As a kid who is actually in high school with a few teachers who do this stuff, I actually rather have the memorization. Here are some of the issues I've experianced with group projects. 1) It's in a teen's nature to procrastinate. If we have groups, those who don't procrastinate will end up doing all the work, otherwise everyone will procrastinate and not do the amount of research and colaboration the teacher wanted. 2) No matter how great an idea is, majority vote comes into play. (cont part 2)

I'm interested in how they get students to participate. How do they motivate those that think everything is boring and lame? How do they get loners to work well with groups? How do they deal with students who game the system?

@iwasfrancisd I'm a student, The thing that gets student like me motivated is the fact that you make the topic of your project interesting, not make it seem like something we should be extremely excited about (not overdoing it), and allow humor.

(part two) No matter how shallow and stupid it is, social status and friends in the group WILL come into play on who has the "best" idea. 3) People will automaticly be draw to the assembly line method, each researching one thing without learning everything about the topic. 4) It's important that we get experiance, but teachers today spend about one week per topic/unit. There's not enough time to work in these projects. 5) its more productive to do projets with 1-2 people who will EACH understand

For some subjects this can work, but, I'm sorry, the BASICS still need to be taught, and PBL cannot teach them this. For example, I teach high school social studies. Most of my students have had PBL since elementary. By the time the students got to my classes, they knew how to make a great project, but DID NOT know the 50 states and their locations, DID NOT know the difference between Washington DC and Washington state, etc... This is due to PBL.

@Rugby80 The basics are ignored, and the previous are just examples from social studies. I, personally, graduated from a high school that had PBL back in the 90's. Although I was a good student, when I went to college I had to RELEARN EVERYTHING! I went to (supposedly) one of the best public schools in the country, and I was not prepared for a taste of the real world. A lot of this was due to PBL training students to do a GREAT diorama, but not knowing how to properly read, write,

This works well if all the students are equally motivated. Sadly, most of the time they aren't. This system looks good on paper, but it doesn't exactly work out as perfect as they say it does.

Awesome! Thanks to Buck Institute and Lee and the gang at CommonCraft!

The really big problem about this is; Not everyone are able to work in groups, either because they just don't like working with others, or because of social problems.

That's how my school is. I love it this way. c:

Easy to understand and good introduction to PBL. : )

@Rugby80 "entertainers" for them. This does not help them in the long run.

This doesn't work. It's a good theory, but most of the students I know don't split the work equally and it ends up being pushed onto one person, even if they report it to the teacher as "everyone did their fair share."

but we can't get good marks in IGCSE if we do this kind of work in school.

@Rugby80 I have read your posts, and have a lot of respect for your opinions. However, I would like to constructively argue with you that the basics have NOT been "ignored," but rather, in PBL are not the end-game. Our standardized tests don't require our kids to even Remember facts...just recognize the correct one from a list. As kids Create their projects, the teacher needs to be sure that the skills they are learning are becoming more complex as they work their way up Bloom's Taxonomy.

i have an essay to do....that counts as a project right? i dont wanna do it !!!

I wish my last school had at least 1/10 of the technology that's shown in this.