BUT- this isn't Problem Based Learning (PBL).
Our district is taking the plunge into a year-long effort to bring Problem Based Learning into our classrooms. It's critical that all the players (including kids) have a clear understanding between what PBL is and isn't. I'm no PBL expert, but I also know that a little research can go a long way to differentiating between STEM challenges/curriculum projects and the instructional design that is the foundation of PBL. EdLeader21 uses the following PBL definition to guide their work:
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 an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge. Their Gold Standard PBL instructional model features the following “Essential Project Design Elements” to characterize learning as project-based:
- Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills
- Challenging Problem or Question
- Sustained Inquiry
- Authenticity
- Student Voice & Choice
- Reflection.
- Critique & Revision
- Public Product
For details describing these elements, see http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl. I've also linked two articles at the end of my blog post that I found particularly helpful and guided my thinking in writing this blog.
As teachers, we have our favorite culminating/End of Unit projects that showcase learning and serve as capstones for students. They may be complex and have a detailed rubric to demonstrate and measure student learning, but they are almost more about product vs. process. We also have our invaluable hands-on activities throughout our curriculum to provide students opportunities to demonstrate learning. They provide formative data to teachers as to how students are accessing content and should drive instruction. Well-designed projects or activities support content and provide means for student application and extension of skills, but are still primarily geared toward assessing learning.
Activity menus add the component of student voice and choice and can be highly engaging ways to differentiate instruction and bounce around Bloom's taxonomy. They can empower students to gain agency in their learning. They often contain fun or enriching projects, but again, they are primarily supplementing direct instruction- not PBL.
Performance tasks are exactly that- activities designed for students to demonstrate skill toward a particular objective. Likely part of PBL, and scattered throughout our instruction, performance tasks may look like anything from dipsticks benchmarks, but that is what they are, and best as a functional component of a larger system.
The thing about these activities and projects, which are rich in content and shouldn't be considered "curriculum-light," is that they are not necessarily rooted in the instructional design. They supplement instruction and can measurably demonstrate students' access and mastery of content, but don't come from the PBL foundation of a complex, student-sourced problem, rooted in inquiry and process. They can often be more about what students are doing and showing, rather than our instructional method to deliver specific contend and standards at increased depth of focus.
STEM Challenges, and all of the activities described, can be powerful learning experiences for our students, and should be valued as such. Just because a particular project or challenge doesn't fall into the PBL realm doesn’t mean it can’t be a meaningful, measurable, or maybe even transformational student experience. Good teachers already know this, and will never abandon the strategies and lessons that they know have the magic, but they also know that there’s always room to develop professionally, and PBL can enhance instruction.
Is there room for STEM Challenges?
Of course! If students are developing the critical social-emotional "soft skills" required to create, communicate, collaborate and think critically, that time has value and extends across the entire curriculum. As long as a paper-chain challenge isn't really about learning to make paper chains (and that piece is critical), then who could challenge the potential in activating curiosity and generating opportunities to apply the engineering design process to achieve a goal. If students understand and can explain that the process of applying the 4 C's to solve a challenge or perform a task, then yes- you should be doing STEM challenges, while appreciating what they are and aren't!
https://www.bie.org/blog/bie_book_excerpt_what_project_based_learning_is_not
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/debunking-five-pbl-myths-john-larmer
The table at the end of the 1st article you linked helped me make sense of the differences. Thanks!
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