According to the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), the “gold standard” for PBL project lessons are rigorous, focused on student learning goals of self-management, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Projects utilize standards-based content to answer a question or solve a problem that includes a real-world situation connects to the students’ personal interests, issues, and concerns. Students make choices about the project in how to participate and what they create in authentic tasks and tools through an extended inquiry process to discover resources and use that gained knowledge to produce a product. Both students and teachers reflect on the project (during and after), how effective the learning was, the quality of the work, the obstacles they are faced with and how they will overcome them. Students practice peer review process to provide, accept and apply feedback to develop their products and enhance their process. Finally, students share their project with the people outside of their classroom.  

References

Buck Institute for Education. (2017). What is Project Based Learning (PBL)? Retrieved September 21, 2017, from http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl