C-I and Project-Based Learning (PBL) Course Design

Some of you may be familiar with or use Project-based learning (PBL) to help students learn and apply knowledge and skills through meaningful experiences. PBL tends to be multiple-step, structured assignments with goals set by the instructor to engage students in rigorous, real-world scenarios and applications designed to encourage critical thought, investigation, and demonstration of skills. In this section, we are examining the relationship between PBL strategies and C-I pedagogy. 

Engagement with project-based learning is flexible, occurring in multiple settings, scales, and frequencies. PBL can happen at the individual or peer level, though many times, there are group components where student interactions foster deeper levels of content exploration. PBL tends to be high-stakes, semester-long projects or smaller, low-stakes moments for students to engage in activities that tease out what each other knows about a topic and provide opportunities for peers to challenge, refute, and support each other's understanding. The communication-intensive aspect of project-based learning is within these projects and activities, where communication tools serve to uncover information, form plans of execution, and coordinate how group members will interact. Student interaction (brainstorming, discussing, defending) with their classmates are opportunities to work toward understanding.  

Project-based learning requires flexibility as students explore the project and the potential approaches. Selected communication modes then become a guide to help direct students through examination and analysis. Whether working individually or in teams, projects provide numerous formal and informal opportunities to encounter, practice, and perfect the communication of class content. The same elements that are a part of all communication projects are a focus in PBL including preparing the message, choosing a method of communication, and thinking about audience.  

Applying communication-intensive methods to PBL activities can be customized by discipline, learning goals, and teacher’s interests. Common forms of PBL include design and implementation of a tool or process that addresses authentic, real-world problems, situations, or challenges in the field. These activities tend to include steps that lead students through the process of learning different skills needed to perform in these situations and space for them to test their proficiency. Examples of PBL might include the design and execution of lesson plans for a class in education fields or the redesign of playgrounds in a civil engineering course. Close examination of a PBL activity reveals the potential to incorporate Think-Pair-Share moments for students to maul over the task at hand, structured outlines that evolve as new information is gathered, peer challenges where student groups present to each other for feedback prior to the final reveal of their projects, just to name a few. The main idea behind PBL is that students work, either individually or with their peers, to identify and complete a task or project, utilizing their knowledge and skillsets, to develop a product. By including peer-peer support throughout the life of the project, you up the level of communicating to learn moments, with students continually checking each other’s understanding to ensure the accuracy and quality of the outcome. In the process, students may build respect for their fellow classmates’ ideas and gain confidence in the ability to share their intellect. 

Building a communication-intensive project should mimic a real-world project by including scaffolded exercises. Identify common projects in your discipline and dissect them into their individual components. Does the project need to be the entirety of the semester or is it a shorter project that can be repeated? How will you provide feedback and at what frequency will students be able to test their ability to learn through communication (L2C)? In our field, no matter the discipline, lecturing is an important project we perform, so why not assign your students to develop and deliver lectures? Student-developed and delivered lectures can be divided into smaller parts: brainstorming, researching, and proposing a topic to present, outlining how the information will be shared, designing active learning moments for their classmates, practicing the delivery, and presenting the final lecture. At each stage, feedback can be provided on both the content of the lecture as well as how the lecture will be shared. Team-constructed lectures off additional communication interaction, such as how the team will divide the work, collaborative tools used, and how they will communicate with each other. Further, between-team feedback can help teams solidify information along with adding clarifying examples and spotting knowledge gaps prior to the final delivery of their lectures. 

Project-based learning offers multiple points of communication-based interaction for students to develop understanding of course content (communicating to learn) and demonstrate mastery of their knowledge (learning to communicate). Approaching a PBL task may include reflective writing to center one’s understanding of the issue at hand and draw upon what tools they have or lack to solve the problem. When approached as a team, spoken communication can be woven into the project in addition to other forms.