Project-Based Learning Does Not Have to Be a 6-8 Week Unit
If you are anything like me, you’ve probably tried a unit-long project-based learning experience at some point in your teaching career. The action plan was set, mini-lessons were ready, student-conferencing was in place, and we launched with excitement.
Then, the slump happens. Normally between weeks 2-5 of a PBL unit, students often struggle with sustained inquiry. Sometimes group work can turn into just group chat. The excitement tends to fade, and the urgency doesn’t pick up until there are just a few days left.
Despite my best efforts, these were often the case with some students when I did extended PBL. Over the years, I improved as a facilitator and was able to scaffold/structure the learning experience better, but when I first started with PBL it was not all roses!
A Lesson Beneath The Struggle
There was something that I took away from these unit-long PBL experiences. The first two days — and the last two days — in the PBL experience were the places I saw the most learning taking place. Kids were amped to get started, began their inquiry, and got to work after the kick-off. Then, at the end of the unit, there was a mad scramble to create, make, and finalize their authentic work.
It wasn’t that the learning in between did not matter, but the learning that took place with the excitement and the time constraints seemed to up the attention, commitment, and overall engagement.
I had seen this in my own learning as well, although the time constraints led to pressure, they also helped me get things done, and focus my attention on the work instead of elsewhere.
Turns out, the idea of using “sprints” in learning and business was not a new one at all. There was plenty of research done on this and I started to dive into it:
“It’s not just about speed,” writes John Zeratsky, the best-selling author of Sprint and Make Time. “It’s also about momentum, focus, and confidence.” The companies who use sprints, in Zeratsky’s opinion, see consistent results from the process. Here are some reasons why it happens:
Sprints pull teams from abstract to concrete thinking. Running a sprint on a particular question means breaking the work down to the smallest pieces, which in turn allows you to think about the issue in a more tangible way.
Sprints prompt teams to focus on what’s important. Starting the next sprint is all about building a shared understanding of the challenge. After everyone knows what to work on, teams become laser-focused and spend their time on the right things.
Sprints sharpen the decision-making process. Transparency at all levels is another thing sprints promote in the workplace. As teams start to participate in the decision-making process, they understand how choices are made and where key decisions are coming from.
Sprints incite faster follow-ups. Considering that teams have a fixed time frame to solve the problem, they’ll have to collaborate closely to get work done. Sprints will move everyone away from wandering in thoughts to doing things.
If sprints could help in all these ways, why wouldn’t I try this in the classroom?
How PBL and Design Thinking Led Me to Sprints
My project-based learning struggles weren’t just about what was happening in the "slump” but also how my structuring of the unit itself was set in a way that did not promote choice or creativity.
I was really bad at scaffolding PBL opportunities for my students to own that process as well. Too often my scaffolding was me “telling them” what to do.
Most of the “project-based learning” I had my students do, looked something like this:
Teach the students about a concept or particular content.
Have them demonstrate their learning in various ways.
Give them an end of the unit project.
Provide detailed steps to complete the project in a handout.
Provide detailed unit to assess the project in a handout.
Give students a detailed timeline on when things should be done for the project.
Help students navigate project.
Collect student projects.
Notice that all of their projects look eerily similar, almost like they were following a recipe
Grade the projects and hand them back with feedback.
Repeat.
The problem with these projects was the recipe-like nature that happened when students began handing things in.
My students were still just trying to follow the rules, instead of actually creating something on their own that they could be proud about.
I was falling into a trap of caring too much about what PBL was supposed to look like, instead of focusing on the actual working definition of Project-Based Learning:
Project-based learning is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which it is believed that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems.
Why did I think my PBL experiences had to be 8 weeks long when that approach rarely worked for me and rarely worked for my students?
Enter Design Thinking
Design thinking provides a way to think about creative work. It starts with empathy, working to really understand the problems people are facing before attempting to come up with ideas and create solutions.
It’s a bit of a debate where design thinking originated. Some claim that it started in the sixties with The Sciences of the Artificial. Others point to Design Thinking, which focussed more on urban planning and architecture. Still others point to Robert McKim’s work in Experiences in Visual Thinking. Like all great ideas, it has been an evolution, influenced by thousands of people. We know that our work around Design Thinking has been influenced by people like Tom and David Kelley, Tim Brown, John Maeda, Peter Rowe (as well as organizations like Stanford d.school and IDEO).
There are a number of different interpretations of the phases in Design Thinking.
Here are the phases of Design Thinking as described in IDEO’s “Design Thinking for Educators” toolkit (an awesome resource):
Here are the phases of Design Thinking as shared by Stanford d.school (and they again have fantastic resources):
And there are other models, frameworks, and descriptions of the design thinking phases from various organizations and universities:
I began to use the design thinking process during PBL, and then 20% time and Genius Hour projects. In PBL, it helped to keep the learning creative and open. In Genius Hour it helped to structure a wide-open process. I helped other teachers structure their inquiry projects filled with choice around the design thinking process. I saw the process as a new way to develop lessons, units, projects and curriculum.
When I got into a conversation about design thinking with John Spencer (who was also using the process as a classroom teacher), we both agreed that the biggest struggle we had when using design thinking and sharing the process with other educators was its implications for K-12 students.
What did we do about this problem? We began to try and solve it using the design thinking process.
