There is forty years worth of research confirming that project-based learning is one of the best ways to learn. Yet, the number of schools that have successfully implemented a project-based learning program in their school is small. The motivation to be part of this successful learning method produced repeated attempts by schools all over the world to either try or declare their intention to use project-based learning in their curriculum. Unfortunately, many of these attempts end after the first trial. What makes project-based learning so difficult to implement and how can you improve your rate of success?
The most challenging parts of PBL
The process of project-based learning starts when students either get a driving question they need to investigate from their teacher or when they come up with one as a result of an interest that they develop while learning about a specific topic or encountering a phenomena. The next step could either involve asking lots of good questions or conducting research about their topic of investigation. This is where students can stumble because they just have no clue how to do research that aligns with their project needs or because they lack metacognitive strategies to come up with the right set of questions.
Krajcik and Shin (2014), acknowledge that students struggle to create questions that incorporate all the elements of a good driving question. Thus, it is essential that curriculum designers write the curriculum around meaningful, authentic, real-life problems that motivate students. Accordingly, Krajcik and Shin (2014) refer to several projects where they, in collaboration with teachers, have created the driving questions and then built the curriculum around those questions.
Most of the problems investigated in a project-based learning scenario are interdisciplinary. We rarely encounter real problems that relate to one discipline. So, when students are trying to figure out what is absolutely necessary for them to investigate in order to answer that driving question, identifying all the disciplines that relate to their problem could be quite challenging.
Research can make or break how successful a project can end up being. Students need to know how to conduct research on the internet, find out what is a valid source, which resources can be relied on and which ones have an agenda they try to promote. Once they have a few good sources, they need the capacity to navigate ambiguity, triangulate knowledge, question the established wisdom of our time, not just reproduce it. All these can be challenging tasks that can discourage students from the get go.
The Project Topic Advisor
In order to help students with these metacognitive challenges, we designed the Project Topic Advisor GPT to assist both K-12 and university level students and teachers in developing effective driving questions for projects, understanding the topics their subject entails, and generating project resources, focusing on grade-appropriate materials. Initially, the GPT will ask the user about their education level, distinguishing between K-12 and university. If the user is in K-12, it will further inquire about their specific grade level. Based on the education level, the GPT provides tailored assistance in three areas: generating a driving question, understanding the topics their subject entails, or generating project resources. For driving questions, it assesses clarity, scope, and relevance, offering guidance to refine them. In subject topics, it provides the different topics that are necessary for answering the driving question. For project resources, it suggests materials aligning with the project’s goals and educational level and links to them. The GPT maintains a supportive and engaging tone, ensuring users feel confident and involved in their project planning.
The Project Topic Advisor provides clarity about the question they need to solve, the topics they need to investigate to solve it and which resources they can rely on to research it. Students can immediately embark on executing the project, feeling confident that they are being led in the right direction to solve the driving question. That can be a great relief for students because it can save them many false attempts to find the correct path to accomplish their goal.
Project planning
Finland is one of the leading countries that actively implements project-based learning, which they also call phenomenon-based learning. Therefore, a qualitative study conducted by the University of Helsinki in Finland about the implementation of project-based learning can provide the most reliable information about its advantages and challenges. According to this qualitative study, teachers reported lack of time being a major challenge, time referred to planning time with colleagues or the time consuming nature of project work in general. Thorough and careful planning is essential to the flow of the project and the success of the student. Unfortunately, teachers reported that they do not have sufficient time for this level of planning. The need for more training for supporting their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in PBL, was also mentioned.
The burden of planning can be somewhat alleviated by using the Project Topic Advisor because in addition to providing help with the driving question, it also helps generate the list of topics their question entails and the resources students can use to learn about them.
The skills students need before starting any project
One of the best ways to make sure that PBL practice ends up being successful is by dedicating time before any project starts to train students to conduct research, learn how to collaborate effectively, and how to manage their project. These three courses may take an entire academic year to complete, but it is worth it. Once students learn how to research, collaborate and manage their projects effectively, working on a project may turn into a walk in the park.
Learning to do research is important for anything students learn. There are plenty of resources on the internet that you can use to train your students to do research. Our blog entry “Here’s Why Research Is So Important (And How to Teach It to Your Students)” can provide you with a good starting point. You can use our Beginner’s Guide to Collaboration Best Practices to train your students to collaborate and our Beginner’s Guide To Project Management to train your students to manage their projects effectively.
How can AI help
One of the most important things in a team project is the ability to manage tasks, prioritize them and follow up on task completion. In the past, well managed teams used the calendar to schedule the tasks of the entire project, but many times got confused how to prioritize tasks and synchronize tasks for all team members. AI builds the entire schedule for the team by synchronizing tasks based on task priorities and it makes following up on task completion much easier. One such AI powered application is Motion, which focuses on project management, helping students keep track of all the tasks they still have to complete. By tweaking each task priority, the student will be telling the AI engine when it should land on the calendar and how to place the other tasks around it.
Up until the advent of AI, student meeting conversations were usually lost. AI changed all that and there are AI transcription apps that can turn voice into text, letting students browse it later. This can help students be more present in their meetings and, at the same time, be able to thoroughly analyze the transcription later. One such transcription app is Fireflies, which can transcribe all student meetings, tracking the conversation topics along the way. It has its own bot called Fred that can handle summarizing the meeting’s contents, generating text, and searching through the history to meet students’ queries.
Once students finish their project, they can further use AI to create a presentation based on their final essay. Many AI tools can create a presentation based only on a topic. Of course, that will not require student work at all. That is not what I am recommending here. Students can use SlidesAI.io to input their text, choose the total number of slides, and let SlidesAI.io do the heavy lifting of transforming the text into visually appealing slides. Once students have a professionally crafted presentation, they can then use a different AI tool to coach them to present their presentation in front of the class. PowerPoint Speaker Coach feature is specifically designed to evaluate various aspects of a presentation, including pacing, pitch, use of filler words, and other common speaking habits. It allows students to practice in private, and the feedback provided can help identify areas for improvement.
All these tools can make teachers’ and students’ lives much easier. Making the shift to project-based learning can become much less threatening and can guarantee that students are engaged in a student-centered deep learning that can keep them engaged throughout the duration of the project.