Students in a South Texas classroom had taken on the role of employees at CleanWater Tech, a fictional U.S. company that produces water filtration technology, and were poring over the economic indicators of various unnamed countries, trying to decide into which nation the company should expand.

When asked by Ilene Kantrov, director of the Center for Educational Resources and Outreach at the Education Development Center, what they would tell an administrator who visited the classroom during their work on the project, one student piped up, “I’d tell them they should leave, because there’s learning going on and they don’t want to get in the way.”

Such a response is not at all unusual from students who are engaged in project-based learning, says Kantrov. The Education Development Center is a global nonprofit organization that designs, delivers, and evaluates innovative instructional programs–and many of these embrace learning through inquiry-based projects.

The California-based Buck Institute for Education, an organization committed to the use of project-based learning worldwide, defines the concept as “a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.”

Project-based learning is a successful approach to instruction for a variety of reasons, its proponents say. For one thing, it helps students retain the information they learn. Lecture approaches don’t lead to long-term retention, says John Mergendoller, executive director of the Buck Institute. “Kids learn it for a week, then forget it,” he says.

Another reason project-based learning is useful is because it engages students’ interest and motivates them to learn. One of the main reasons kids drop out of school is because they’re bored. With project-based learning, students are encouraged to explore their own interests and to make connections to the world beyond school.

“I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, ‘Why am I learning this? This is a waste of time. What’s the point?’ Project-based learning gives you a way of answering those questions,” says Kantrov.

Project-based learning also encourages a deeper level of thinking by involving students in answering questions for themselves, making connections, and using analytical skills.

“When I’m doing project-based learning, I’m looking at taking the ‘whole’ apart and looking at the pieces. That’s problem-solving, the ability to analyze information by putting it together in a new way to solve the problem,” explains Pat Walkington, vice president of sales and marketing for Sebit LLC, which produces an online learning solution called Adaptive Curriculum.

Adaptive Curriculum is an interactive, web-based software product that allows students to conduct scientific experiments, in realistically rendered surroundings, that are substitutes for actual experiments when these might be dangerous in real life or when they require costly equipment. The virtual experiments help students develop standards-based scientific inquiry skills.

“In project-based learning, instead of answers being provided to students, [students] have to do experiments to come up with the solutions,” Walkington says.

What’s more, project-based learning can help students develop the same kinds of 21st-century skills–such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity–that today’s employers covet. Tackling long-term, student-led projects can help students build real-world skills and knowledge.

Examples of project-based learning

At the High Tech High charter high school in San Diego, a group of 10th-grade students collaborated on a multidisciplinary project called Beyond the Border. Because one of the most-crossed borders in the world is just 12 miles from the school, the students wanted to discover what was on the other side, and why conditions were so different there.

They decided to look at several elements, including medical care, water quality, immigration, and travel across the border. Then, working in groups of two or three, they created video clips about their findings and posted these on YouTube. They also presented their findings in an evening exhibition. Visitors could watch the students’ videos on a bank of laptops and headphones arranged around a table.

The project cut across several courses and disciplines, including English, science, and social studies, while teaching students in a way that allowed for multiple entry points into the core curriculum content.