Student Perspectives: A Comprehensive Reflection on Project-Based Learning

 

“This was probably my favorite project that I've ever done in an English class because it is based on a topic that I am a big fan of -- video games. I've never done something that I've been extremely interested in during English class.” - Hunter

“This project involved video games, art, symbolism, gothic literature, and design -- all things that I love.” - Traci

“I am proud of the different ways I was able to better the project because of the effort I gave. This was an amazing idea to get us to engage and learn about gothic themes and symbolisms.” - Caitlyn 

Statements like these are sure to put a smile on any teacher’s face because, naturally, teachers want their students to enjoy learning. They want students to be engaged and excited about their work. But not all learning experiences result in the kind of enthusiasm these students expressed in their project reflections.

So, what was different about this assignment?

The Project

Students in the STEM Academy at Northwest High School completed a “Gothic Video Games PBL”. They were assigned a small team (3-4 people) and tasked with creating a video game design that honored Edgar Allen Poe’s contributions to Gothic Literature. By the end of their project, they had to answer the driving question, “How does style drive creativity?” Their learning tasks included:

• work as a team to develop an E10+, ‘gothic game’ idea loosely based on an existing Gothic short story 
• create a visual representation of their game to support the pitch
• 'pitch' their idea to a local game developer through a formal presentation

The end-products themselves aren’t that unique, so what made this project so engaging? In PBL students follow a learning path wherein creation acts as the impetus for learning.

Project-based learning reframes traditional teaching, offering real-world, hands-on experience. In PBL students are challenged to create an authentic end-product, but haven’t necessarily learned what they need to know to create that end-product. In this way, student inquiry drives learning in a PBL.

Students know they have to create or do something (and even have a product rubric), but they don’t always know how to accomplish their task or have the knowledge they need to get it done. Students gain those throughout the PBL and apply what they learn as they create. This is different from classrooms where demonstrating mastery primarily happens at the end of a unit.

Paired with consistent feedback, PBL leaves room for students to fail in the moment but still grow and succeed in the end. The need to create becomes a catalyst to learning, and within the parameters of the PBL, a student can personalize their learning experience based on their interests and passions. How and what students learn in a PBL is organically driven by their authentic "need to know" for the purpose of creating.

(A note for teachers: In PBL, student inquiry is strategically planned and guided. The success of projects like these hinge on detailed backward design and the facilitator’s intentional guidance and scaffolding of student thinking throughout the project.)

The Reflection

Through Project-Based Learning, students get more than just academic content. In PBL students practice critical skills like communication, personal responsibility, time management, teamwork, and creativity. Student reflections even showed that through PBL students apply what they learn across content areas and make cross-curricular and industry connections.

"[Through this project] I grew my knowledge of game design and gothic elements, which allowed me to become more creative with those things. In a STEM field, most of the problems you have to solve aren't going to have definitive answers, so you need to be creative and innovative to solve them." - Robert

“A creative skill that I grew during this project has to be brainstorming. I don't brainstorm often… but this project and the brainstorming [needed] allowed me to think of a lot of unique ideas we could add to our game.” - Rylan

“Creativity is extremely important in the STEM field as it requires everyone to be unique when it comes to approaching a problem. If we all share the same idea, the final product will be dull.” - Anthony

"Our group's problem-solving was phenomenal. We found many issues with our original idea, but then made an amazing comeback and [designed] a whole new game and presentation. My group was lacking in the communication department... Thankfully, we pulled ourselves back together to make what I would say is a pretty good project." - Ethan

Of course, no collaborative effort is without its challenges. Students shared that, by working together, they learned to advocate for themselves and each other. They learned to lead, to compromise, to play on each other’s strengths, and to communicate with one another in a professional manner. Ultimately, they learned with and from each other.

