This is a PBL project that allows students to increase their depth of knowledge of work, the conservation of energy, power, and the work-kinetic energy theorem by designing, building, and racing a full-scale gravity car.

This is a PBL project that asked students to select a select a major period/style of architecture in history, research it to see how this genre influenced the major architectural design elements, and then synthesize the information as part of a redesigned college campus. The final designs are presented to working architects and used as a basis to prove key geometry standards in the Math 2 curriculum.

Hometown Heritage is a high school level, school-wide, cross-curricular PBL project originally designed and conducted at Tri-County Early College High School in the spring of 2018. The project's primary goal is to allow students to develop, refine, and present a product that addresses the following driving question: "How can we inspire young people to value our local heritage by telling our community’s stories in creative and meaningful ways?" Modeled after the "Foxfire" series, this project asked students to become apprentice level experts on a topic they cared about that was specific to the fabric of our local community, including working directly with an outside mentor to develop this expertise. Moreover, the students were expected to make strong connections and applications to their academic and 21st Century Skill competencies.

This is a PBL project that allows students to design, build, and explain an electrical device that would safely and accurately demonstrate their mastery of the principles of electricity and magnetism.

This is a project that follows the PBL framework and was used to help students master the fundamentals of probability, specifically the laws of probability (NC.M2.S-CP.1 to 8). Note that the project was designed and delivered per the North Carolina Math 2 curriculum and it can be customized to meet your own specific curriculum needs and resources.

A PBL project that allows high school physics and math students exercise voice & choice in the design of a new maker space.

This PBL project required students to design, build, and then explain a working Rube Goldberg Machine as a way to demonstrate mastery of Newton's Laws.

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This mini-lesson is intended as a self or collaborative discovery exercise for physics students needed to master the concept of 1D motion. It involves the use of The Physics Classroom for scaffolding, followed by a PhET interactive simulation. 

This is a PBL project that had students use musical instruments to demonstrate their mastery of waves and vibration. It was specifically designed to help students increase their depth of knowledge of vibration, wave fundamentals, wave interference, light and sound waves, and wave boundary effects. The project required students to use actual instruments to authentically present and justify their level of mastery to local musicians and other experts. Note that the project was designed and delivered per the North Carolina honors Physics curriculum and it can be customized to meet your own specific curriculum needs and resources.

This set of slides is intended to provide you with a brief overview of the key elements of high-quality Project Based Learning. It includes links to other PBL resources and examples. This set of slides is best reviewed with a group of educators ready to learn more about PBL so they can make the learning more engaging and relevant for students. Enjoy!

This is a tool teachers can use to design high quality PBL projects, including how to ensure they have a strong connection to curricular standards and success skills, they are authentic per things students care about, they provide students with choice and voice during the project, assessments and scaffolding are intentional and personalized for each student, time is dedicated for student reflection and revision, and the project has a public audience.

The Racing Project is high school level, school-wide, cross-curricular PBL project done at Tri-County Early College HS and was centered around the question: How can we innovate vehicle design solutions to win a race? With that question in mind, there were four different buckets containing different ideas for car designs: gravity games, combustion, electric, and human powered vehicles. Within each of these buckets the PBL groups (with help from an outside mentor) were to design a car to win a race to the best of their abilities using the power source bucket they were in.

This is a high school level, school-wide, interdisciplinary PBL project that allows students to increase their depth of knowledge of academic and 21st Century Skills by designing, building, and refining a product or service that will help people better prepare for, respond to, or recover from natural disasters. It was done at Tri-County Early College in 2018.

Water is life. We live in southern Appalachian Mountains, part of a temperate rainforest where over 50 inches of rain falls each year. This abundant precipitation creates a lush landscape on which our communities rely to support our population and economy. Students will explore this resource in depth from multiple perspectives. They will summarize the results of their studies with final products to include a written piece, an educational presentation/community outreach, a 3D product or art piece, and a multimedia component. Each of these products will allow students to demonstrate the mastery of both academic content and survival skills that they have achieved during the project. The final exhibition will be an Aquatic Adventure Academy where they will facilitate hands-on activities that teach local middle and elementary school students about water.

This is a PBL project originally done in a Math 2 class at the beginning of the year. It was a relatively low stakes project that allowed students to get a feel for the PBL process and identify gaps of fundamental math knowledge so they could develop a personalized plan to close those gaps - ideally while relating it to their academic and career goals. It can also be adapted to other math courses.

The Whimsy Project is high school level, school-wide, cross-curricular PBL project that allows students to maximize their creative thinking and problem solving skills as they connect academic content to real-world applications, in a fun and whimsical way (per the book by Tony Wagner, "Creating innovators"). It was done in the fall of 2017 at Tri-County Early College as a relatively low stakes way to introduce students - especially incoming freshmen - to the basics of PBL.

This is a PBL project that used the "Lord of the Rings" book/film as the basis for a study of kinematics. It was specifically designed to help students increase their depth of knowledge for one-dimensional motion and two-dimensional projectile motion so that they could successfully fend off a hypothetical attack of the ork army. The project also allowed students to build a working catapult or trebuchet. Note that the project was designed and delivered per the North Carolina honors Physics curriculum and it can be customized to meet your own specific curriculum needs and resources.

Food is universal--we all eat! Few things are so common and yet so different between individuals, families, cultures, or geographies. Our preferences and styles define and separate us but exploring those differences can also bring us together. Learning about what people eat means that we learn about their everyday lives. Learning about food can help us to learn about science, math, history and culture.

This is a blog post by Geoff Krall, who is a math instructional coach for the New Tech Network and writes a blog called Emergent Math. In it, using math as the context, Geoff distinguishes between Project Based Learning (PBL) and Problem Based Learning (PrBL).