Unveiling the Gold Standard: Essential Components of Project-Based Learning

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a transformative pedagogy that has become increasingly prevalent in educational settings. It distinguishes itself from traditional instructional approaches by engaging students in solving real-world problems or answering complex questions over an extended period. This approach fosters not only deep content knowledge but also critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills.

Distinguishing PBL from Traditional Projects

While projects have long been a part of education, PBL differs significantly from what might be termed a "dessert project." A dessert project is often a short, intellectually light activity served up after the teacher covers the content of a unit in the usual way. In contrast, PBL is a "main course" where the project is the unit. The project serves as the vehicle for teaching essential knowledge and skills, containing and framing curriculum and instruction. Unlike dessert projects, PBL demands critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and multifaceted communication. Students must utilize higher-order thinking skills and learn to work as a team to answer a driving question and produce high-quality work.

The Gold Standard PBL Model

To ensure that students engage in rigorous and impactful Project Based Learning, PBLWorks promotes a research-informed model known as "Gold Standard PBL." This model provides educators with two useful guides:

Seven Essential Project Design Elements: A framework for developing high-quality projects.
Seven Project Based Teaching Practices: Guidelines to help teachers, schools, and organizations improve and assess their PBL implementation.

The Gold Standard PBL model aligns with the High Quality PBL Framework, which describes what students should be doing, learning, and experiencing in a well-designed project.

Seven Essential Project Design Elements

The Essential Project Design Elements serve as guideposts for teachers when planning Gold Standard projects. These elements are designed to be developed over time, becoming more evident as teachers and students gain experience and confidence with the project process.

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1. Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills

Student learning of academic content and skill development are at the center of well-designed project. Gold Standard PBL teaches students the important content standards, concepts, and in-depth understandings that are fundamental to school subject areas and academic disciplines. Content knowledge and conceptual understanding are not enough. In school and college, in the workplace, as community members, and in their lives generally, people need to be able to think critically and solve problems, work well with others, and communicate effectively. They also need to manage projects and approach novel tasks with creativity and innovation. It’s important to note that success skills can only be taught through the acquisition of content knowledge and understanding. Each project should explicitly teach and assess one or two specific success skills, even though students may learn other skills as well. All PBL should start first with a standard and the specific skills that must be learned to master that standard. Take care to include not just academic skills but also SEL and career-ready skills, which often overlap. Educators can refer to resources like the World Economic Forum's list of in-demand, future-ready career skills or the Technical Assistance Center of New York’s Life/Career Competencies Framework.

2. Challenging Problem or Question

The heart of a project is a problem to investigate and solve, or a question to explore and answer. This question should be aligned to learning goals and, as much as possible, should connect to students’ interests, identities, and communities. The challenge could be concrete (the school needs to do a better job of recycling waste) or abstract (deciding if and when war is justified). The formulation of a challenging problem or question is akin to setting the stage for a captivating narrative. It serves as the catalyst that propels students into the realms of inquiry and exploration. Instead of merely instructing students to memorize historical dates, pose a question that prompts them to analyze the causes and consequences of a significant event. The essence of a challenging problem or question lies in its ability to transcend rote learning and foster genuine engagement. The project centers around an essential and real-world question or problem whose answer or solution is neither binary nor black and white. A well-designed problem or question makes learning meaningful for students. They are not just gaining knowledge to remember it; they are learning because they have a real need to know something, so they can use this knowledge to solve a problem or answer a question that matters to them.

3. Sustained Inquiry

Inquiry involves seeking information or investigating - it's a more active, in-depth process than just "looking something up" in a book or online. The inquiry process takes time, which means a Gold Standard project lasts more than a few days. In PBL, inquiry is iterative; when confronted with a challenging problem or question, students ask questions, find and use resources and other learning experiences to help develop answers to those questions, then ask deeper questions - and the process repeats. Sustained inquiry is a process in which students ask questions, find possible resources, and apply their learning to the driving question. Learning through sustained inquiry helps students engage with the world from a place of curiosity. Students who do inquiry-based projects develop the capacity to ask meaningful questions and the agency to effectively seek answers to those questions.

4. Authenticity

Authenticity means that something is real or genuine, not fake or contrived. In education, the concept has to do with how “real-world” the learning or the task is. A project can be authentic in several ways, often in combination. It can have an authentic context, such as when students solve problems like those faced by people in the world outside of school (e.g., entrepreneurs developing a business plan, engineers designing a bridge, or advisors to the City Council recommending policy). It can involve the use of real-world processes, tasks and tools, and performance standards, such as when students plan an experimental investigation or use digital editing software to produce professional quality videos. It can have a real impact on others, such as when students address a need in their school or community (e.g., designing and building a school garden, improving a community park, providing support to local immigrant families) or create a product or service that will be used or experienced by others. Authentic PBL has real-world application and provides students opportunities to link their learning in school to various career paths. When the crux of the project centers upon a problem with real-world relevance, students have the opportunity to use authentic resources-tools, technologies, and sources for research-as professionals would. When a project is designed with authenticity in mind, students are engaged in learning for a purpose. Their motivation increases because they see why what they are learning matters. Students also understand how to transfer their learning, as they apply the concepts and skills from the standards to life beyond the classroom.