“We came across many problems while working on our project. There were many things that we either disagreed with or didn't fully understand. We had to collaborate and try to work things out.” - Ryan

“I've grown as a problem-solver by understanding my weaknesses and getting help from people who are better at a particular thing than I am.” - Amelia

“This project taught me a lot of presentation skills that I will need in the future... After watching many [other teams present], I was able to learn the best ways to talk, communicate, and demonstrate ideas when presenting. That is why I enjoyed this project so much. I was able to learn some really great ways on how I should go about presenting.” - Vincent

“We were able to blend our ideas as a team to make something really cool.” - Anthony 

The Products

After two and a half weeks of hard work, students were proud of themselves and of what they had created. They were eager to celebrate and share their hard work, growth, and successes. They presented their ideas to a panel of judges, which included a gaming expert who was acting as their game developer. Celebrate these hardworking students by exploring are some of their final products:

“The Crypt”

This team of STEM students designed a full website, complete with original artwork, to showcase their video game idea based off of the story “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Highlighting the idea that our surroundings have an impact on our mental health, they challenged players to escape from the Crypt before they "go insane". Replete with gothic imagery and symbolism, in this game, players are “in a fight against insanity, which is caused by the dark”. The player “must cling to torches and light sources to save what sanity remains”.

"Puppet's Mirror"

This group designed a game where you escape by solving puzzles. They cleverly embedded mini-games that innocently represented the darker aspects of their short story, "The Black Cat" in order to adhere to their E10+ kid-friendly rating for their game. For instance, when in the story the cat loses an eye to the owner's violence, in the game, players are instead transported to "a rigged rotating cup" game with images of a one-eyed cat. They even used online tools to create an AI vision board for their game. They also created 3D mockups of their main character, noting minor adjustments in her appearance to symbolize her personality changing and other gothic aspects of their game. 

"Just Around The Corner"

In this "labyrinth escape game", players must get out "before the consequences of their actions catch up with them". In this excellent presentation, students shared original artwork, that included iconic gothic symbolism from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat". Their work helped the project judges visualize each level. They also included a detailed description of how sensory elements of gameplay and user experience would communication the theme, build suspense, and contribute to the overall gothic of the game. Lastly, their pitch used persuasive diction to entice future players. 

Thinking about trying a PBL with your students? Check out these helpful resources from PBLWorks. 

Monuments & Mysteries: An Innovative Jigsaw In Language Education

At Northwest High School, AP Spanish teacher Ginger Cline is doing more than teaching a language. She works hard to truly connect her students to the cultures of the people who speak the target language -- that takes intentionality and innovation. Fortunately for her students, she is committed to both.

In addition to language, culture can be found in the stories told and monuments recognized. Whether a globally-celebrated landmark or simply a local treasure, monuments hold meaning, and by learning about them we can learn more about the culture and ideas that they represent. That said, it would be impossible to teach every student about every meaningful monument across Spanish-speaking cultures. That’s why for this assignment Mrs. Cline put a few engaging twists on a tried and true method -- the jigsaw method.

The traditional jigsaw method works like a puzzle. First, students take on the role of investigator and teacher; they work in small groups to understand and become experts on a part of the overall collection of information before then teaching their small part to their peers. Even though students are initially only responsible for learning and teaching one part, through the presentations at the end, all students have the exposure to and opportunity to learn all of the material. Because students have become experts on part of the information with the purpose of teaching others, this process gives students ownership in their learning.


But more than exposure, Mrs. Cline also wanted her students to create and to have a cross-class collection of student-created resources that they could look back on for this information. That required some creativity on her part. Here is what they did:

Students selected a monument they were interested in and were tasked with creating a screencast about that monument in their target language (Spanish) that both introduced the monument and explained the story behind it. Then, students shared their screencasts on a collaborative Padlet. By having students create screencasts in their target language, Mrs. Cline was able to assess each student’s language learning through an authentic product.

The next step was to bring the learning together. Through Padlet all students could access and watch each video, but Mrs. Cline motivated them to do so by creating BINGO boards based on the videos students created. Playing BINGO together not only ensured that students would watch the videos, but that students’ had an authentic audience in their peers. Students could also see the relevancy in their purpose for creating -- knowing someone will see your work and find value in it makes learning more meaningful.

