Personalized Project-Based Learning

Written by Future Design School’s Director of Professional Development, Leslie McBeth.

At Future Design School, we believe that teachers are experience designers.

Every day, teachers empathize with their students, identify their unmet needs, strengths and interests, and adapt plans and programs to best suit the students in their classroom. This process is often referred to as differentiation. We want to empower teachers to take this one step further and personalize learning for students.

iNacol defines personalized learning based on practitioner input as:

Tailoring learning for each student’s strengths, needs and interests–including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when and where they learn–to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible.

The purpose of personalized learning is to open student pathways and encourage student voice and choice in their education. Differentiation is a key part of personalized learning, and it is essential in education. In personalized learning environments, educators seek to meet each student within their own zone of proximal development. Without personalization, there is a gap between the individual student, their learning, and the support they need to succeed in a way that makes sense to his/her interests.

When I speak with teachers about designing personalized learning experiences in their classrooms, the most prevalent perceived challenges are:

• How do I manage 30 kids doing 30 different things at the same time?
• How do I ensure that I am covering curriculum expectations and provincial or state standards?
• How do I scaffold students’ learning skills to enable them to direct their own learning?
• What about students who think they have no good ideas?!
• How do you assess and evaluate student learning if they are all creating different products?

We see each of these challenges as an opportunity to rethink the way we design learning experiences. By using design thinking as a framework for project-based learning, teachers can provide students with a personalized learning experience that allows them to pursue their own interests while also covering important curriculum expectations.

Teachers start by developing a How Might We? question for their students, and then use a modified process of backwards design in order to develop a sequence of activities built around a series of highly structured processes for developing solutions to those problems.

Teachers who employ this approach to project-based learning have reported increased motivation (one teacher told us a story about a grade 4 student getting up at 5am to spend more time working on her prototype); an increased ability to grapple with big questions and develop unique ideas; improved communication skills; and, a deeper understanding of content. In my classroom, students reported a better understanding of how concepts from seemingly unrelated courses (Politics, English, Design and Math) are truly connected and increased confidence in their creative abilities.

If you are interested in learning how to design personalized, project-based learning for your students, drop us a line at team@futuredesignschool. Future Design School empowers educators to “hack their curriculum” and walk away with a unit plan and practical, immediately usable tools to implement design-based learning in their classroom.

We have upcoming Future Skills Institutes coming to Chicago and Vancouver — register today!