Archives - October 2006
Connect Project Based Learning Activities to the Real World
Sharon Abriani, Business Teacher, Fremont High School,
Fremont, IN
Learning skills from the textbook is great, but if my students can’t apply those skills to real-world situations, then I have failed them as a teacher. Project based learning (PBL) takes the extra step of helping students apply their skills to real-world situations.
Students must know how to apply the skills they learn in school to be successful in the real world. I have a degree in accounting and worked for small, family-owned companies for eleven years before going back to college to get my business education degree. My motivation to enter the teaching profession came from the desire to help prepare students for what they would face in the workforce after high school and college.
Project Based Learning Across the Curriculum
Barb Beadle is the Business and Marketing Specialist for the state of Indiana. She has been running summer workshops on PBL for the past thirteen years. This past June I attended my sixth PBL workshop and I intend to return for every year that Barb keeps hosting them.
At Barb’s workshops, we usually work in pairs to create PBL activities that we can use in our classrooms. The vast majority of our projects include the use of technology. However, the projects aren’t limited to only technology-based classrooms. Many of the projects are intended to connect the skills learned in Business Technology or Computer Applications classes to the content taught in core academic classes.
The greatest asset of PBL is that projects are based around real-life skills that would be used in real-world business settings. This is accomplished by writing the projects so that they tightly tie into our Indiana Academic Standards as well as the Indiana State Business Content Standards and Expectations, National Business Education Standards and SCANS Skill Competencies and Foundation Skills. Projects can take anywhere from one to ten hours to complete and include student directions and source documents, teacher instructions and guidelines, examples of outputs and solutions, and rubrics or checklists for helping to evaluate and assess the student’s work.
How to Use Project Based Learning
Our Indiana projects are written in a number of different formats, but my favorites are ones that take several comprehensive jobs and integrate them into one project. For an example, see my lesson plan for a
Business Communications PBL Activity on the Created By Teachers page in this issue.
To begin using a PBL activity in your classroom, first teach the basic skills necessary to understand the project. Then, provide the students with a thorough scenario of their assumed position, the company they are working for, and the tasks that they are expected to accomplish. I feel the next step is the most important aspect of the instructions. The students should be given source documents to work from that are either from actual businesses or have been teacher-created to look as authentic as possible. The source documents could be in the form of memos, invoices, previously prepared reports to be revised or updated, spreadsheets, company procedural manuals, or even current annual reports.
The experiences I’ve had with my students is that if it looks like "real work" from the get-go, they are more likely to turn in their best idea of “real work” in their completed projects.
Examples of Project Based Learning
One of my students’ favorite projects from this past year included an informational brochure on the Supreme Court Justices produced by my Business and Personal Law class. The students were working as interns for the Information Officer for the Supreme Court. Teams each selected a different Justice to research. Their task was to create a professional brochure that could be handed out during tours of the Supreme Court building.
I used another PBL experience as a final project in my Marketing Foundations class. The students worked in teams of four on a three-part campaign promoting some aspect of the school. Some of their chosen "clients" were one of the biology teachers, the gym’s weight room, and the janitorial staff. Their positive campaigns included creating a print media ad, a billboard, and either a TV or a radio commercial. Considering today’s technology, the majority of their work was very creative and near professional quality!
If you are not already using Project Based Learning activities in your classroom, I urge you to give them a try. PBL activities help to relate the subject matter we are already teaching to real-world situations. They introduce higher-order thinking skills into your curriculum by having students engage in the processes of decision making, problem solving, and creative and critical thinking. Students always tell me that they prefer the hands-on aspects of the projects and that they enjoy the Internet research and technology required to complete the tasks. PBL activities help to motivate your students to make connections between content knowledge and what it takes to be a successful participant in the real world of work. Plus, students truly like doing them!
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Teacher Interview: Project Based Learning
This month Interviews with Real Teachers presents Megan Johnson, a Computer Teacher at Northwood High School in Pittsboro, NC to hear how she successfully uses Project Based Learning in her classroom.
Question: What classes do you teach?
Megan: I currently teach Computer Applications I and Computer Programming I to grades 9–12.
Question: Describe an effective project that you have used with your students.
Megan: Last semester in Computer Applications I, PBL activities were implemented for the following objectives: Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Database, Desktop Publishing, and PowerPoint. At the beginning of the semester each student took a learning styles test which allowed me to properly create groups of students in my classroom. Each group was instructed to come up with a business idea and a business name. Every activity in every objective focused on the businesses that each group created. For example, during the Word Processing Objective I teach the students how to key business letters. Together, we would key the shell of a modified block, mixed punctuation letter and a block, open punctuation letter. The content of the letter would state the various specifications of that particular format such as quadruple space after the date, double space after the return address, insert a colon after the salutation, double space between paragraphs but single space within paragraphs, etc.
Students are given guidelines to follow and the various topics on which each letter should be written for the actual assignment that they complete and turn in. For example, I may require that a letter be sent to all potential customers announcing the opening of their business. I would let them know what information must be included in the letter, but the students would be required to devise the letter and key it in the format practiced earlier in class.
Question: What are some of the advantages of using PBL to teach concepts to students?
Megan: From what I’ve observed and the data that I’ve collected, students seem to have a sense of ownership and choice over the work that they are completing. From day one, the majority of students are very excited that they will get to create their own business. This, in turn, generates an excitement in the completion of assignments and objectives. Most students become very meticulous about the assignments they are completing because they are creating the content of each letter, memo, spreadsheet, newsletter, etc.
Students enjoy working with group members. They motivate one another and actively participate when the groups meet to collaborate on the business. The students are also able to relate what is being done in class to an actual business. They find that the tools and skills they are being taught in the classroom can be taken into the real world. Many students have no idea what it takes to run a business, and by participating in PBL activities they get an idea of how much time, effort, thought, and money must be invested into making a business run efficiently and effectively.
Question: Are there any specific concepts that work particularly well when taught using PBL? Are there any concepts that you find difficult to teach in a PBL lesson?
Megan: Word processing, spreadsheet, charting, desktop publishing, and presentation were very simple concepts with which to implement PBL activities. Each group was essentially running a business. In the real world, businesses must write letters and memos to other corporations or within the businesses to other employees, create spreadsheets on products and inventory, keep a database of all employees or customers, conduct meetings using PowerPoint as a supplement to an oral presentation, send out flyers or newsletters announcing new marketing promotions or a grand opening.
The Alternative Input Devices objective in the Computer Applications I curriculum was the only difficulty I faced with PBL. To teach my students this objective, I divided the various devices up to form centers that each group of students would rotate to on a daily basis. At each center, the students were instructed to complete a set of activities and assignments in order to teach them the concept of the device.
Question: What materials (textbooks, internet, other teachers, etc.) do you rely on to help you come up with PBL lesson plans?
Megan: Before I implemented PBL in my own classroom, I did an extensive amount of research using the ERIC search on articles that had been published by other teachers and professors. I got an idea of how PBL worked and the advantages of using PBL in the classroom. I also interviewed ten veteran teachers about PBL in their own classrooms at the school to get an idea of what did and did not work effectively in their own classrooms.
Many of the topics that I use I came up with on my own. I tried to think of topics that a teenager could comprehend, like creating a flyer advertising a new product or writing a memo announcing the employee of the month. At times I utilized the Internet and looked at other corporate Web sites to get ideas. When I give my students an assignment such as writing a mission statement, I encourage them to research Web sites of real businesses that they have heard of to get an idea of how to write a mission statement.
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