A Project-Based Learning Spectrum: 25 Questions To Guide Your PBL Planning

SIMPLE

1. What role is the learner assuming? Designer? Engineer? Brother? Artist?

Cultural Critic? Naturalist?
2. What is their purpose? What are they doing, and what should the project
itself ‘do’?
3. Who is their audience? Who is the audience of the project’s design, impact, or
effect?
4. How can different learning spaces (e.g., classroom, home, digital) work
together? To promote meaningful interaction? An authentic audience?
Personalized workflow to meet each student’s needs?
5. What kind of support does each student need individually? Who can provide
it? How much structure is enough for that student? (Scoring Guide, Teacher-
Provided Tools, Rubric, etc.)
6. What’s the ‘need to know’? Is there one? Where did it come from? Is it
authentic? Teacher-based, school-based, curriculum-based, or student-based?
What are the consequences of each?
7. Which academic standards are the focus of the unit? How will data from
formative assessment (that target these standards) help teachers and students
respond within the project?
8. Who will provide learning feedback? When? How? And feedback for what–the
quality of the project? Progress towards mastery of academic standards? Will
it be ‘graded’ with letters, numbers, as a matter of standards-mastery, or
some other way? Which way best supports student understanding?
9. How should the product be paced to maintain student momentum? What
‘check-in with the teacher’ markers make sense?
10. How can assessment, iteration, and metacognition improve student
understanding?
11. How can the student bring themselves (affections, experience, voice, choice,
talent, curiosity) to the project? Also, what is the teacher’s role in the process?
Is it the same for every student?
12. What sort of quality criteria make sense? How will we know if the project
‘works’? Was it effective? Performed? Who designs this quality criteria?
13. What kind of project would the student never forget? 
14. What’s most critical to the success of the project? Creativity? Critical thinking?
Organization? Grit? All may apply, but how might the project be designed to
focus on the factors you or the student value most?
15. How can students work within their local community to solve authentic
problems, or celebrate meaningful opportunities?
 16. Is technology use distracting, useful, or critical to the success of the project?
17. Does it make sense for the project to also be Inquiry-focused? Problem-
based?
18. How can students build on their unique schema and background knowledge
to produce something special?
19. What role might iteration play in the project?
20. Is the project research-based? Product-based? Service-based? 
21. Can mindfulness be embedded into the project to help students see their own
thinking, identify barriers and opportunities, and respond in a self-directed
way?
22. What filtered (e.g., a teacher-selected book, an encyclopedia) and unfiltered
information sources (e.g., a Google search, a social media stream) might they
use cooperatively?
23. What learning taxonomies or cognitive actions might guide students to think
best? We covered some of these in a recent post, many of which are shown in
the graphic below.
24. What scale makes the most sense for the student to work best?
25. Is the project designed to build on student strengths (rather than trying to
‘correct deficiencies’)?
COMPLEX

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A Project-Based Learning Spectrum: 25 Questions To Guide Your PBL Planning; image

attribution wikimedia commons (the spectrum to the right)