I am often asked when discussing Project-Based Learning (PBL) why I would support a model of education that has no regard for the teaching or mastery of content (click here for an introduction to PBL). Why would I use a model that is solely passion and interest-based with no structure? Isn’t PBL basically what we did in kindergarten when we finger painted and built houses out of popsicle sticks? Where is the content?

These would be great questions if they were based on anything but a lack of understanding of what PBL is. To the uninitiated, PBL is often seen as a model that encourages chaos with no substance. Projects with no purpose. Learning with no….well, learning. All of these things could not be further from the truth and in PBL, content is still king. The only difference between PBL and more traditional methods is that content shares the throne with seven other kings.

Back in 2010, the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) wrote a paper for the September issue of Educational Leadership from ASCD to help educators understand the difference between PBL and just doing projects. They broke PBL down into these eight “essential” elements:

• Significant content
• A need to know
• A driving question
• Student voice and choice
• 21st century skills
• Inquiry and innovation
• Feedback and revision
• Publicly presented content

You can read more about each element by clicking here and Tikvah Wiener and I will be exploring these elements on the I.D.E.A. Schools Network blog. However, as you can see, the first element listed is Significant Content. It is the foundation of every PBL project. It is just that where more traditional models start and end with the content, PBL is only getting started. Although, to be accurate, PBL starts with the end in mind by working backwards from driving questions that propel the learning forward. The content exists to support exploration and discovery towards answering the driving question and, in turn, solving a problem or accomplishing a goal put forth by the question. We will be discussing more about driving questions when we write about that essential element. For now, the question is how do we ensure that significant content is part of PBL?

Michael Gorman, on his award winning blog 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning, lists ten ways to answer this important question.

1. The entry event should show a relationship to the Driving Question promoting a “need to know” of significant content.
2. The Driving Question should allow students to uncover the curriculum in a student friendly and understandable manner.
3. The PBL planning sheet for students should line up with significant content in the curricular area being studied and assessed.
4. The project should be ongoing and made up of activities and lessons that facilitate the learning of significant content.
5. Formative learning activities and assessments that teach and reinforce the significant cont should occur throughout the timeline of the project.
6. While innovative and student centered learning is encouraged, scaffolding of the project can still include traditional lecture, tests, and textbook reading. that promote significant content. Yes… rich engaging lectures can be used!
7. There should be rubrics developed that evaluate student learning outcomes and they should be aligned with significant content.
8. The final project should not only emphasize the 21st century skills, but should show the learning and understanding of significant content.
9. Final outcome should include more than learning of significant content, but also application and connections of content to real world.
10. When planning projects teachers should consider Common Core as part of their significant content.

You can read the entire post by clicking here.

Another example of where the significant content fits in can be seen in this sample Algebra project overview from BIE (click here). This is a great template to start designing your own PBL unit, but I want to point your attention to the “Content and Skills Standards” box. In this unit it is clear that the students will learn significant content and skills in the area of Algebra II/Trigonometry. However, if you read the language carefully you will understand what make this uniquely PBL. The content and skills being taught and learned are not passively transmitted. The goal with the content is that the “student will be able to…..” utilize the content and skills to accomplish something, solve a problem and demonstrate their knowledge. The content serves a purpose and does not exist solely to be understood. It must be applied.

The usual follow up question to this explanation is that while it all sounds nice, does it work? Do the student actually learn the content? The answer is simply, yes. PBL students not only learn content knowledge as well as traditional students, they appear to learn it better (Boaler, 1997; Penuel & Means, 2000; Stepien, et al., 1993). More importantly, they not only demonstrate this knowledge for assessments, but show longer retention and a deeper understanding of the content (Penuel & Means, 2000; Stepien, Gallagher & Workman, 1993). The research also points to that fact that the effectiveness of PBL is not limited to peripheral courses such as electives, but impacts teaching and learning across the curriculum (Beckett & Miller, 2006; Boaler, 2002; Finkelstein et al., 2010; Greier et al., 2008; Mergendoller, Maxwell, & Bellisimo, 2006).

Content is still king in PBL despite it sharing the title with seven other essential elements. In fact, in regard to the understanding and acquisition of the content, it may have dethroned more traditional models of teaching and learning content.

