Structure your PBL so students go deeper.
Your students are moving through a self-paced process, tackling real-world challenges all to come up with real-world solutions. I call this phase 1 of PBL: Research & Development. This process is authentic, relevant, motivating, and a complete headache to manage. Your job is to be each student’s mentor, but when they have different needs, different roadblocks, and different schedules - how can you ensure that quality driving questions are formed, their inquiry is sustained, learning partnerships are productive, and incremental improvements and ongoing reflection are constant? Basically, how do we help our students go deeper?
Students have to move through a number of important steps to get from questioning to the final product and usually not in a rigid order. Scrum tools greatly support students in solution development, but it’s not enough to support their whole endeavor. Students need a framework to pull them to the solution development stage and pull them again to put a plan of action in place once the solution is fully baked. Once students have their final product, they are truly just getting started on their endeavor. How can we get our students to grow their vision once they’ve done their first showcase? A topic for another day I suppose.
Your students have the tools they need to work on the pieces and parts of PBL, phase 1. They can safely explore the internet, survey or interview key stakeholders, ideate solutions, work together as a team to iterate and build on their solution to present their final product. Students are naturally curious and will scout out these tools before you’ve even heard of them ( just in case we’ve provided a shortlist above).
But do they have a system to go deeper?
We are sending our students the wrong message when we use assignment-based software to facilitate student progress. When work is only submitted to the teacher, we are telling our students that learning is stagnant, finite, teacher-centered and silo’d. When students “submit” their work, they don’t consider revision as a necessary part of the learning process. But, PBL is fueled by constant reflection and iterations. So how do we pull students through their projects? Here are some basic project set-up tips to get your students to be independent problem-solvers.
PROJECT SET-UP
Create a real-world DQ. Remember this isn’t just a ‘topic’ but an ‘authentic problem’ relevant to your students.
Establish a “true north” or project vision. Make sure it is always revisited. Try the 3-legged stool analogy to keep students on track.
Give them a project roadmap. Roadmaps should have clear objectives and scope.
Break down the project. Provide students with manageable chunks and microtasks (metacognitive ones).
Be ready to constantly reflect to iterate on no. 3 and 4
Provide a low-stakes, ongoing training ground. Students need to share (not submit) their rough stuff so they can practice.
Embrace learning partnerships. Peer-to-peer or cross-team. Students need networking opportunities to get the targeted collaboration/ feedback they need when they need it… just as we adults do.
“Spinndle nudges students to explore more deeply”
On Spinndle, students move through design thinking loops, practicing ongoing reflection in order to make constant incremental improvements to their projects. Their entire process, not just their final product, is facilitated - from coming up with their own driving question, formulating project goals and plans, to building a quality final product. Everything is a “work-in-progress”. Teachers have a transparent system to check-in with all the pieces and parts of each student’s process, and project plans so they can ensure high-quality PBL.
Not convinced? Book a demo or sign-up for a free trial to learn how.