Mrs. Cline’s Mysteries and Monument Bingo is a reminder that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be innovative, but you do have to push the boundaries of tradition. She started with an established, sound teaching strategy -- she kept the most valuable parts and then skillfully integrated technology to create a deeper and more meaningful learning experience for her students.

Guiding Today's Learning with the Tools of Tomorrow

We have all heard the saying about “...preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist.” While that may be true, the best preparation for a future yet to materialize is to let go of the idea that we, the educators, are responsible for preparing them for the future, at least in the way traditionally thought. It is more necessary for educators to step out of the way and to let the students take control of their own learning in order to foster engagement, authentic growth, and innovation.

Rob Austin & Lee Devin, the authors of Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about how Artists Work, describe innovation as a process where managers need to forget about the traditional destination and journey mindset. The idea that someone has to have a crystal clear objective in order to justify movement toward a goal, at least as we know it, is becoming obsolete. In truly innovative environments, collaboration, flexibility, creativity, and growth mindsets can lead to the discovery of new paths rather than a predictable route to success. When we work with our students to facilitate the realization of their creative ideas, our students can develop necessary skills for the modern workplace while becoming leaders that guide their own success. Setting students free to create and innovate is interesting in theory, but how does this look in today’s classroom? 

At Eaton High School, William Gilbert’s Computer Programming students investigated possible uses for innovations in virtual reality technology prior to being tasked with coding and creating their own tools, geared for the same purpose. Students were given the freedom to imagine other applications and uses for this type of technology and began inventing their own VR programs designed to meet real needs predicted for future learners and workers. After learning about the educational benefits or virtual reality, many students began working on utilizing VR technologies in the workplace and school settings and have even begun testing their work in the context of their existing classrooms.

Business Academy students in Tabatha Everett’s Entrepreneurship course were given the challenge of studying and determining future viability of an up and coming technological business model in their Pokemon Go AR Challenge. These students used a case study of Niantic's Pokemon Go app, from a previous Virtual Enterprise International Competition, as a model for mobile augmented reality use in business. They studied usage trends, obstacles for expansion, effects of the app on user quality of life, modifications and additions to the game, as well as the company’s efforts to meet user demand. 

The student led part of this project allowed them to critically explore real questions surrounding the game, the technology used, and future opportunities for AR revealed by Niantic’s venture. Students then created a proposal of their own for marketing with augmented reality integration in other business areas. Some of these proposals explored the potential for business partnerships through integration of AR, virtual dressing rooms for purchasing clothing, and virtual showrooms where consumers experience product features of items like furniture, cars, or appliances. One group even outlined the potential for online AR marketing events with real rewards for consumers. The students exploration of this innovative platform allowed them the ability to dream about untapped ways this technology can be used to impact the future lives of consumers.

Another group of students in Donny Pharr’s Introduction to Aircraft Technology courses researched commercial drone use and considered business models, laws restricting flight areas, and other logistical factors related to commercial drone aviation. After completing the initial research process, students were given the task of creating their own plan to re-purpose drone technology for the benefit of school district sponsored events. They were given the freedom to invent ways this technology could enhance experiences at high school sporting events. The process resulted in groups outlining utilization of drones for concession stand food delivery at NISD football games. They mapped out geofencing boundaries around the NISD stadium as a foundation for designing their delivery service, via drone technology. This real world scenario was conceptualized by allowing students to creatively think about solutions for the problem of crowded venues and long concession lines at NISD events. They met various obstacles and limitations while working their way through the learning process, which resulted in them constructing their own ideas for innovative and practical use of existing technology while visualizing the potential for drones to breed entirely new careers. 

