During the course of this classroom project, many of the features of a 21st century learning balance outlined earlier in this book were demonstrated—rigorous science content learned through a hands-on, collaborative project approach; a real-world problem and challenge that motivated individual and team learning; both a student-centered and teacher-guided approach to learning; and others.

A video of the class’s science project, Bacterial Transformation Lab, is included on the DVD accompanying this book; you can also view it on the book’s Web site. Both the DVD and Web site also include reflections from teacher Annie Chien on the project learning method.

This model—the Project Learning Bicycle—provides a visual device to help remember the components of a well-designed and well-managed learning project. We have presented this model to educators around the world, and it always brings a smile as well as a welcome dose of insight into just what is meant by effective 21st century learning methods.

The project must first be defined, with the question, problem, issue, or challenge that drives the learning in the project stated clearly and concisely. In the Bacteria Lab, the essential question was “How can we alter an organism’s genes for medical use?” or as one student succinctly described the challenge, “How can we transfer glowing to another bacteria that can’t?”

Teacher Annie Chien had a lot of planning to do for this project up front. She had to collect and prepare all the lab equipment for the experiment, set up the procedures for the student teams to follow, prepare the worksheets and lab recipe guides, and much more. The students also had to plan their individual and group work and the steps they would take to successfully carry out the experiment.

For a teacher to be an effective learning coach during a project (and not just a lecturer), learning activities must be designed so that the students own much of the learning and teaching. Students’ planning their work, doing research, sharing findings with other team members, asking questions, designing procedures, taking on leadership and group facilitation roles, analyzing their own results, getting feedback from others, and so on are all important parts of a good project design that builds 21st century skills and deepens understanding of the learning content.

The extra time Annie Chien invested in planning student-directed activities paid off later on during the project, allowing her to give more individual attention and support to each learning team and its learning challenges.

After planning comes doing: the real work of the project must be accomplished, the learning activities performed, and the results recorded. Teacher and students work together, with the teacher playing the “conductor” or coach role, and the students being the team members or “workers” in the project.

Finally, the project results and lessons learned are presented and reviewed. The teacher, other students, and often other members of the learning community see the results in a presentation, exhibition, or learning fair and offer evaluations and feedback.

Lessons learned from going through the entire project cycle can often be applied to the next project, or sometimes to a new iteration of the same project, with the second time refining the project definition, improving the plan, refining project implementation, and resulting in deeper reflections and reviews. This way, learning grows and deepens.

Define, Plan, Do, and Review—these are the stages in the project learning and teaching cycles—the project “wheels”—for both the students and the teacher, as shown in Figure 7.1.

Though the time spent in each of the phases of a project may differ for the teacher and the student—the teacher typically spending more time in up-front planning and the students spending more time in the doing phase of project activities—both teacher and students work together through the project phases.

Students and teachers must coordinate their project cycle work, co-managing the whole learning project (the bicycle frame), and using the driving question or problem (the handlebars) to steer and guide the project forward, as in Figure 7.2.

The learning gear used in the project (the lab equipment, Internet access for research, and all the rest) is represented by the gearshift, the gears, chain, derailleur, and so on; ongoing assessments of student learning (worksheets, questioning, observations, and lab reports) are represented by the cyclometer; and the pace and timing of the project is controlled by the bike’s pedals and hand brakes.

Balance is also important: if the project bicycle leans too far to the left, the teacher may be oversteering (applying too much direct instruction and control); too far to the right, and there may be too much collaborative creativity and independent construction of knowledge (referred to as “chaos” by one of the students in the Bacteria Lab video) without enough teacher guidance to ensure the desired learning objectives are achieved and the principles involved are understood. School and community support for this type of learning can provide a tailwind to help propel the project; lack of such support could be seen as strong headwinds to thwart progress. And finally, the goal is a rich learning experience that blends knowledge, understanding, and solid performance on many of the 21st century skills, as illustrated in Figure 7.3.

