Can PBL be effective for Advanced Placement Courses?

COACHES' CORNER | Dayna Laur

If you teach an AP course, you know all about the concern of covering content! The end goal that all AP teachers push their students toward is receiving a score of a 4 or 5 on the AP exam in May. Thus, content heavy lessons become the daily focus of the course. Unfortunately, this often leads students to merely memorize the information, rather than to truly learn the information.

Having taught AP U.S. Government for the last eight years of my fourteen-year teaching career, I understand the desire to “push” through the content. I know all about the demands of the College Board. In fact, I would argue that most high school AP courses are much more demanding than the dual enrollment courses that many students opt to take at local colleges. I am also the first to admit that for the first few years of my AP teaching experience, I merely “covered” content. However, I can’t guarantee that my first classes of AP students truly learned the content.

As AP teachers we know that AP level students are masters at the game of school. They can read and memorize, listen to lectures and memorize, and can pass a unit test with flying colors, having memorized all of the content. But the question remains: Have they truly learned the content and mastered the standards of the course?

While I had been using project-based learning in my other courses for several years, I was skeptical at implementing PBL into my AP Government class. In fact, it wasn’t until one day, while discussing ways in which voter turnout could be increased that my students took charge of the class and created their own project. Admittedly, I was dubious, not to mention worried that too much time would be spent on the project with too little content covered and too few standards met. However, at the end of the project, I was amazed to learn that more content was covered and more standards were met than I ever imagined were possible. When I began to move away from the structure of the textbook and toward an integrated thematic approach, the design of the project came naturally.

Today, I am excited to report, that I have more non-traditional, first-time AP students who register for my class than any other AP class in my district. While not every student who takes my class signs up to take the AP exam in May for various reasons, I am please to say that 75% of my students last year received a 4 or a 5 on the exam. Most importantly, I can say with confidence that my students are truly learning the content and meeting the standards in my course that is solely structured around project-based learning.

If you are interested in hearing more about PBL in an AP setting, join me on November 2 for a free webinar. Space is limited so please register at http://www.bie.org/services/webinars to reserve your spot.

I will be sure to talk about the project that convinced me that PBL is the way to go in an AP course, as well as offer examples of projects that have been successfully implemented in other AP courses. I will also provide you with tools to make PBL a success in your own AP courses. Until then, start thinking about ways in which you can transform your traditional AP classes into project-based learning experiences.

Dayna Laur

BIE National Faculty

Why do Hoosiers have a hankering for PBL?

THE VIEW FROM 30,000 FEET | David Ross

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog that cast a spotlight on the incredible growth of PBL in Texas. I received a ton of emails from Texans who said, “heck yeah, we rock. “The second biggest pile of emails came from Indiana. They all contained one question: “What about us?”

Good point. At the moment, Indiana is the golden child of PBL.

Our friends in the New Tech Network are opening their 19th school in the state. California, where the network was born, has seven. There are two, that’s right, two PBL conferences in the Hoosier state each year. The first is sponsored by the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) at the University of Indianapolis; the second, called the PBL Academy, is a joint project of Indiana University and EcO15, an initiative of business, education and community leaders to advance K-12 education in southeastern Indiana.

BIE has been flexing its muscles in Indiana, too. This summer we facilitated workshops for more than 700 teachers and administrators through a grant program funded by the Lilly Endowment’s Talent Initiative.

There’s more. We are collaborating with the Talent Initiative on a documentary film that will portray a year in the life of teachers and students experiencing PBL for the first time. This summer, again in partnership with the Talent Initiative, we launched our first Best Project contest, a regional competition in northeast Indiana. The winners of that contest will receive cash awards and see their work appear prominently on the BIE website next June.

So why Indiana?

As usual, I turned to the source to find out why Indiana has a hankering for PBL.

My initial curiosity was focused on Indiana’s ability to host two PBL conferences when no one else, including BIE, can manage to deliver one. I confess to an ulterior motive because I have a dream that BIE will host a national PBL conference. I sent a message to Lynn Lupold, Fellow for Strategic Initiatives at CELL, asking her to explain the process.

“CELL began hosting an annual PBL Institute where teachers collaborated and learned the process and crafted units,” said Lynn. “This Institute cultivated even more interest and over the course of the last three years has grown exponentially. Indiana educators have seen the success of this methodology and implementation growth continues to increase.”

Amy Leeson, the Region 8 ESC Program Coordinator in Fort Wayne, takes a different tack. She cites the New Tech invasion as a PBL beachhead. “By August 2011, Northeast Indiana will have the most New Tech High Schools in the country,” she explained. “For those school corporations who have middle schools and elementary schools feeding into these high schools, they see the need to prepare their elementary and middle schools students for the rigors of New Tech and PBL is a key way to do this.”

Amy also drew attention to a phenomenon that BIE has been tracking. “School districts that do not have a New Tech High School do recognize the importance of the 21st Century Skills that students need to be successful when they leave high schools, “she said. “These schools see PBL as a way to ensure that all their students have these skills. “

I called Brad Sever, an 8th grade social studies teacher at Creekside Middle School in Carmel to get the classroom perspective. Brad, a thoughtful practitioner, focuses on the skills students will need to be successful in college, career and citizenship. “Project Based Learning encompassed so many best practices that Indiana educators simply could not turn their back to this methodology,” Brad explained. “Collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, relevant inquiry, written and oral communication are all aspects of PBL and Indiana educators quickly made that connection.”

I’m pretty sure that California educators can make that connection, too. What are we waiting for? It sure ain’t Superman.


David Ross
Director of Teacher Professional Development
& Dean of National Faculty