How should teachers monitor student project work?
Teachers need some way to monitor what each student and team is doing—even for the most responsible students. This allows teachers to address problems with motivation, interpersonal relationships, personal situations, and project-management, as well as any other problems that may arise. Teachers can ask students to maintain activity logs, time logs, self-evaluation notes, and other kinds of reflections on their activities. Teachers should take time to observe the teams at work. Scheduling regular check-in meetings with teams is also helpful. The teacher’s job will be easier if the students use some sort of online tool, either to manage their projects (like Edio) or to take just-in-time tutorials with the ability to certify and document mastery (like Khan Academy). Otherwise, develop ways for the students to report their progress to the teacher.
How will teachers coach students for managing their own projects and monitoring their progress?
Especially when a teacher first switches from teacher-centered instruction to PCBE, most students will not have effective skills for managing their projects and monitoring their progress. Therefore, the teacher must coach them with explanations and demonstrations about specific skills for managing their projects and monitoring their progress (Nowack & Wimer, 1997). Such skills include scheduling work on each project, monitoring or reporting progress to the teacher, identifying and accessing the materials or resources that they might need, deciding whom they should go to first for help, and deciding how they will demonstrate mastery of learning targets as a project proceeds. For some useful tips on these matters, teachers can check online (for example, www.bie.org/resources and www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning) or with their fellow teachers.
What kinds of support should a teacher provide during students’ project work?
Coaching (Nowack & Wimer, 1997) and tutoring are a teacher’s main activities to support student learning during project work in several areas: learning targets, the project itself, higher-order thinking skills, and social-emotional learning. In the area of learning targets, if teachers have not been able to find or create tutorials, they should encourage teammates to tutor each other on their learning targets, but teachers should always monitor such tutoring and provide coaching to the tutors when needed.
In the project area, if teachers do not have a project-management tool for teams, they should develop some tools (digital or paper-based) for students to use to keep their projects on track and running smoothly. The Project Management Institute (2013) provides guidance about good project management. Again, teachers should encourage the teammates to coach or tutor each other on project management practices, and teachers should monitor project management activities and provide coaching or tutoring when needed.
In the areas of higher-order thinking skills and social-emotional learning, teachers should encourage the teammates to help each other, and they should monitor the teams to identify difficulties and provide coaching or tutoring when needed. For example, if a student gets very upset, a teammate could encourage him to use such self-control techniques as taking a deep breath, counting to ten, and expressing his feelings in a calm way with words.
In all areas, teacher support should take the form of asking (Socratic dialogue), rather than telling, to develop better thinking and self-direction skills and promote deeper learning.
How will teachers certify mastery of learning targets as students proceed during a project?
Teachers should not wait until the end of a project to certify mastery of learning targets. It is more efficient and more motivating for the student to work on a learning target until it is mastered, rather than having to go back and remediate later. Finally, it prepares the student better for the real world by helping the student to frequently monitor and evaluate his or her own success at learning.
Teachers can save time if they identify online tutorials that entail the student reaching a criterion for mastery and can keep record of competencies mastered. If this is not possible, teachers should teach their students how to certify their teammates’ mastery and develop some form or chart for the students to keep track of each teammate’s mastery. Of course, the teacher will need to monitor, coach, and likely verify this assessment and record-keeping process, but it will save the teacher time over doing the assessment and record keeping him- or herself, and it will help develop the students’ self-direction skills.
Ending and Displaying Projects
Procedures for ending projects are also necessary, including evaluating, revising, displaying, celebrating, and reflecting. Issues to consider include not finishing by the deadline, substandard project performance, and the roles of students and teachers in the various concluding activities.
What should be evaluated?
Both learning and project performance should be evaluated. To clarify the difference, a project performance could be writing an article for the school newspaper, while one of the learning targets might have to do with capitalization and punctuation. However, new competencies are best assessed while they are being learned, rather than at the end of the project (see Principle B: Competency-Based Student Assessment, page 16).
Who should do the evaluating?
As with managing their projects and monitoring their own progress, students need to develop appropriate skills and mindsets for self-evaluation, which includes self-reflection. Teachers must help students develop these skills to become effective lifelong learners.
How should students evaluate their own learning and performance?
It is helpful for students to have a rubric for self-evaluating their mastery of each learning target and another for their performance on the project—perhaps different rubrics for different parts or aspects of the project. The more often students are involved in developing their own rubrics, the better for developing their self-evaluation and self-direction skills. The less experienced a student is in self-evaluation, the more frequently the student needs to self-evaluate—evaluating smaller episodes of learning and performing.
What role should teachers play in evaluating both student learning and performance?
Teachers should have a rubric for each learning target and another for each major performance on the project. If it is a team project, they should not rely on team performance on the project to evaluate each student’s mastery of the learning targets. Such mastery should be evaluated for each student separately. Teachers typically observe individual student performances, either formally or informally, during and at the end of a project. More importantly, teachers observe and coach student self-evaluation activities. More guidance for doing this is offered in Principle F: Instructional Support (page 29).
How should teachers help their students to self-evaluate?
Teachers should begin by explicitly teaching students how to self-evaluate, which includes demonstrating how to do it and explaining during the demonstration. In addition, continual coaching is important. Good coaching involves providing guidance during student attempts to self-evaluate. Even younger students can learn to assume much responsibility for self-evaluation.
What should a teacher do if a student or team has not finished their project by the deadline or the final project or performance does not meet standards?
This is a learning process for teachers as well as for students. Missing a deadline is an opportunity for teachers to reflect on their own practices—how