PBL Help! My Students Don't Want to do a PBL!

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

You would think that students would be thrilled at the idea of hands-on learning, right? Well, sometimes, not so much. Why?

There's a few possible reasons.

Reason #1: It's not easy

Learning by doing projects is engaging. That means it requires students to actually, well, engage with the learning. Engagement requires thinking. It requires work. If students have been spoon-fed their entire academic career, the idea of having to go above and beyond to think critically and creatively might seem arduous at first.

Potential Solutions: Let students know ahead of time that they're going to be doing a PBL. Mention it frequently and explain what it is and what it will look like so they get their angst out early and move past it by the time you do the actual project. Assure them that you'll be there to scaffold it. You can even do an activity where you have them individually write down all their worries or oppositional thoughts, submit anonymously and then compassionately address the various concerns.

Reason #2: They hate group work

A lot of our top students don't actually enjoy group work because they're used to getting top grades AND being expected to pull along their less academically successful peers. They interpret a project as, "Here is a giant project that you are going to have to do all by yourself, except it will take even longer because you're going to have to redo other peoples' work and manage them when they don't pull their weight."

Potential Solutions: One option is to ensure that grades are a combination of individual and group work grades. Some teachers allow students to "grade" one another's contributions (the teacher has final say over the individual grades that students receive). On the front end, assign roles that evenly distribute the work (for instance, the timekeeper often doesn't need to do as much as, say, the facilitator).

On the back end, technology can also be a great help here; using collaborative programs like Google Slides or Google Docs allows you to see exactly how many times various students accessed the documents AND what they contributed.

Reason #3: They don't care about the project topic

You excitedly tell students that they are going to create a PSA about why cyber bullying is wrong. They sigh and agree to do it but are obviously unenthusiastic.

Potential Solutions: This is where student Voice & Choice can be your best friend. One of the temptations in order to manage a project is to simply tell students what they are going to do. This makes it easier to help them complete their project and to grade it...but it can also be de-motivating if the students have no interest. One way to potentially combat this is to ask more questions rather than giving the solutions. For instance: "What are the impacts of cyber bullying? How has it impacted you personally? What do you think we should do about it?" So that the project doesn't go completely into left-field, you can still give students a rubric with the content that you want them to address...but letting them have some voice and choice in how they complete it is one way to help draw them in.

Another big way to combat the apathy is authenticity. Authenticity means that the project is either directly connected to students' current lives OR has them working in a way in which people in careers work. The cyber bullying project above is a perfect example of a project that is authentic to students' lives. A project that is authentic to a career might be something like having students design a new community center or create a menu for a new restaurant.

Lastly, consider a high engagement entry event. For instance, when doing a project on combatting pollution, have students start by taking a field trip to a common area, such as a beach, and actually clean up the trash. Then tell them, "Okay, how are we going to keep this from happening again?"

Reason #4: Students don't understand how to do projects

Sometimes students are slow to warm to the idea of project-based learning simply because they don't know what is expected or how to even start. I remember when I was in high school physics and I had to create a vessel that could keep a raw egg from breaking when dropped from the top of the bleachers. Quite frankly, I had no idea how to do this. I put it off and put it off because I didn't even know what step one should be (this was in the days before the internet where you could just look up a plan to save your poor defenseless egg). My egg contraption was made the weekend before it was due and I'm sorry to say that the egg, that did nothing wrong, did not survive.

Potential Solutions: Break up the project for students. In the egg drop project, it would have been nice if the teacher had specifically chunked the PBL. Maybe we could have started simply with some whole group brainstorming, then moved to small group researching. The teacher could have checked in with all of us to see what we were planning and provide feedback. Perhaps our initial designs would have been turned in and we could other groups critical feedback. We would have done a test run and used the results to make improvements. Then, I might have actually learned something rather than simply wasting a perfectly good breakfast item.

In Short

What are the overall lessons? Teachers need to scaffold the PBL by providing structures for it and chunking it into manageable pieces. The teacher should check in frequently with students and make sure everyone is pulling his or her weight. The project needs to include students' voice and choice and be authentic to their lives or future careers. Lastly, the more than students do projects, the better they'll be at doing projects, and the more excited they'll be about them, too.

Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Director of Innovation and Professional Development for Hampton City Schools. You can follow her on Twitter @LearningKate or on Linked In or email her at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.