#edutech #college #work #NFT #education #remotework #onlinelearning #stem #talent #diversity #highered #STEM #blog

Many schools have structures to support the work of a professional learning community (PLC). Teams have dedicated time to plan together, analyze data, and plan interventions and enrichments. They collaborate to support student achievement and foster a sense of shared responsibility for all students.

This culture and work can enhance the implementation of project-based learning (PBL), but teachers may struggle to see how their PLC can support PBL, instead perceiving the PLC and PBL as separate aspects of their work. However, there are specific ways to make them work in harmony. A project cycle aligned to elements of the PLC can ensure greater success of PBL in terms of both teacher and student learning.

IMPROVING PBL IMPLEMENTATION WITH A PLC
Learning Together: One piece PLCs that is often set aside is the sacred time to learn together as team. The whole process of the PLC fosters each individual’s professional growth, but teams need to create time to learn together. This might include examining short readings, videos, or resources as a group.

This shared learning time can be used to focus on aspects of PBL. Perhaps a team learns more about designing effective projects, or reads an article about implementation and assessment. This might come out of team goals for the year, or from a reflection on a previous project. This learning can only enhance the teachers’ future PBL projects.

Collaborative Planning: PLC teams plan high-quality instruction and assessment. This is a natural fit for PBL as teams can plan the project together. Specific planning components of PLC work enhance the project planning: By unpacking standards, teams can ensure that the project is clear on the assessment targets and that they have a shared understanding of student achievement. PLC teams are also well suited to planning assessments in a project, both formative and summative, including major products and milestones.

In addition, teams can plan the general lessons they feel all teachers will need to teach. It’s important in this process to trust both the team and the individual teachers, in considering what does and does not need to be planned together—this will allow the individual teachers to have autonomy and to experiment within the context of the project implementation.