to Big Data, Big Gains

By Diana Bidulescu

Over the past few years, K-12 classrooms have been inundated with digital tools that make learning fun, and capture various data.

Teachers rejoiced at the variety of fun and engaging free digital tools that they could use with their students, the wonderful interaction the tools brought and the great impact on classroom instruction that they had. They were able to see student responses and intervene promptly to correct misconceptions, to give students homework and track the progress through the tasks, they were even able to tag their test questions to learning standards to determine what understanding of the concept that the student had. Schools and district administrators rejoiced at the teacher enthusiasm and student excitement with the digital transition and looked forward to seeing improved learning outcomes.

Fast forward one year, and classrooms burst at the seams with a wealth of information about students. The teachers and administrators start realizing that some tools, while great at engagement, provide little else to help student learning, while others have information that they would like included with their regular, learning standards-based batch. So much data, so little time to put it all together, and such limited means to add it up and compare it! Some say it’s a square peg in a round hole, some call it apples and oranges, some say it’s too much, while others say it’s not enough. It seems we’ve struck gold, but don’t know how to dig it out! Welcome to the data rich and information poor era!

This is when we start realizing that we have access to an enormous and varied pool of information, but have little means to make it work together to have an accurate and aligned image of the student progress and truly personalize learning.

We can call this the K-12 Big Data Dilemma. As we well know, the Big Data is present in all areas of our life, caused by our adoption of digital tools. To make sense of the Big Data, companies have algorithms that mine the data and make connections. They then produce a report of the findings, with correlations and possible recommendations. In K-12 we call that a really good teacher. However, with the amount and variety of data we now have, and adding to that the experience the teachers have aggregating so many data points, we soon see that we, too, need an algorithm, as well as a plan. The great awakening hence begins with a big question: how do we help our teachers use this Big Data? How can a teacher use a wonderful free or paid digital tool, but get relevant data that can be added to the mix to create a full and comprehensive view of the student’s performance?

How do we move from “Data Rich, Information Poor” to “Big Data, Big Gains”?

In a future not far away, we will all be able to replicate Alt School, a place where technology and good teaching come together to provide students with personalized education based on the data. But to get there tomorrow, we have to build realistic and systemic supports now. The first step is to ensure student digital access, and that all the online learning systems, which collect vast amounts of data as students progress through the game, test, or learning activity are able to import/export data in standard formats that allow for the data to be aggregated accurately, and simplify the cross-walking work that districts and schools currently have to do to get relevancy and accuracy.

In Houston ISD (HISD), we started the digital transition four years ago, and it included 1-1 programs, the implementation of an LMS, a digital content and curriculum initiative that made all high school books available exclusively online, and the circle was completed with a transition from paper and pencil to eAssessments (online testing) on the state and formative assessment platforms. The HISD eAssessment program complements the integration of digital curriculum, which advances the instructional goals of personalized learning, data ownership and improved mastery; this is facilitated by a formative assessment platform, OnTrack, powered by School City, that satisfies our authoring and reporting needs, aside from being nimble with online assessments as it is with paper. All systems and digital tools purchased by HISD are conformant with IMS Global interoperability standards, and facilitate a cohesive data flow.

The second step in moving the district to big gains from big data is to build Digital Assessment Literacy skills in teachers and staff. With the new ESSA allowing districts more freedom in the assessment selection and implementation of educator-controlled, local performance assessments, the requirement is also that the assessment system must be valid and reliable, aligned with the state academic standards, provide coherent and timely information about the student’s mastery level, and be provided in multiple languages for English Learners.

Because so much of the student academic data comes from teacher-student interaction in class, and this information is “live,” it is important to learn how to capture it in a meaningful format, which enables for it to be aggregated. It was therefore important to train teachers on how to build digital assessments that are reliable and standards- aligned. In HISD the schools are becoming accustomed to teaching and learning on mobile devices, and online formative assessments are increasing at a vertiginous rate. To support the digital transformation, and prepare for next gen assessment, Digital Assessment Literacy is focused both on the utilization of assessments and data, and on the assessment authoring aspect. Data relevance, heat maps, and Data Driven Instruction (DDI) are elements that campus and district staff are continuously training on and putting in practice when creating assessments, as well as when making data driven learning decisions. To support ease of test authoring for teachers we purchased the new formative assessment platform, School City. School City enables the test authors at all levels to align the test items to learning standards, and embed accessibility features, which mimic the Texas state standardized assessment accessibility features to support all student learning needs. It also provides a reporting feature that is easy to read and helps teachers support students’ learning with personalized learning resources. Maybe the most important and valued feature is the student facing data, which is released at the end of the test where students see what questions they missed and how they are connected to their learning, before they even see the grade.

Big or small, campus or district, for anyone trying to move from Data Rich to Big Gains, here are three elements that must be present for successful transition to Data.

Digital Assessment Literacy – Maybe one of the most needed, assessment literacy helps teachers understand how to construct their tests for relevance, validity and maximum reach without taxing students with long or frequent assessments. Guiding questions can be: what test to use when, how do we code test items and is one question relevant to determine student mastery?

Data Literacy – Without knowledge of data, teachers are unable to guide their students efficiently through their learning, Moreover, they would not understand how to build activities, assessments and projects that yield the much-needed “live” academic information. Guiding questions can be: what data is needed in my subject, should reading level matter in Math, how much weight should I give my test, is grade only a number, do I have apples and oranges and what is next?

Logistics and flexibility – The greatest challenge in achieving big gains from big data is training teachers and administrators how to efficiently read, interpret and implement the data. Like all good PD, all trainings have to be applicable, in a low stakes environment and with the focus being on mastering the Digital Assessment Literacy and Data Literacy processes. Guiding questions can be: is PD in PJs helping teacher plan data-driven lessons, what tools do teachers use to gather data from student assessment, how to read a heatmap and what are the next steps?

As we build upon Big Data, Big Gains, it is important to remember that our teachers are the ones who must understand and find the tools and processes easy to use that help our students be successful. The secret to personalization is in helping all stakeholders make sense of various data, which paint a complete picture of the student. The only way to do so without the great algorithms, is to build capacity in our teachers so they create relevant data yielding lessons and assessments. And just like the Gold Rush, sharing out loud nuggets of data inspires others to equip themselves and go digging for it!

Author

Diana Bidulescu, M.Ed. is the Online Assessment Manager for Houston ISD. She strives to empower teachers and students to build safe, productive and innovative digital teaching and learning environments in every school through strategic planning, design thinking, and creative custom solutions that enable each student to reach their full potential. Her expertise involves integrating multiplatform (1-1 and x-1) solutions in the k-12 classroom, digital learning strategic planning, 3D and holographic applications in STEAM/STEM, online testing and data management, and privacy awareness for schools and communities.

1. ADT Magazine – App Economy Report: ‘Big Data Will Lead the Way’
2. AASA – Using Data to Improve Schools
3. Smart Data Collective – Challenges of Big Data in Education