With PBL, your teacher presents you with a problem, not lectures or assignments or exercises. Since you are not handed "content", your learning becomes active in the sense that you discover and work with content that you determine to be necessary to solve the problem.
We use the Challenge Wheel to develop PBL.
The 'Challenge Wheel' PROCESS
Explore the problem or task.
What do we know?
Explore possible solutions
What do we need to learn?
Choose a way forward.
What do we need to do?
Present your conclusions.
Review your performance.
Celebrate your work!
PROBLEM -> IDEAS -> CHOICE -> REFLECT ->
PBL offers an opportunity to practice, use, (and even develop) such processing skills as problem solving,interpersonal,group and team skills, the ability to cope with change, lifetime or self-directed learning skills and self-assessment skills.
These are valued skills in themselves.
‘education approached through authentic project based learning can significantly contribute towards increasing motivation, initiative, problem solving, engaging with and applying knowledge (including engineering knowledge) and independence in procedure and design making (Doppelt and Barak, 2002; Verner and Hershko, 2003; Barak, 2004)’
‘In addition to increasing attainment, scientific-technological problem based learning, as a method of imparting thinking competencies and creating flexible learning environments, has been shown to elevate pupils' self-image at all levels and achieved significant affective learning (Doppelt, 2003; Moriyama, Satou, and King, 2002).’
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