7 Summary

The main idea behind effective project-based learning is that extended and independent study of real-world issues and problems can secure students’ interest and engagement in a way quite unlike traditional methods of instruction. When students are ‘hooked’ into a meaningful project that is based on some real-life challenge, they learn implicitly, in great depth and also develop many important other social and life skills.

As a teacher, you need to make a big shift in your normal practice to undertake effective project-based learning. You need to facilitate rather than lecture, and should undertake no pre-teaching of material so that your students can learn fully for themselves. Your project-based classrooms will look and sound like very different places. You will have to accept that you cannot possibly know everything there is to know about your project topic. The benefit for you is that you can learn something new about the project topic too!

6 Assessing project work