Strategies from Friday Institute for Educational Innovation New Literacies Collaborative Director Marie Himes.

A note from New Literacies Collaborative Director Marie Himes: Project-based learning (PBL) sometimes falls short when educators emphasize the final product rather than the learning process with students. High-quality PBL intentionally aligns meaningful projects with learning goals, ensuring that the project itself is the context for learning, not simply an activity students complete at the end of a unit. Research suggests that well-designed PBL can support deeper learning, strengthen students’ academic knowledge and transferable skills, and increase opportunities for student voice, collaboration and engagement.

These benefits are particularly important in a rapidly changing world shaped by advances in artificial intelligence, where students need opportunities to develop and exercise durable human capacities, including asking meaningful questions, thinking critically and creatively, working with others, communicating across differences, making informed decisions and applying knowledge to authentic challenges.

In work at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation with Project-Based Inquiry Global (PBI Global), we approach PBL with students as an iterative inquiry to action journey, rooted in the nuanced and complex interconnections between local challenges and global issues. These four principles highlighted below guide our work with educators to design more impactful PBL experiences.

Four Tips for Implementing Project-Based Learning

1. Ground learning in “glocal” relevance.

Start with issues and questions that matter to students and connect their lives and communities to the wider world. A “glocal” project might ask students to investigate a local challenge, such as a community food desert, while considering how it connects to larger global issues, such as health, poverty or sustainable agriculture. Glocal relevance gives students a reason to care about what they are learning and helps them see how academic knowledge can be used beyond the classroom.

2. Make it interdisciplinary.

Real-world problems rarely fit neatly within a single subject area. Look for opportunities for students to draw on knowledge and ways of thinking from multiple disciplines. For example, students investigating food insecurity might use science to understand nutrition, mathematics to analyze data, social studies to examine systems and policy, and language arts to research, communicate and advocate. Interdisciplinary projects can help students see connections among ideas rather than experiencing knowledge as isolated subjects.

3. Put inquiry at the center.

A strong project begins with questions worth investigating, not simply a product students are expected to create. Give students opportunities to generate questions, conduct research, evaluate sources, consider multiple perspectives and revise their thinking as they learn.

Educators remain essential throughout this process: they provide structure, disciplinary knowledge, feedback and strategic scaffolds while gradually creating more space for student voice and agency. The goal is not to take the educator out of the learning process, but to shift students from primarily receiving knowledge to actively constructing and applying it.

4. Move from inquiry to meaningful action.

Whenever possible, give students an opportunity to use what they have learned to make a difference, whether through creating a solution, designing a product, informing an audience, advocating for change or taking action in their school or community. Action does not have to mean solving a complex global problem. A smaller-scale, authentic contribution can help students see themselves as capable of using their knowledge to positively impact the world around them. An authentic audience beyond the classroom educator can make this experience even more powerful.

Ultimately, effective PBL asks students not only “What do I need to know?” but also “What questions should I ask, what can I do with what I learn and how might I contribute?” That shift—from completing an assignment to using knowledge with purpose—is at the heart of deeper learning and prepares students to be thoughtful, capable contributors in an increasingly interconnected and complex world.