While these classes are just small examples of student exploration and innovation, they are prime instances of the ways learners can begin to dream about the future and how their own educational journey can forge a new path that previously did not exist. Of course, just removing all classroom guidance and parameters for students is not what is being suggested. Whether your students are part of specialized areas such as these, or whether they are searching to connect existing content and skills to real life, giving them the freedom to explore possibilities for applying skills beyond the classroom is what will open up their imaginations to new ideas. Simply put, if we present problems for our students to solve and then step out of their way in order to let them dream, fail, learn, and innovate, we can facilitate results that outshine anything previously imagined and students can forge incredible new paths for their futures.

The Game of Life: A Financial Literacy Project

At Adams Middle School, Hanna Patredis and Ashley Dacus wanted to turn their financial literacy project that was all paper and pencil into a interactive hyperdoc for the students to really engage in real world situations. They wanted their students to truly see how their choices affect their future wealth. Students were asked to estimate the cost of a college education, calculate the school loans, determine simple and compound interest formulas, and make a household budget.

The lesson was created on a hyperdoc where students were able to interact and input their answers in the google slide that was copied for each student. The teachers used the grey space in slides to give instructions and place extra information needed. A YouTube video of dice being rolled was used when the students were asked to roll dice. All of these intentional moves set up by the teachers, created an experience for the students that was interactive. Lucy, a student on Mrs. Dacus’ class said, “I like designing my own life using math skills throughout the year. The digital format helped my

ideas stay organized and I could access it anywhere.” Check out Lucy’s work here.

At the end of the experience, students had voice and choice in how they wanted to represent their knowledge of the financial literacy unit. Students choose from a menu board on how they want to present their work creatively. Check out some of their work below:

• Create a bitmoji or cut out: dressed for your job with a speech bubble of your life description
• Create a Google Slide presentation of how your life turned out
• Write a letter to someone updating them on your life

"Hear" Me Out: Deaf Culture Experience/Experiment

Challenge: You are about to experience simulated deafness for a full 24 hour period to truly experience authentic ASL language usage as a hard of hearing individual. 

What a shock that must have been to the students in Mrs. Enfinger's American Sign Language I and II classes as Byron Nelson High School. While this teacher is able to somewhat mimic this experience in class by having full silent class days by which students must solely sign the language without speaking aloud or listening to said communication, this experiment provided a truly different take on removing sound from the equation. As a result of the experiment, deaf culture awareness was at an all time high at BNHS as students, parents, teachers, and administrators were talking about their opinions, accommodations, concerns, and perceptions which brought to light the need for true empathy and understanding for ALL types of students.

To begin, the following various stakeholders were informed about the experience.

• Students who would be participating learned of their assignment expectations and details
• Parents of those students in part that the experiment was expected to continue in full effort at home throughout the 24 hour time span
• Teachers and all other school staff since they would have these ASL students in their classes as well as other staff members who would be witnessing the experiment in other roles

The most frequently asked question was "How am I supposed to teach?" or "How is my student supposed to learn?" The best part about these questions is that the eye-opening learning experiment would not solely be experienced by the direct participant, but so much learning and understanding would also occur with other responsible parties.

To prepare for the "big day," students were tasked with researching ADA (American Deaf Association) requirements or accommodations available for all of the students' traditional daily activities including in the classroom such as enabling closed captioning on videos, live closed captioning on Google Slides, in addition to what needs may result for electives such as music or sports, and even church or other after school activities. They also gained an awareness of additional accommodations to accomplish other things they would want to do such as technology available including phone apps, interpreter and closed captioning services. Furthermore, research continued as students learned about Mandy Harvey and Nyle Dimarco to study deaf later in life vs. deaf from birth. Going into the experiment, students not only had a base understanding of the language they've so far learned through a traditional classroom setting, but they've also had a heightened interest in cultural aspects and legal accommodations as this research was authentic and immediately applied.

