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PROJECT-BASED LEARNING: A PATH TO AGENCY
Mark Calleja investigates project-based learning, a teaching method that gives students the tools to take charge of their own learning roject-based learning is about asking your students to solve a real-world problem by designing and creating a project over a specific period of time. Getting started with project-based learning in your classroom requires a bit of a shift in thinking. Instead of providing an activity that demonstrates prior knowledge or acts as a unit assessment, students’ learning is directly embedded into, and emerges from, the investigative and design processes they engage in, while solving the problem you’ve posed. That is to say, their project is the unit: it’s the vehicle for teaching the knowledge and skills that students need to learn, as well as the assessment process that demonstrates their learning. I’m a huge proponent of teaching this way, for a whole host of reasons.
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The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy
Creating solutions from the ground up
Agency: There’s a massive difference for your learners between being asked whether they know the answer to a problem, and being asked to find a solution to one. The first question assumes knowledge (and thereby frames a lack of knowledge as failure) and has a narrow focus, while the second gives learners the room to be wrong or not know yet, and to develop real understanding and practical skills in a self-directed way. Engagement: Learners with more agency are likely to be more engaged in their learning, too. A huge benefit of projectbased learning is the scope it gives you to set relevant, real-world problems for your students. Being able to relate their learning to their own lives motivates students: when they see that they can apply new skills and
knowledge to other situations in their lives, they understand the true purpose of the work they’re doing. Universal skills: Project-based learning doesn’t give students ready answers to a specific problem; it asks them to build a mental toolkit for understanding any problem, so that they can create solutions from the ground up. By enabling this indepth learning, you equip your students for real life, letting them practise skills required in most industries today: taking initiative, working responsibly, decomposing and solving problems, collaborating in teams, and communicating their ideas clearly.
Giving the power back to your learners When your learners are interested and engaged with their own learning, your job changes from passing on knowledge and