Students had access to the necessary learning gear—lab equipment, bacteria cultures, clean room equipment, and computers for research. The pace of the project was appropriate (except for the actual experiment day, which was rather rushed), and the degree of challenge of the project was fitting for most of the students. A good balance was struck between direct instruction by the teacher and collaborative discovery and exploratory learning by the students throughout the project. Students gained a deeper understanding of science content through the hands-on engagement and questioning that naturally arose during their researching and experimenting.

The project had students exercising many of the 21st century skills—problem solving, communication, collaboration, information and ICT literacy, flexibility and adaptability, self-direction, leadership, and responsibility. The project did not particularly emphasize individual creativity and innovation, but the bioengineering expertise students gained did give them some insight into how scientists and engineers are innovating new approaches to medicine and gene therapy.

Designing and managing effective 21st century learning projects like the Bacteria Lab project is no small challenge—it has to engage and motivate diverse students, meet the curriculum goals of the school, provide evidence that each student is gaining understanding and proficiency, and prepare students for success in the real world with 21st century skills. This is especially a challenge for teachers who may have not been trained to teach in this way.

But as projects like the Bacteria Lab and the SARS Project described earlier illustrate, and as research and reports of successful learning projects from around the world reaffirm, this type of learning is very powerful. It deeply engages students in their learning, goes beyond memorization to meaningful understanding, and results in large learning gains for students with a wide range of learning styles and backgrounds.

As we journey deeper into the 21st century, creativity and innovation will become the brightest stars in the constellation of 21st century skills. New ideas, innovative products, novel services, and fresh solutions to local and global problems will increasingly power our emerging Innovation Age.

Though there will be an increased demand for skills in science, technology, engineering, and math, the “STEM” skills, there will be even higher demands for creativity, invention, and innovation. The arts have been the traditional source for developing creativity. Integrating the arts into STEM (making it STEAM—an acronym whose first use is attributed to children’s book author Peter Reynolds) will be an important education goal as we move through our century.

So how do we best prepare our students for a future of work that does not yet exist, careers that have not yet been invented, an economy that prizes things not yet created, and that puts STEAM into the learning plans for every child?

Tom Kelley, CEO of the renowned design firm IDEO has a one-word answer to this challenge—“design.”¹ He is also a fan of a simple phrase that has launched a thousand design projects, “How might we . . . ?”

To prepare for the Age of Innovation we must all become better designers, ready to tackle brand-new problems and design things and processes that have never existed before.² We must apply both thinking and tinkering.

Fortunately the design process is not a secret ritual performed by a priestly cult of sanctified professionals. Everyone can participate in the design process, and as with playing a musical instrument or participating in a team sport, practice improves performance.

Learning projects anchored in the phases of the project cycle—define, plan, do, and review—can deeply engage students in their learning activities and build creative skills. Design challenges, like the ThinkQuest Web site competition and the FIRST Robotics contests, can go a long way in developing a student’s invention and innovation skills.

IDEO has designed better toothbrushes, shopping carts, computer mice, e-commerce businesses, medical emergency room procedures, and thousands of other useful solutions to everyday challenges. The firm’s design process follows the same four-phase project cycle, but with some important additions that boost the odds of a design team’s coming up with innovative ideas and solutions:

A diverse design team is also important to the innovation process—the more diversity, the better the chance of coming up with a fresh, outside-the-box solution. (For example, the cultural diversity of the SARS Project team contributed to a number of Web site design innovations that appealed to a more international audience.)

The Do and Review phases are repeated often in this stage of the IDEO cycle, bouncing back and forth between the two, with lessons learned from the evaluation immediately applied to the next round of creating an improved prototype.

Finally, the innovation is implemented, with client feedback and new ideas eventually prompting a brand-new trip through the design cycle and another quest for useful innovations.

IDEO’s design process can be seen as a powerful project approach to learning. In fact the design process is a powerful learning process that produces innovative results, applies and builds the design team’s creative skills, and develops a deep understanding of the problem area and its possible solutions.

Learning to design and designing to learn—the use of innovation-producing methods like the IDEO process will prepare students for the demands of the Innovation Age.

