Project-Based Learning Workshop Activities

Now that you've established the basics of PBL, you're ready for part two. On this page, you will find a wide range of activities that will get workshop participants thinking and talking about PBL.

1. Prepare Participants for Critical Viewing of Case Study Videos

Before watching a set of videos that demonstrate PBL at work, ask participants, "What questions do you have about good PBL projects that might be answered by looking carefully at a video of students working on a project?"

Suggest that participants view the videos shown with particular questions in mind. For example, they can be asked to watch the Newsome Park video while looking for evidence of how students were included in developing a key question for a project.

2. Watch Case Study Videos

Choose a video from the following list to share with class participants, based on their grade level interest. There are links to accompanying articles from the video pages for more information.

After a brief small-group discussion and reflection, engage the larger group of participants in conversation about what they saw. Ideas for post-viewing questions include:

3. PBL Experts

Ask participants, "What do the experts have to say about the effectiveness of PBL activities?"

4. Criteria for Good Projects

Ask participants, "What makes a project a good one?" and then follow these steps:

5. Identifying and Asking Good Questions

The importance of helping students identify and ask good questions is explored in the What Is PBL About? section of this professional development guide.

From Now On, a website published by educational-technology champion Jamie McKenzie, offers a wide array of ideas for good teaching and learning. Key to many of them is a good guiding question -- how to recognize one, how to develop one for students, and how to help students develop their own. To guarantee effective PBL, it is essential that the starting point is a good question. To explore this idea with the class, follow these steps:

The Buck Institute for Education also offers a great tutorial on how to "Craft the Driving Question."

6. Examples of Online Collaboration in Projects Among Schools

For a number of years, education scholar Judi Harris and her graduate students studied how teachers were using the Internet. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) published the results in Virtual Architecture, a book written by Harris, who has also maintained a website by that name that highlights key findings and provides links to a variety of project examples. To help your students become more familiar with Harris's work, follow these steps:

7. More Examples of PBL in Schools Across the Country

Here are more ideas for using the wealth of resources on Edutopia.org in your class:

8. Effective Rubrics for PBL

Ask participants: "How will you evaluate student projects?" Being able to evaluate the effectiveness of projects in terms of student learning is key to their success, as well as to whether the time and energy put into developing projects is worthwhile. A number of websites provide links to rubrics sites. For example, see Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators, on DiscoverySchool.com. To familiarize participants with rubrics, follow these steps:

9. Project Template: Develop a Project

Ask participants: "What ideas do you have for a project?" This activity can be divided into a number of sections. For example, before actually creating a project, participants might share their own project ideas:

Participants might then be asked to brainstorm effective questions. Have them

Continue to the next section of the guide, Resources for PBL.