Students didn’t know the exact day they would go deaf in order to simulate adult deafness as it is usually gradual and don’t know it is happening. Instead, they showed up to class on a random day and were then told it would be their day to go deaf. The kids wore inner earplugs and outer ear muffs and on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being profoundly deaf) were a 3-4 to simulate an adult who was hard of hearing. Students had their choice of how they preferred to journal their experience from keeping an ongoing written blog via Google Doc, a vlog (video blog) for extra credit to later by shareable via YouTube, voice notes on a phone, other other digital presentation format.  

Alisa's full YouTube video blog (vlog)

Alisa's thoroughly detailed, insightful blog

Megan & Copelynn's Adobe Spark Page Experience Summary

These examples above show the passion and above-and-beyond-effort these students exhibited through being given an relevant, authentic experience coupled with the ability to share their story with a live, authentic audience. 

Mrs. Enfinger concluded that “The amazing thing about ASL is that I get to watch these kids fall in love with the culture and the people in a different way. They have a deep compassion and admiration for them, but it is difficult to teach them an understanding, empathy if you will. Not sympathy at all because what they learn over everything else is how empowered they felt- truly no fear! This experience was meant to educate them and those around them that the deaf can do anything the hearing can do except hear.”

This experience meets International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)’s standard of a Knowledge Constructor in which “students plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other resources for their intellectual or creative pursuits” (3A) and “students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems, developing ideas and theories and pursuing answers and solutions” (3D). 

The Real World is In Your Classroom

Visualize a small group of kids huddled in a middle school flex space, Expo marker in hand and video camera staged in front of them, confidently drawing shapes and lines on the whiteboard as they explain the steps to solve an equation. Picture students, who otherwise avoid math, passionately debating the best place to ask a question: is it before or after an example? Can you hear them, animated, discussing the best way to teach someone about complementary and supplementary angles?

This was the scene in Jennifer White’s math class at Pike Middle School when she challenged her students to create Edpuzzles that teach other students new math concepts. Determined to engage her students in rigorous and authentic learning, she asked them to design video lessons that would be used as warm-ups and tutorials in other classes.


If you don’t know, EdPuzzle is a video platform that lets teachers turn any video into a lesson by embedding questions, comments, and/or audio. Teachers then assign their video lessons to students and collect formative data, like who watched the video and what they understood. Because the videos are self-paced, students can re-watch them as many times as they need, and even share them with others.

For this project, in teams of 2-3, students chose a topic from their next unit of study. Before creating their video lessons in EdPuzzle, they explored resources, researched their topics, and planned what comments and questions would best help their audience learn the concepts.

White gave students a choice to either find an existing video or create their own to use in the EdPuzzle. Some were excited to make their own videos using their Chromebooks. Giving choice helped her differentiate for students who needed more time during the ‘discovery phase’ and for those who needed an extra challenge.

Before publishing and sharing their work with their audience, students gave each other feedback (using Google Forms) about how they could improve their lessons. Mrs. White gave students time to apply the feedback they collected. This step also worked to expose students to all of the terms they needed to know, and to reinforce the concepts they would eventually see in class.

In the end, this whole project took 3-4 days, provided a whole department with student-created peer tutorial resources, and gave students the chance to learn with a purpose. You can see examples of student work here: Example 1 & Example 2

It is hard to imagine what authentic learning looks like in practice because there isn’t a ‘single right way’ to approach it. John Lamar, with bie.org, put it simply, “In fully authentic work, students are doing work that is real to them... [it has] a direct impact on or use in the real world. (The “real world,” by the way, could still be school, which is a very real place for students.)”

It’s easy to get caught up in preparing kids for the future, but don’t forget: to our students, the real world is here and now. The real world is in your classroom as much as it is outside of it.

One of Mrs. White's biggest takeaways from this project was that students owned their learning throughout the entire process. That happened because she gave students a purpose and audience for their learning. Students were proud to contribute to their immediate environment and motivated knowing that other people would see and benefit from their work.

Ultimately, when educators design authentic learning opportunities they empower students in the present. Instead of hoping students will become leaders, creators, and good citizens one day, teachers can give students the chance to be those people today, to contribute to their real world in the here and now.