Project-Based Learning ( Pros & Cons)

 

Project-Based Learning ( Pros & Cons)

Project-based learning is a pedagogical method that actively involves students in their learning by asking them to research the answer to some real-world question or problem and then create a concrete solution.

Learning is the goal of teaching practice, the answer to what? The methodology responds to how? In this sense, Project-based Learning constitutes a didactic response that is gaining more and more followers among teachers due to its integrating, motivating nature and, above all, due to the performance of learning. It is not something new, nor a new discovery. Any teacher has ever developed a project in their practice; however, there are keys to the design and implementation with a curricular anchor that facilitate the integration of this active methodology in terms of learning.

What is it?

Project-based learning (PBL from now on) is a methodological design and programming strategy that implements a set of tasks based on solving questions or problems (challenges), through a process of research or creation by the students who work as relatively autonomous and with a high level of involvement and cooperation, culminating in a final product presented to others (dissemination). A society in continuous change requires educating from uncertainty through experience and building shared knowledge generated from interaction and fostering autonomy. Perhaps here lies the recipe. Relevant and sustainable learning is developed through cultural exchange with the shared creation of culture in multiple directions, implementing a more active education focused on “know-how”.

Why?

If reality is complex, we cannot pretend to learn through simplifications. Projects allow students to approach the curriculum with meaning and significance. Democracy is exercised because teaching is understood as dialogue. The projects allow teachers to promote the competence development of students and their own professional training. It works with various types of knowledge and knowledge. In practice, students learn, make and communicate process and product, and also attend to diversity because it integrates it from a cultural but also personal perspective.

The PBL allows the choice and involvement of students, facilitates their empowerment and makes them protagonists of their own learning process. But perhaps the most important thing is socialization, something that is not worked on in a more direct methodology and that clearly needs to be promoted from school. The development of a project allows a richer socialization because it involves movements not only in the classroom, but inward (participation of expert agents or the families themselves) and out of it (directed at the community to what is outside the classroom). Center through its own dissemination)

What are the basic ingredients to build a PBL?

1. Integrated curriculum:

Different disciplines of the curriculum are approached through a relevant topic and a guiding axis, including formal and non-formal learning.

2. Shared protagonist:

Teachers are learners and not experts, and their main function is to create learning scenarios that allow students to develop the project.

3. Inclusive:

It responds to different rates of learning, interests and abilities.

4. Part of a challenge:

It starts with an attractive theme that connects the interests of the students with the expected learning to guarantee their motivation.

5. Continuous evaluation and reflection:

Students learn to evaluate themselves and to be evaluated to improve the quality of the processes and products in which they work.

6.     Socialization and dissemination:

The experience of socialization occurs between students and students with other educational agents. The project ends with the public dissemination of the products.

Pros and Cons of Project-Based Learning

Pros;

1.      Flexible

2.      Develop leadership and Team work

3.      Encourages Creativity

4.      Can work for any age group

5.      Teacher and Learners are active

6.      Work with real scenario

7.      Collaborative Learning

8.      Reflection & Revision

9.      Deep learning

10.  Easily identification of trends & patterns

11.  No human intervention needed

12.  Continuous development

13.  Handling multi-dimensional & Multi-variety data

14.  Wide Application  

Cons:

1.      Can be time consuming

2.      Students who are absent have difficult time catching up

3.      Students mayn`t stay on task or lack-discipline

4.      Students needs more responsibilities & commitment

5.      Increase vulnerability to unfamiliar questions raised by students

6.      Reduced control over content cover

7.      Reduced control over quality of material studied

8.      High error-susceptibility

9.      Data Acquisition

10.  Time & resources

11.  Interpretations of Result