Roughly what percentage of the learning targets for a given period do we think should be personalized (selected by the student)?
For universal content and content on which students undergo high-stakes testing, you may not be willing or able to allow student choice. When deciding what portion of learning targets you’ll allow students to choose in any given project period, begin with the ideal and compromise as necessary for your first implementation. Your ideal may be as high as 50 percent, depending on the developmental level of the students, but you may need to initially compromise to around 10–20 percent.
Which targets should be selected by students?
To the extent that teachers can let each student choose her or his targets, the better—both to enhance motivation and to allow students to cultivate their individual talents. Thinking in the ideal, your team first needs to use your professional judgment to decide which targets are not so important that all students should be required to master them (which we call universal targets—see principle K, page 61), even if they are presently required by your state standards or district guidelines. Second, for the universal targets, teachers can still give students some choice as to which of them to work on when. Third, beyond the universal targets, for whatever percent of content students are allowed to choose, teachers should give students great latitude for the selection of targets of personal interest.
How should those targets be personalized?
Students typically need guidance to choose their own learning targets appropriately. It usually helps to start by having each student think about possible career goals (long-term goals—which will not be easy, given that most students haven’t thought much about that), and then to think about intermediate-term goals (stepping stones) that will help them to achieve those goals (Schutz & Lanehart, 1994). In that process, have each student think about civic responsibilities and other nonwork responsibilities and set intermediate-term goals that will help them meet those responsibilities. With this context, students may make better choices about learning targets for the next project period.
Career-Planning Tools
States around the country have approved new laws requiring schools to encourage career planning among high school students. This is promoting the development of online tools like Naviance, Kuder, and Career Cruising. It is likely that such tools will change significantly over the next few years, so we encourage your team to do a thorough search.
Personalized Projects
Various students can achieve the same learning targets through many kinds of projects. Different topics for the same content, different groupings (individual or team), and different kinds of products or presentation formats are a few ways the projects can be personalized. Some students may be more motivated to learn math in a project related to sports, while others may prefer one related to feeding the hungry in their community, and others. The more that teachers can personalize the projects through which students learn, the better.
Should a teacher help students to design their own projects, offer students a menu of projects to choose from, or adapt a project from such a menu?
In some schools, like the Minnesota New Country School (see chapter 7, page 121), teachers show students the state standards they must master, and then support students as they design their own projects to develop and demonstrate mastery of those standards. When students are accustomed to doing this throughout their schooling years, it works quite well. This student-led approach creates a higher level of motivation that results in deeper learning and better long-term retention, as well as the development of higher-order thinking and self-direction skills. Your team should discuss the supports necessary for teachers to help students design their own projects, compared to offering students a menu of projects to choose from and adapt or just selecting projects for students. Considerations include the logistics of each teacher monitoring, supporting, and assessing a number of different projects (for example, ten to twelve different projects compared to three to five projects or a single project), the tools available to support this work, and the capacity of individual teachers.
If a teacher decides to offer a menu of projects, how should she or he create that menu?
Teachers can also offer students a menu of projects to choose from or adapt. There are many online project banks that offer projects designed by teachers or other experts. If the teacher can’t find good projects on the internet, then he or she will need to design them. There are resources to help in this task. See Project Libraries and Project Design Guidance for resources related to both project banks and project design.
Project Libraries and Project Design Guidance
New England Board of Higher Education (www.pblprojects.org) has, with National Science Foundation funding, produced a clearinghouse of teachers’ resources for project-based learning.
Mrs. O’s House (www.mrsoshouse.com/pbl/pblin.html) provides a variety of problem-based learning projects.
PBLWorks (pblworks.org) offers free projects that it has curated from online project libraries. It also helps teachers use project-based learning (PBL) in all grade levels and subject areas. It creates, gathers, and shares high-quality PBL instructional practices and products, and provides services to teachers (professional development), schools (schoolwide processes and structures to support PBL), and districts (creating and sustaining districtwide PBL initiatives).
TeachThought (http://www.teachthought.com/project-based-learning/a-better-list-of-ideas-for-project-based-learning) provides a list of ideas for project-based learning for kindergarten through precalculus.
Lesson Planet (http://www.lessonplanet.com/) offers project-based learning lessons from 200,000 reviewed lesson plans.
Edutopia (http://www.edutopia.org) offers free materials and downloads for building rigorous projects for all grade levels.
Personalized Scaffolding
To maximize learning in a project-based learning environment, teachers must provide coaching and just-in-time tutorials during the projects. It is difficult to know how to personalize the quantity and quality of each, but we provide some guidance here.
How can a teacher personalize the quantity of coaching and tutoring?
Some students need more support for learning than others—more coaching, more demonstrations, more practice with feedback. A teacher has three options. First, if your school has an LMS with tutorials on all the new content, the teacher can cue students as to when to use them, and the tutorials provide the quantity of demonstrations and practice needed by each student to reach mastery. Alternatively, teachers can try to provide all the coaching and tutoring themselves, which is obviously a large burden. Finally, the students can provide each other with the amount of support they need. If a teacher uses team-based projects and develops