These summary conclusions are based on a thorough review of the fifty-year research base on inquiry, design, and collaborative approaches to learning by noted Stanford University education researcher, professor, and policy adviser Linda Darling-Hammond and her colleagues in Powerful Learning—What We Know About Teaching for Understanding.⁴

Professor Darling-Hammond and her colleagues reviewed the accumulated research on three learning approaches based on inquiry and design methods of teaching and learning: project learning, problem-based learning, and design-based learning. They also reviewed the extensive research literature on cooperative and small-group learning methods.

The following are the summary findings from their analyses of the research base for each of these learning methods, as well as highlights of key research studies for each method.

In a comparison of four types of problems presented to both individuals and cooperative teams, researchers found that teams outperform individuals on all problem types and across all ages.⁵ In addition, individuals who work in groups do better on individual assessments as well.⁶

Effective project learning has five key characteristics:⁸

Research on learning projects having these qualities found that student gains in factual learning were equal to or better than those using more traditional classroom instructional methods. But when studies took the time to measure gains on other learning skills, in particular the higher-order, 21st century skills, the learning gains were significantly higher than traditional methods:

Other comparative studies documented a variety of benefits from project learning methods: increased ability to define problems, improved reasoning using clear arguments, and better planning of complex projects. Improvements in motivation, attitudes toward learning, and work habits were also found.

Another important research finding was that students who struggle with traditional textbook-and-lecture approaches benefited from a project learning approach that was better matched to their learning styles or preferences for working in groups.

Much of the research comes from medical education, where medical students are challenged to provide the proper diagnosis, tests, and treatment for a patient’s case (based on real patient histories). This case method has also been used effectively in law and business education, as well as other professional learning, including teacher education.

Studies and meta-studies of the problem-based learning research show that, similar to the findings from project learning research, for factual learning, problem-based methods are equal to or better than traditional instruction. But problem-based methods far outshine traditional methods in developing 21st century skills like flexible problem solving and applying knowledge to real-world situations, as well as critical thinking skills such as generating testable hypotheses and communicating more coherent explanations.

The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University (CTGV) studied problem approaches to learning for over a decade. In one study of more than seven hundred students from eleven school districts engaged in solving problems from CTGV’s popular Jasper Woodbury series of video-based challenges, students experienced much larger gains than those in the comparison group for all five of the areas measured: understanding math concepts, doing word problems, planning approaches to problem solving, having positive attitudes toward math, and providing feedback to teachers.¹⁴

As Johns Hopkins University’s Robert Slavin argues, “It is not enough to simply tell students to work together. They must have a reason to take one another’s achievement seriously.”

Similar obstacles confront the use of inquiry, design, and project learning approaches. Students unfamiliar with this form of learning must develop readiness skills that enable them to ask relevant and meaningful questions and to create logical arguments. They must also be guided toward being more independent in seeking out answers to questions and researching possible solutions to problems.

To make project approaches work well, teachers must carve out the time to design and plan project activities that match the interests and needs of their students and the school’s curriculum, as well as the time for extended project work that doesn’t easily fit in the standard fifty-minute classroom period.

Teachers must also learn to play the role of facilitator and coach as well as providing expertise and guidance. In the 21st century, teachers must be comfortable with managing new kinds of classroom dynamics, supporting multiple teams of students working independently as they explore and gain new understandings and skills that will prepare them for 21st century life.

Twenty-first century teachers will also have to be expert at the same 21st century skills they are imparting to their students. Teachers will have to collaborate and communicate with other teachers and experts, working in teams to create and share their best engaging projects that challenge the interests and skill levels of their students and to assess their students’ project outcomes.

As noted, the research evidence is conclusive: inquiry, design, and collaborative approaches to learning build a powerful combination of content understanding, basic skills, and applied 21st century skills. However, the research also shows that these methods will require changes in curriculum, instruction, assessment practices, the professional development of teachers, and the learning environments that support 21st century learning.

We turn next to these educational support systems and how they are transforming to meet the demands of the 21st century.