I made it! Please see my Lionfish Invasion! PBL website HERE.
Final course reflection:
After completing this course, what I understand best about Project Based Learning is the integral involvement of students as the driver for a unit’s design and, in many cases, content. PBL learning is, by definition, constructivist and student-centered. I understand the significance of a driving question to corral the process of discovery within the classroom. I also value the importance of a public audience for the end project, which I appreciate to be very creative and in-line with students’ interests and talents. Making these kinds of connections to the real world (authentic sources, professional mentors, current societal issues, etc.) makes learning more meaningful.
What I understand least well is how to get my colleagues on board to make it a truly interdisciplinary experience. I understand what it should look like, but I feel like I still would appreciate extra guidance in how to make it happen! I also need a bit more confidence in aligning the tasks and assessments to standards to ensure that my students are learning the adequate scope and sequence of what is expected of them in that course. I do also worry about the students who may struggle with the open-ended nature of this unit and would value more anecdotal support in how to address issues that might arise due to frustrations with teamwork, apathy, or limited content mastery. This type of learning relies upon a lot of intrinsic motivation, and some of my adolescent students need assistance in fostering that skill.
I expected to learn what Project Based learning was and how to use it in our own classrooms, which I believe I did in fact learn. I had never heard PBL called “PBL,” but have indeed seen different interpretations of it under the guises of Brain-based learning, active learning, and social constructivist philosophy. I found it helpful to have a solid working definition and access to several key websites for institutions that have devoted themselves to studying and promoting this learning style in all classrooms. I appreciated having access to their videos of teachers using PBL, and would have loved to view even more. I found their reality-based examples very helpful and insightful, but sometimes I felt they bordered on promotional “commercials”. They did not often address the fears or concerns of teachers, administrators, or parents to help us anticipate how to handle the “devil’s advocate” aspect. What I really enjoyed learning in this course was actually the gathering of fantastic ideas from my classmates. We have ourselves a great compilation of projects to explore and borrow from. It’s a useful resource of creative and realistic PBL units.
With what I have learned, I hope to attempt teaching a PBL unit in the classroom this year. Although my teaching circumstances are currently a bit up-in-the-air, I believe this model of instruction is useful in any classroom in which I find myself. Even if I don’t teach a seven-week unit, I would like to start with a two-week unit, perhaps, and ensure we have a good driving question, a plethora of teamwork opportunities, a project to create with a public audience in mind, and an array of technology programs to supplement the discovery process. I also hope to promote enthusiasm about PBL to my colleagues and, hopefully, get enough teachers on board to plan an interdisciplinary unit in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, I will seek out more examples of successful PBL implementation to learn from.
