Community Partners for Student Projects
In Switzerland, students in the last two years of high school typically spend half the school week working in an apprenticeship with a company (Singmaster, 2015).
Colorado adopted an apprenticeship program (www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdle/apprenticeships) that entails students working two days a week in a community organization to learn finance, information technology, business operations, or advanced manufacturing. All students learn the twenty-six workplace competencies that Colorado has defined for the program. Individual districts and even schools could adopt a similar program.
The Give and Take Project (www.realworldscholars.org/our-programs) from Real World Scholars supports students in partnering with local businesses and community organizations to build meaningful relationships that help communities thrive.
Iowa BIG (education-reimagined.org/pioneers/iowa-big) is a competency-based program in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In addition to their regular classes, high school students work on projects with local companies and organizations. This allows them to develop collaborative skills, gain real-world experience, and expand learning beyond the classroom.
Imblaze (www.imblaze.org) is a powerful mobile platform that connects learners who are interested in real-world internships with mentors and workforce opportunities in their communities.
CommunityShare (www.communityshare.us) has an online platform that matches educators with local partners—both individuals and organizations—who can serve as project collaborators, mentors, and more.
Will students work on projects individually or in teams?
Any given student may have some team projects and some individual projects regardless of where the projects are conducted. There are many advantages to team-based (collaborative) projects.
• Students help each other learn, saving a lot of the teacher’s time while truly personalizing the learning.
• The student who helps another student learn also benefits by learning the content more deeply.
• Students develop collaboration skills.
• Students develop strong and caring relationships (principle Q, page 90) and a better understanding and appreciation of student differences.
• Collaboration enhances student motivation, if managed properly.
There is one potential disadvantage: a teacher cannot judge mastery from the project’s final product, because there is no assurance that more than one student was able to perform to mastery on any given learning target. This concern disappears if each student is assessed individually on each learning target during the project, as described in Principle F: Instructional Support (page 29). Also, an individual reflection component at the conclusion of a project not only helps students to become more reflective learners, but also helps a teacher get a sense of the contributions made by individual team members and the quality of the collaboration that took place. Nonetheless, team products do not indicate individual learning.
If in teams, how will teammates be chosen?
Maximize the benefits of team-based projects by assigning teammates carefully and with intention. The first criterion should be the learning targets and projects that have been selected for this project period. The second should be student interests, because many different projects can be used to master the same learning targets, and different students are motivated by different projects. Other criteria include making teams as diverse as possible in terms of student demographics, speed of learning, skill sets, and personality traits. Those with stronger skills can help those with weaker skills, and mixed-ability teams help develop understanding and caring relationships among all members of the classroom. However, do not always match faster with slower learners, because slower learners also need projects in which they can further develop leadership skills. Group dynamics are always important to consider, but with proper coaching, bad group dynamics can be a good learning experience. Avoid having the same students always team up with each other—give students opportunities to interact with a variety of individuals and build a broad community.
If in teams, will students play different roles (focus on different learning targets), or will all students collaborate on all project activities (meet the same learning targets)?
If students who are working on the same project have somewhat different learning targets, give them different roles that are tailored to their targets. If they have the same targets, then collaboration on each activity is necessary, but make sure that all students participate fully so they all get to use the targets during the project.
What number of projects will each student work on during the project period, and how long will each project take?
Picking the right number and size of projects requires knowing how quickly a student learns and how quickly and effectively a team works together. Teachers should try to determine how long it takes a student of average learning speed to do each project, and then adjust that for how fast each student learns. They can divide the total number of hours by the number of weeks in the project period, and then work with each student to determine the total number of hours per week within the range that the student wants to work on the projects. Eventually, a learning management system will be developed to do most of this monitoring and calculation for teachers.
How will we schedule time for working on projects?
PCBE is most successful when large, flexible learning blocks replace small, rigid periods for the school day. At the elementary level, where students spend most of the day in one classroom, we encourage teachers to support lengthy, flexible learning blocks. Project-based learning is hampered when students are required to stop in the middle of their work. A rigid schedule divided into small blocks of time also creates barriers to teacher collaboration and interrupts a student’s sense of flow (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990), hindering motivation and self-direction. Constant transitioning can be particularly difficult for students with special needs. Of course, as students move into high school, supporting large, flexible learning blocks becomes a change that needs to take place at the school and district levels.
Conducting Projects
How will a teacher initiate each project?
A hook event to kick off the project work can provide motivation. Make sure each team is thoroughly familiar with the goals of the project, contextual information, resources needed and available, and other relevant information before they begin.
How much responsibility will teachers give individual students to manage their own projects and monitor their own progress?
Younger students may benefit from the teacher providing a structure for when to work on each project during a project period, but teachers can begin to give them some responsibility as early as preschool, as Montessori Schools do effectively (Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006; Montessori, 1964, 1967). Managing projects and progress is a skill. With coaching (Nowack & Wimer, 1997), students can assume ever greater responsibility