5. Student Voice & Choice

Gold Standard projects include opportunities for students to make their voices and perspectives heard, within and beyond the classroom. Effective projects are also shaped by student choice: students can have input and (some) control over many aspects of a project, from the questions they generate, to the resources they will use to find answers to their questions, to the tasks and roles they will take on as team members, to the products they will create. Students are able to make some decisions about the project, allowing them to have both voice and choice. This means that students might be able to choose how they work and what they create. As students complete the project, they are not only given the opportunity to express their ideas and opinions, but they are also expected to do so. Having a say in a project creates a sense of ownership in students; they care more about- and bring more of themselves to- the project. Creating opportunities for student choice in a project also increases student engagement and ownership.

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6. Reflection

John Dewey pointed out that we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. Throughout a project, students - and the teacher - should reflect on what they’re learning, how they’re learning, and why they’re learning, as well as how they are changing as learners. Teachers must take care to set aside time throughout the project to reflect with students on their learning. Reflection can happen in group or class discussion, through journaling, or through check-ins with individuals. Students learn so much from reflecting on their learning. Reflection on the content knowledge and understanding gained helps students solidify what they have learned and think about how it might apply elsewhere, beyond the project. Reflection on the project itself - how it was designed and implemented - helps students decide how they might approach their next project, and helps teachers improve the quality of their PBL practice.

7. Critique & Revision

High quality student work is a hallmark of Gold Standard PBL, and such quality is attained through thoughtful critique and revision. Students should be taught how to give and receive constructive peer feedback that will improve project processes and products, guided by rubrics, models, and formal feedback/critique protocols. Prior to students submitting the final deliverable, students should receive formal critique of their work so far. Feedback can come from the teacher or from other students. Giving and receiving purposeful feedback helps students build a shared understanding of what quality work looks like with regard to the targeted content and skills. It also expands responsibility for formative assessment and collective learning from the teacher alone to the whole class, helping to create a culture of interdependence and investment in collective learning.

8. Public Product

In Gold Standard PBL, students share the work they create with an audience beyond the classroom. This can take many forms: a tangible product that students design or build, or the presentation of a solution to a problem or an answer to a driving question. Many PBL schools and districts reinforce this message by repurposing the traditional “open house” into an exhibition of project work, which helps build understanding and support for PBL among stakeholders. Upon project completion, students present in front of an audience of professionals or community members with expertise and/or employment in the industry/field pertinent to the project. In a project, students create and share a public product for the school or greater community. There are three major reasons for creating a public product in Gold Standard PBL. First, like authenticity, a public product adds greatly to PBL’s motivating power and encourages high-quality work. Second, by creating a product, students make what they have learned tangible and thus, when shared publicly, discussible. Instead of only being a private exchange between an individual student and teacher, the social dimension of learning becomes more important. Finally, making student work public is an effective way to communicate with families, community members, and the wider world about what PBL is and what it does for students.

Project Based Teaching Practices

Project Based Teaching Practices are the instructional moves teachers make to bring a project to life in the classroom. Many of them are familiar practices to teachers, but they look different in the context of a project. The Buck Institute’s Project Based Teaching Rubric includes, at the most proficient level, the “Gold Standard PBL Teacher” column, which is a detail rich resource for educators working towards proficiency. But, many teachers express they are overwhelmed when they read this rubric. Teachers are viewed as coaches that provide a structure or framework to guide students through the learning process. But the learning comes from the students.

The Instructor's Role in Gold Standard PBL

The instructor plays a critical role in ensuring effective PBL. This includes:

Designing for authenticity and agency: The instructor must carefully consider the course context, learning objectives, and student needs to develop a project that allows for student voice, choice, and input. The audience for the final deliverable should also be clearly defined.
Building a collaborative culture: PBL requires each student to contribute to all aspects of the project and respect and learn from each other’s contributions. The instructor must work with students to establish expectations and build class community, especially as a PBL approach could be new for many students and their past experiences working in groups may be fraught.
Scaffolding student learning: Instructors scaffold project elements and subtasks to help students build upon the work they’re doing. Instructors guide students toward the culminating project.
Managing teams and project activities: While students are expected to take ownership of their projects and their work, and learn to use the processes, tools, and strategies of project management, instructors help students as they work collaboratively and define and set project deadlines and subtasks.
Providing feedback: Instructors provide students with feedback on their progress throughout the course of a project. There should be opportunities for ongoing formative feedback (e.g., written feedback, check-in meetings, facilitating peer- or self-assessment activities).
Creating opportunities for reflection: Students engage in ongoing reflection on their learning and progress throughout the project.
Showcasing student work: An important feature of PBL is students having an opportunity to showcase their work. The instructor should create opportunities for the showcase of student work and encourage students to participate in campus-wide initiatives.
Collecting feedback: Just as it’s important for instructors to provide students with feedback throughout the process, it’s equally important to collect feedback from students. The instructor should invite feedback from students throughout the process and create opportunities for responding to and implementing feedback in the moment.

Equity-Centered Vision for PBL

In addition to knowing the nuts and bolts of PBL pedagogy, effective PBL teachers hold a clear vision for how their project design and implementation will meet the needs of all of their learners. This includes attending to four “levers” for equitable PBL- knowledge of students, cognitive demand, literacy, and shared power- and regularly using these levers to reflect on and refine practice.

Examples of PBL Premises

Analyze a product developed by a company and design a marketing campaign to encourage consumers to buy the product.
Analyze the building plans of a certain building and collaboratively decide how to improve the design for efficiency or cost.
Fourth grade, literacy project: Develop a business brochure. Students select a business in the community for which they will develop a brochure. Students learn about the business (its products, its customers, its prices, and so on) and then create a brochure for them. They share it with an employee of the business who gives them feedback. Students apply feedback and send the updated version back for approval.

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