Example 1: ESL Students
- John W. Thomas, Ph.D. (2000) conducted a study of schools who used PBL.
- He followed the statistics of improvement scores of one middle school which implemented PBL.
- He compared the statistics from the middle school against those of the rest of the state.
- After the first year:
- The middle school showed an improvement score increase at an average of 59 points. The state showed an improvement score increase at an average of 15 points.
- The limited English-speaking students showed an improved score increase at an average of 15%.
- The middle school showed an improvement score increase at an average of 59 points. The state showed an improvement score increase at an average of 15 points.
- In the years following, these statistics continued to rise (Thomas, 2000).
Example 2: Secondary School
In an example from a secondary school experiment, two classrooms were taught the same subject. The control class took a traditional test, while the experiment class completed a project-based assessment (Siswono, Hartono, & Kohar, 2018):
Pay close attention to the "percentage of students who mastered learning" statistics. That is over a 50% increase in mastery for those that participated in PBL!!
Example 3: Student feedback
- Myeong-Hee Shin (2018) conducted research surrounding how the students feel regarding project-based learning.
- Students have higher scores on assignments when they enjoy completing them.
- “For students’ attitudes toward the project-based learning, 69% (19% of the student’s strongly agreed and 50% of them agreed) of total students changed their attitudes toward English learning by doing the video project. Finally… over 70% (6.5% strongly agreed and 64.1% agreed) of the students had strong confidence and hoped the project-based learning could become part of their regular classes (Shin, 2018).”
Example 4: Sophomore World History
- Instead of a traditional midterm exam for my World History II class, I had my students create a music video. This PBL had a thorough rubric, which can be accessed here.
- Here is one example of the project-based assessment about Martin Luther:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyoVirEleBg&feature=youtu.be
Tambrie N. Aiken NCSU Graduate Program NLGL Showcase Spring 2019