Project-Based Learning and You

In perusing edutopia for articles about project-based learning I found quite a few articles on the subject, some talking about tips for implementing it, others about the different elements of it, and more talking about the research behind it. However, the article I found most interesting was entitled, “When a PBL Project Fails.” In all the other articles they offered tips for avoiding disaster while acknowledging it was likely to be difficult to implement. Yet, none of them truly talked about what to do after the failure had happened (or even during it!). How do we handle it for ourselves and for our students?

Well, as the article discusses, it creates an opportunity for us to model graceful failure, and teach students how to reflect and improve for the future. The teachers give suggestions, but also compared it to a failed “choose your own adventure” video activity they did on the two world wars. They reflected on what went right (the students did end up with content mastery!) and what went wrong (the videos never really ended up being made), with particular emphasis on why, and how to fix it next time.

As a new teacher, I have been told repeatedly that I can expect to fail, and fail epicly, quite a bit my first year, and that it only goes up from there. That’s great, but without real suggestions for how to handle that failure in the moment with those students (who can’t just wait a few years for me to figure it out since they are only siting before me right now) then I will find myself stuck and struggling. The point these authors were trying to get at yes, it will happen, and its okay, here are some tips to help. The solution is not to stop doing PBLs, but instead to think critically about them, yourself as a professional, but also with your students as you all learn together.