When I was a new teacher, I was a part of a school district that emphasized project based learning to the point that it ended up feeling overdone and just like a ton of work. We also had to submit lesson plans to show how and when we implemented our projects and alignment with standards. There was a lot of accountability, but I speak from my own experience that I didn't have a solid foundation of understanding for what PBL was! This obviously didn't lead to me creating the most effective projects for my students in the beginning, but I certainly did learn quickly how to us it to my advantage. 

The first key for me was that students needed to tap into a deeper mode of thinking, and to access a higher-level of thinking. Teachers can help throughout the project with asking guiding questions to ensure that students are truly tapping into thoughtful learning (Hough, 2022). In the format of an MOOC, this would look like discussion or chat that occurs in synchronous learning, or throughout draft updates on a specific project. There needs to be an outlet for which students reveal their thought process, and also a way that the teacher can respond and encourage deeper thinking. 

In a physical classroom, sometimes these PBLs took the form of lab practicals (I was a chemistry teacher) and it often helped to have some sort of mystery or scenario for the students. In an MOOC, I think that this could still be replicated through the emphasis on the application of given knowledge in a novel situation. In this way, students can practice the skills of producing their own knowledge based off of the provided lessons the teacher front-loaded with the class (Granado-Alcón, 2020).

One final key takeaway is that the teacher and the student both need buy-in. Is this a valuable project? What makes it so? Both need to see that the project has important implications for the student and their learning of the content in the class, and how they reflect that knowledge to the teacher. 

Granado-Alcón MdC, Gómez-Baya D, Herrera-Gutiérrez E, Vélez-Toral M, Alonso-Martín P, Martínez-Frutos MT. Project-Based Learning and the Acquisition of Competencies and Knowledge Transfer in Higher Education. Sustainability. 2020; 12(23):10062. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310062

Hough, L. (2022, January 6). Project-based learning is great, but students still need to learn something. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved December 14, 2022, from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/22/01/project-based-learning-great