References:

Beckett, G. H., & Chamness Miller, P. (2006). Project-based second language and foreign language education: Past, present, future. Greenwich, Connecticut: Information Age Publishing.

Boaler, J. (1997). Experiencing school mathematics: Teaching styles, sex, and settings. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Finkelstein, N., Hanson, T., Huang, C., Hirschman, B., and Huang, M. (2010). Effects of problem based economics on high school economics instruction. (NCEE 2010-4002). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Geier, R., Blumenfeld, P. C., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Fishman, B., Soloway, E., & Clay-Chambers, J. (2008). Standardized test outcomes for students engaged in inquiry-based science curricula in the context of urban reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(8), 922-939.

Mergendoller, J., Maxwell, N., & Bellisimo, Y. (2006). The effectiveness of problem-based instruction: A comparative study of instructional methods and student characteristics. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1(2), 49-69.

Penuel, W. R., & Means, B. (2000). Designing a performance assessment to measure students’ communication skills in multi-media-supported, project-based learning. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.

Creativity and Professional Development

One of the hardest things to do for a school is keep the momentum of professional development (PD) going. At Magen David Yeshivah High School (MDY), the administrators worked throughout August to prepare three opening days of PD that connected to the ways in which the school wants to grow.

On the first day of PD, faculty got to unleash their creativity with an opening icebreaker. Faculty were divided into ten groups and went to sit at tables with different fruits, art supplies, props, costumes, and sport-related objects (a kite, paddle ball, plastic ball):

For five minutes, each table brainstormed an answer to the question, “What if Jewish education were more like . . . ?” JEDLAB and participants of the Summer Sandbox had tackled that question over the summer, giving rise to answers such as a gym, a candy shop, and an outdoor adventure. Magen David faculty came up with the following answers, which they posted to the poster below: 1) a survival hike, 2) an orchard, 3) a fitness center, 4) a desert oasis, 5) a do-it-yourself theme park, 6) Disney World!, 7) K _ _ _ _ _ _ _, 8) an English fantasy football league, 9) a tour, and 10) freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

RealSchool-er Ari Mendelow created the poster on which we posted the faculty’s answers!

Faculty then had to create visual representations of their ideas. Here’s one table of teachers and administrators bringing to life their vision for Jewish education — in 15 minutes!

This group saw Magen David as a Do-It-Yourself Theme Park, where students could go on a “BOLD-er Coaster,” that is, take blended learning classes, and climb the to college rock wall (the notched nerf ball)

In the High Tech schools in San Diego, CA, all the teachers have to complete the projects they assign, so they feel what it’s like to undertake their own assignments. Not only do the teachers gain empathy, experiencing school from a student’s point of view, but they can also troubleshoot before the project is even assigned. Magen David felt it was important for teachers to experience the power of making and being creative, if the school was going to stress its importance throughout the coming year.

PBL in Professional Development

Later on the first day of PD, we had a workshop focused solely on PBL, with the goal being that each department would formulate a driving question based on the content of a course in their subject area. Here are the teachers’ driving questions, some of which tackle a real-world problem and some of which focus on the social, emotional, and religious development of the students, something that as a yeshivah, we are particularly concerned with.

MDY Driving Questions:

Art:

How did Post-Impressionists change the course of modern art?

Biology:

How does human population growth affect Earth’s ecosystem?

English:

How does multi-cultural literature help us learn about ourselves?

Halakha [Jewish Law]:

How can condo vacationers make their kitchens kosher?

Hebrew Language:

How is Israel related to my identity?

History:

Can an international community exist, and can that community solve international crises?

Math:

How do we use linear and quadratic equations to help describe the real world?

Navi (Prophets):

How are events and ideas in Navi related to us today?

Physical Education:

How does physical education affect various aspects of your life?

Talmud:

What makes a lulav kosher?

