Study after study has proven the effectiveness of Project-Based Learning (PBL). It has the power to increase engagement and curiosity among students, while also effectively teach problem-solving for the real world.
However, it can be difficult to find the right project ideas that will engage students in a meaningful way. Here are few suggestions for integrating PBL into your classroom.
K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid)
Integrating PBL into the classroom doesn’t always mean you have to purchase a 3D printer or laser engraver or some other piece of engineering teaching equipment. When resources are tight, look to online communities for inspiration.
Instructables has a ton of crowd-sourced simple PBL classroom projects that don’t require much more than hot glue, rubber bands, craft sticks and a clothespin or two. The Simple Pneumatic Machine and the Cork Launcher are two good examples, but there’s plenty to choose from.
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Create Opportunities for Entrepreneurship
The whole point of PBL is to make learning relevant to students by establishing connections to life outside the classroom and addressing real world issues.
What better way to do that than charging students to take on actual real-world problems?
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The University of Maryland is an example of a school that is taking entrepreneurship to the next level. UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering offers first-year students a project-based Introduction to Engineering Design course, which gives them access to the 3D printers in the school’s MakerBot Innovation Center.
Right next door is the university’s Rapid Prototyping Lab, which is open to all students to matter what their major, where students are inspired to create. Both of these 3D printing labs are near UMD’s Startup Shell, a student-run incubator that has generated more than 50 companies in its first three years, creating the perfect pathway for students to become entrepreneurs in their own right.
Entrepreneurship isn’t just reserved for universities. It also benefits K-12 classrooms. This article from New York-based high school history and humanities teacher Raleigh Werberger illustrates the value adding a sense of entrepreneurship to existing lesson plans without losing the integrity or original intent of the course.
Embrace the Maker Movement
The Maker Movement is starting to take hold in classrooms, and it’s a great way to create open learning environments for design-oriented problem-solving, similar to a maker studio or FabLab. It encourages design thinking in a new way than can also help to incorporate the Arts into STEM (STEAM).
Charlottesville High School is a great example where Physics Teacher Matt Shields runs a more open-ended style course where students are given loose parameters for the desired end result of a project, and then they set their own deadlines to find their own way to that end result.
The lab is part of a partnership with the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education to investigate the effectiveness of different types of technology in the classroom.
Ultimately, it’s these types of PBL projects that create effective pathways for learning.
In fact, one of the reasons we’re hosting our STEM Bootcamp for Educators next week is to allow teachers to sit in the student chair and experience PBL for themselves.
If this is something you’d be interested in seeing in your area, let me know. We’re in the midst of planning workshops for the Spring semester and want to make sure we’re giving you the resources you need to do your job better.