We looked at the terminology used, the sample exercises and activities available, and how teachers and students responded to the different phases. We talked with teachers using design thinking in their classrooms and met with those that wanted a framework for creative work. Then we started to design and build out an idea. We highlighted what worked and kept on revising.
The end result was “The LAUNCH Cycle”, a K-12 framework for design thinking in the classroom!
Using Design for PBL Sprints
Design thinking and design sprints allowed me to scaffold the PBL experience for my students. Instead of starting with a unit-long project-based learning experience, I could now structure learning sprints that had them researching, collaborating, evaluating information, creating, revising, and launching in a short period of time.
My ultimate goal was to prepare my students for an opportunity later in the year to do a full course PBL unit, but I had to build up to that and scaffold throughout the year with shorter activities that had PBL pieces.
Before jumping into Design Challenges, Maker Projects, and Genius Hour, I would always do an activity that followed the simple process shared below. This PBL Sprint PSA can be done in any subject and in any grade level (with modifications of course).
I’ll break down the example PSA Project Sprint that I use all of the time in workshops to show how this is possible. The key elements are that you choose content that you want the students to learn, but give them a choice in which content they choose.
After that, the project is simple.
Research what the world needs to know about ____, and what they can do about _____.
Then create a PSA to demonstrate that information and understanding.
For my example, I want my students to learn about the United Nations 2030 Goals. So it would look like this:
Research what the world needs to know about one of the UN 2030 GOALS, and what they can do about _____.
Here is the step-by-step process for scaffolding PBL with a PSA Project:
STEP #1: PRESENT THE CONTENT THAT STUDENTS ARE GOING TO LEARN (THEN GIVE A CHOICE ON WHICH AREA THEY LEARN MORE ABOUT)
Note: Some students will have background knowledge, others may not have much background knowledge and that is ok.
For this example, I give learners the topic of the UN 2030 Goals. The content they are going to learn is about these UN 2030 Goals (which works well because most folks don’t have a deep understanding or much knowledge about the goals).
Second, I ask them to get into small groups (2-3 people) and choose a goal that resonates with them personally. This is key because the more meaningful and relevant the activity becomes, the more effort and commitment the team will have towards the project.
It’s also important to note that I do not give a lot of time for this activity. Thirty minutes max amount of time. It should be a one-class activity in school where time and resources may be limited.
STEP #2: HAVE STUDENTS RESEARCH THE CONTENT (WHAT DOES THE WORLD NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT AND WHAT CAN THEY DO ABOUT IT)
Once the goal (content) has been chosen it’s time to research! The key here is to research quickly and efficiently.
If you have younger kids, provide stations that have bits and pieces of the research ready to consume. Things like videos, articles, pictures, graphs are key to giving young students a head-start on the research.
If you have older students (or adult learners) feel free to point them towards a couple websites or directions to research online. For the UN 2030 Goals I always choose GlobalGoals.org as a starting place.
The other important piece to remember during this research step is that you must give a specific time of how long (or else they’ll get stuck in more and more research). You have to also give very specific things they are looking for (such as what the world needs to know about the 2030 goal and what they can do about it to help out).
STEP #3: CREATE A PSA
Here is where we climb up the Bloom’s taxonomy and get students making and creating. When you use this activity with a specific piece of content (2030 Goals, Periodic Table of Elements, historical figures, scenes from a play, author study etc) the project becomes about demonstrating your understanding of this content through creating the PSA.
You can give the option of creating a PSA much like the one shared above (The R-Word) or learners can create it with video, with a slideshow, a skit, or any other type of way to spread their knowledge and understanding.
We are scaffolding PBL here so a key point to remember during the creation stage is that many times students will want to mimic or copy what they saw as the example (or exemplar) given to the whole class.
This is something to keep an eye on, but also a teaching moment. I always share Austin Kleon’s good vs bad copying chart to get my students thinking about personalizing their PSA’s and projects:
Once students are finished creating, the project is not yet done! Two key pieces remain. First, they have to share this with a bigger audience than just themselves and their classmates.
Sharing it with the world gives the students an authentic audience. As a teacher, I’d try to find various audiences for my students to share their work with, but sometimes throwing it up on Youtube and social media is enough to get the positive peer pressure working!
Finally, you’ll want to have the students reflect on what they learned, what they created, and what they would do differently.
This reflection continues the learning well after the “project” has been completed.
The final product should never be the end of a learning experience, only the beginning of the next learning experience.
DON’T JUST TEACH WHAT YOU KNOW, TEACH WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING
When starting students on a journey with a Project-Based Learning sprint we can think of it as a journey where the travel is just as important as the destination.
Learning happens during the project work and as a result of the work, just as taking a hike up a mountain is as important as getting to the final destination of that view over the valley.
The mark of many great projects is that the learners teach what they know and understand through the project.
But, you don’t need to be an expert in order to teach.
The goal here is for students to be documenting, sharing, creating, and teaching while they are learning.
This process enables constant reflection and dialogue to take place between the learner, the collaborator, the mentor, the teacher, and the audience.
That is what makes true PBL so authentic. It is the connections we can make throughout the learning process that does not happen when sitting in a seat listening to a lecture, or sitting in a seat answering multiple-choice questions.
I’d love to hear how you scaffold PBL in your classroom or school. How do you get students started down the PBL path? What activities do you begin with? How do students reflect and share what they have made?
