OACS News Service

Heritage Christian School students engaged in a Lego project for a recent project-based learning initiative.
Project-based learning gets uptake amongst OACS members
Educators see opportunity for improved learning through active and engaged approach
Thursday February 28, 2013 -- Michelle Strutzenberger
From fashioning a Lego robot at Heritage Community Christian School to sounding a wake-up call on environmental issues at Ottawa Christian School, educators and students in the Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools (OACS) membership are increasingly trying their hand at an approach called project-based learning.

Project-based learning involves students exploring real-world problems and challenges, including possible solutions to those challenges. In the case of the Lego robotics project, students were aiming to construct a robot that could help seniors with small tasks.

The approach is hands-on, largely student-directed, and involves the creation of something that demonstrates what students have learned to more than just the teacher. At Ottawa Christian School, students designed websites and pamphlets and organized an eco fair, all with the intent of sharing their learning with the broader community.

Project-based learning has been shown to increase academic results, as well as students’ ability to understand, apply and retain information, according to an introduction on the approach by the George Lucas Education Foundation. It has also been shown to boost critical thinking, communication and collaboration skills.

Students have demonstrated increased motivation and engagement in learning, the introduction notes.

OACS members are anecdotally also reporting such outcomes.

Heritage Community Christian School teacher Wilma Vanderkloet says she was most inspired to see her students increase their collaborative skills through their engagement on the Lego robotic project.

Ottawa Christian School teacher Laurence Stassen says his students were more motivated to learn.

“With traditional learning, what I often get from kids is, ‘Why do we have to know this?’ and I didn’t get that once through this whole enterprise; it was very refreshing,” he says.

The Ottawa Christian School students also spoke of being moved to make changes in their lives as a result of learning about environmental concerns.

High Tech High is a complex of schools in San Diego that has been at the vanguard of introducing project-based learning.

OACS member representatives have visited the forward-edge education system in past years to learn and observe. In January, 35 OACS representatives visited the schools as a group.

“I saw at High Tech High an approach to schools, to learning and to education that is profoundly honouring of students,” says OACS learning consultant Gary VanArragon, reflecting on what excited him most about the possibilities he saw in the High Tech High environment for OACS members.

 “The beauty of the system, and that was the most exciting part, is that it really does engage teachers and students together in seeking the best possible approach to learning.”

Hamilton District Christian High (HDCH) school principal Nathan Siebenga, who has visited High Tech High before and did so again this year says he’s convinced it isn’t so much what’s taught as how it’s taught that changes classrooms and students.

“That’s what you see at High Tech High,” he says. “They don’t have reams and reams of paper and binders delivering curriculum.

“They have teachers engaged with students in developing projects together.

“I think that’s an important shift for us in Ontario to make, and at HDCH we’re moving in that direction as well, (that is), away from the idea of curriculum is a binder to curriculum is life and life is about learning.”

Further conversation, exploration and collaboration is planned in order to expand and deepen the application of project-based learning in OACS schools.

A three-day workshop facilitated by California’s Buck Institute for Education to better understand project-based learning is being offered by the Christian teachers’ association Edifide this summer.

HDCH is also hosting a hands-on workshop this year on how to do project-based learning and create the kind of instructional environment seen at High Tech High that is appropriate to OACS members.

Click here to watch a video on project-based learning.

You can comment on this story by e-mailing michelle(at)axiomnews.ca.