Development And Project-Based Learning

Janani Eswar Jun 23, 2021

The world today needs humans to be inspired, resourceful, ethical, empathetic, able to critically evaluate information and collaborate for success. In order to enable this, we need to reevaluate the role of education in a person’s life?. As a facilitator of project-based learning, my challenge is to be the anchor of curiosity, a person who helps a group learn to work together, and, most importantly, a person who teaches how to learn, not what. This has been central to the conception of education that we are developing at Atria University in Bengaluru. Here is what I feel are the most important components of it.

‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

This is possibly the most powerful question a facilitator can ask in a project-based learning environment, provided that we fully listen to the responses that arise from learners.

All of us remember times when the fear of being wrong stopped us from trying. A project-based learning atmosphere systematically breaks that down and replaces it with a process for trial and error. In a project-based learning atmosphere, conversations between students and facilitators move from sentences like, ‘That’s correct. Now you know this concept.’ to 'That is an interesting conclusion, does that hold true in this different situation as well?'

Can you cook rice in the sun?

All textbooks and curricula break down the real world into chewable bites of learning. These bites are then sequenced and separated according to levels of difficulty and disciplines. “Good” textbooks also offer the student context for their learning. This approach enables educators to easily evaluate and track large batches of students. But, it robs students of agency in their own learning. A student is dependent on a system to tell them when, how much and in what context they should learn something.

Here’s a story of how it could be different.

When Rohini was 12, her mother was thinking about how to reduce the amount of cooking gas they use in the house and asked her to help. Looking at the cooker full of rice, and the sharp, hot sunlight outside the house, she was curious if she could cook rice in a solar cooker.

She looked through some books, checked online and decided to try using a foil-wrapped umbrella to concentrate the heat from the sun. It took her many frustrating hours of trying to stick the foil on the umbrella before she had a prototype. Now she had to figure out where to place it, what vessel to use, how to insulate the heat created, how to increase the heat absorbed by the vessel, the optimum level of rice and water for cooking, the cooking time, and whether this shape of an umbrella was the best to use.

Here’s the thing, What do you think she did?

But don’t you need good foundations?

A very normal response to suggesting that project-based learning can replace a large amount of our current curriculum is the thought that in order to implement 'practicals' your “theory” must be solid.

This brings us back to our initial point. Inspired students are able to find what they are looking to learn with easily available resources online. The education system should now be in charge of supplying students motivation, critical thinking, context and skills. Not only content.

Therefore, a good foundation would involve knowing how to identify the important variables to enable one to concentrate heat at a spot (solar cooker), rather than only knowing the equations of heat transfer. Not that the latter isn’t useful. Merely that it isn’t a core foundational skill. It is something that a student can learn if they know the former and are motivated to research.

As we work towards designing an exciting undergraduate program at Atria University, we are constantly challenging ourselves to create a resourceful environment where we redefine what it means to be educated. A cohort of students who will use every single thing they learnt at university, and not wonder 10 years later why they bothered in the first place.