Unlocking the Block

One of the ways Magen David has shown a serious commitment to employing PBL is by using block scheduling for its core secular studies classes. A double period allows learners to engage fully and deeply in a project that involves longer periods of planning and execution time. On the third day of PD, secular studies teachers were given time to model block scheduling lessons. Roxanne Maleh, an English teacher at MDY, prepared this dynamic and fun lesson that not only taught how to employ PBL but how to infuse the classroom with play and games:

Block Schedule Lesson for PD Day

Another way MDY has shown its commitment to PBL is by creating a project-based learning schedule for the school year. Each month, a Judaic Studies subject and a secular studies one have committed to using PBL, so on the PD days, you could hear departments hashing out what content in which courses they wanted to use for a project-based learning unit. Here’s Magen David’s PBL schedule for the year, and note that not every grade in a particular subject is employing PBL. We want to make starting with the pedagogy as manageable and feasible as possible:

Magen David HS PBL Schedule for 2014 to 15 School Year (1)

Keeping the Momentum Going

As we said, starting a PD initiative may be hard, but keeping it going is even harder. MDY has committed time and resources to making sure teachers have what they need to implement PBL and generate creativity in their classrooms. Faculty are part of the I.D.E.A. Schools Network; have a coaching and mentoring system with experts in PBL and student-centered learning; and an office where they can easily access art supplies and other tools they can use for creative learning.

How’s it going so far? Here’s a gallery of some of the things the MDY faculty is doing already:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/83447659@N04/sets/72157647296186247/

Next Steps

We’ll keep you posted about how PBL progresses at Magen David. Adopting the pedagogy requires commitment and planning, but the rewards are well worth it: students become engaged, active learners who are proud of their work and are able to think deeply about what they study. As Naomi Weiss, MDY’s instructional coach, says, “Learning becomes about uncovering content, not about covering it.”

Cross-posted on welovemagendavidhs.blogspot.com.

So you want to get started with Project-Based Learning?

We think that’s an awesome idea, and we want to provide a path to success. One of the first things we have to do when discussing PBL is explain why it’s important in today’s world. After all, PBL has been around since the early twentieth century when John Dewey advocated that students needed to learn by having experiences in the real world and not by memorizing packaged content. Go here to learn more about Dewey’s philosophy. The truth is that Dewey’s approach wasn’t really new either. The idea that people learn by doing and that learning should have practical value is obviously at the heart of the apprenticeship system, but in the last couple of centuries, emphasis on academic knowledge sidelined educational opportunities that focused on student-centered, immersive learning experiences. For more on this theme, check out Ken Robinson’s amazing RSA Animate video (Sir Ken’s TED Talk is also pretty paradigm shifting.)

What accounts for the adaptation of Dewey’s pedagogy, almost a century after he lived? Technology, we think, plays a large role. Today, students — anyone — can access information in a way that is unprecedented in human history, and they can also create using digital media in a way that is unique to the world. In fact, it’s often students who know more about technology than their teachers do, so for the first time a younger generation is more knowledgeable about something than their elders. We think that calls for a radical re-shifting of how learning takes place. And we’re not alone. Check out David Thornburg’s take on what school should look like:

Tony Wagner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education is also an education change agent. Here’s what he says in his book Creating Innovators:

“Most of our high schools and colleges are not preparing students to become innovators. To succeed in the 21st-century economy, students must learn to analyze and solve problems, collaborate, persevere, take calculated risks and learn from failure. . . . A handful of high schools, colleges and graduate schools are teaching young people these skills—places like High Tech High in San Diego, the New Tech high schools (a network of 86 schools in 16 states), Olin College in Massachusetts, the Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford and the MIT Media Lab. The culture of learning in these programs is radically at odds with the culture of schooling in most classrooms.”

So we see that there is a serious need for PBL and the kind of thinking and learning it fosters. We’re ready then to get into some PBL basics. The Buck Institute of Education, dedicated to all things PBL, has a good definition of it, as well as a clear breakdown of its components:

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 a complex question, problem, or challenge. Essential Elements of PBL include:

• Significant Content - At its core, the project is focused on teaching students important knowledge and skills, derived from standards and key concepts at the heart of academic subjects.
• 21st century competencies - Students build competencies valuable for today’s world, such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity/innovation, which are explicitly taught and assessed.
• In-Depth Inquiry - Students are engaged in an extended, rigorous process of asking questions, using resources, and developing answers.
• Driving Question - Project work is focused by an open-ended question that students understand and find intriguing, which captures their task or frames their exploration.
• Need to Know - Students see the need to gain knowledge, understand concepts, and apply skills in order to answer the Driving Question and create project products, beginning with an Entry Event that generates interest and curiosity.
• Voice and Choice - Students are allowed to make some choices about the products to be created, how they work, and how they use their time, guided by the teacher and depending on age level and PBL experience.
• Critique and Revision - The project includes processes for students to give and receive feedback on the quality of their work, leading them to make revisions or conduct further inquiry.
• Public Audience - Students present their work to other people, beyond their classmates and teacher.

We also like this brief overview of PBL, again provided by BIE:

You can find all you need for PBL not only on BIE’s site but also through edutopia, which identifies PBL as one of its core strategies.

Another question that often comes up during a discussion of PBL is: what’s the difference between projects and project-based learning? We think this chart provides a good answer:

Take the time to truly examine the chart. You’ll find that PBL has some key features that we think are essential for deep and true learning:

student-centered learning

context for learning

built-in assessment (the project is the learning and doesn’t come after the learning)

emphasis on acquisition of skills as well as content

a public audience (think of how much more meaningful work can be for students when they know it will be seen by the world)

One final resource:

This past July, at the Summer Sandbox, our professional development workshop, educators got to experience PBL and create their own project-based learning units. This short video of the Sandbox can add to your understanding of the pedagogy:

Now that you’ve gotten an introduction of project-based learning, you can start thinking about how you’re going to marry your course content to the pedagogy.

We know you’re busy preparing for the opening of school. One of the topics we discussed at the Sandbox and in conversations with educators in a variety of schools is how to start and sustain culture change. We know change is hard, and it involves the commitment of many, many stakeholders at an institution. One of the things Eliezer and I will be doing in the I.D.E.A. Schools Network is chronicling the process of change in the schools in which we’re based, Eliezer at Valley Torah High School in Los Angeles, CA, and me at Magen David High School in Brooklyn, NY. In the meantime, we’ve had several requests from individuals for Matt Williams’ Culture Change workshops from Day Three of the Sandbox. Here’s the Sandbox video about Day Three:

And here are Matt’s workshops, which were fun, engaging, and thought-provoking. Thanks, Matt, for traveling from Stanford University

Workshop One:

The Ten Billion Dollar Game

The Jewish communal infrastructure is, as the Forward has pointed out, about as large as CBS. The industry of Jewish education alone probably costs in the neighborhood of ten billion dollars annually. Thinking from 30,000 feet and taking seriously the Jewish journeys of all its students, children and adults, how would you allocate these funds? How much would we decide camps should get? Schools? Birthright? Programs for the elderly? How do we even begin to make that decision?

This thought experiment is a sobering process that requires difficult decisions and ruthless analyses. But it is also an empowering opportunity to reconsider your place within the Jewish education eco-system and your capacity to be a value-added change agent in your particular location in the interconnected network.

Below are Sandbox participants describing how they would allocate their hypothetical 10 billion dollars. One fascinating finding from the exercise was how important attendees felt Birthright is for the Jewish ecosystem. There was definite consensus that the program is doing something good and vital for Jewish life today. Another great idea to emerge from the workshop was from Kaylee Frager, an educator from JCDS Northern California: she said Matt’s exercise made her wonder about giving her students the course syllabus and the number of hours they meet over the year and then tasking them with allocating hours to each topic. We love opportunities like that for student voice to be heard.

Workshop Two:

How to Build the Perfect School

Sandbox participants imagine their ideal schools

In 17th century Amsterdam, the members of what was known as the Portuguese Nation (Portuguese refugees from the Expulsion) set out to build the perfect Jewish day school. What makes their story so fascinating and so salient is that, for starters, each family controlled a significant amount of the country’s capital. They were a filthy rich community. And I don’t mean Jewish American wealthy, I mean like Russian tycoon wealthy. They even were committed to educating the relatively poor members of their community. Their schools often had leftover scholarship money; think about that for a second… Also, conversely or perhaps relatedly, the system is famous or infamous for producing one of the greatest philosophers of all time, the man considered by many to be the first modern thinkers in history - Benedict Spinoza.

This parable, for all of the reasons implied, serves as a useful platform for a thought experiment. Stepping back, if resources weren’t a problem, what would your school look like? And would you be happy with Spinoza as the outcome?

Apps for every discipline, a bus that takes students anywhere they want to go, creativity and Fab labs, quiet learning environments, communal learning environments, guest lecturers: the ideal schools participants dreamed up had it all!