Tired of taking notes? Why not do something instead.

Life is full of distractions. It seems that everyone is always trying to multitask, which has led to a severe lack of ability to focus. In the college environment, distractions have a big impact on the effectiveness of lecture-based classes. Students always have their list of assignments buzzing around in their heads, making it difficult to pay attention to the subject at hand. Students’ inability to keep their focus in one place makes it hard to do well on exams, because lectures are often the students’ only opportunities to take in course information.

Project-based learning can also greatly reduce stress among students. A common cause of stress in school is exams, because even if a student goes in to an exam feeling prepared, after having studied for a week, they could still answer incorrectly on trick questions and receive a low grade. Through tests, especially when they are designed to trick students, the grade a student receives does not necessarily represent their understanding, or the amount of work that was put in. With project based learning, this could be easily resolved. With projects, students are more in control of their grades. If they work hard toward their end result, and put in effort to make their project the best it can be, their grade will reflect that work. Throughout the process of creating a high-quality assignment, they will also internalize the course information, because they will have a more personal connection to it.

While cramming for an exam does help me to learn last minute, that knowledge doesn’t really stick. It leaves my memory almost instantly after the exam, because I learned it through rote memorization, and never have a reason to use that knowledge again. This is what makes project-based learning so amazing. Instead of sitting in class and listening to a professor saying “You need to know this fact because it will be on the exam”, students will discover for themselves what information is necessary to complete a project, and therefore learn the course curriculum. This expands a students’ knowledge on their own terms, while improving research skills and self confidence. If project assignments are written well enough, they can be designed to lead a student to discover major parts of a curriculum on their own, with minimal guidance other than the lecture-based background information. After finishing a class project, students will feel accomplished and proud of their work, and will be more likely to recall the material, since they discovered it for themselves.

My best examples of how project-based learning has impacted my education are from my entry level Computer Science courses. I came into college having never programmed before, so just listening about the concepts in class was never enough to get me to understand what was going on. I would often leave lectures lost and confused, except for the times when my professor did coding demonstrations for the class. Luckily, my introductory Computer Science courses involved two parts: lecture and lab. They were laid out as:

Lecture:

Lab:

I found the lab portions of my introductory classes extremely helpful, because they guided me through the steps of various small programming assignments, which were each designed to help teach the basic concepts of programming, and reinforce what we had learned in class. The teaching assistants were available to help students work through points of confusion, and were constantly encouraging and helpful whenever I struggled with a project.

Schools have been making positive strides toward more applicable assignments with initiatives such as One-To-The-World in Loudoun County Public Schools in northern Virginia, where students have to have one project in each class that makes an impact on the surrounding community. I am very excited to see the direction that project-based learning is going in, and I hope to see many K-12 and higher education institutions adopt this teaching style, instead of determining a student’s grades almost solely based off of tests. If you are an educator, consider adding at least one or two projects a year into your curriculum. If you are a student, seek out teachers or professors who are known for hands on work, so that you can get the engaging, in-depth education you deserve.

Related posts:

My school teachers must have hated me. I was nearly impossible to teach if I couldn’t appreciate the practical value of what I was learning. For subjects like chemistry and physics, this was simple…

Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Pricing is based on the actual amount of resources…

Good Morning! Happy Saturday! We are coming off a much better week than the week before last. I didn’t cash in with tournaments, but I did win 100 percent of my cash games, so still a great week. I…