The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails

> but one student reports that she learned much more from traditional classes.

You can't argue with that. She got more from a 4 year computer science education than the 6 week bootcamp! QED

But seriously, as another commenter mentioned, these maximalist headlines don't really help us get to a better education system. Deliberate practice is very important, but that doesn't mean project-based learning "fails".

I'm tutoring a student 1-on-1 at the moment, and my biggest concern as a teacher is always motivation. The delight that comes from building your own little real world website/app (simple cookie clicker clone in her case) after only a few weeks of programming is so useful in getting students to actually appreciate the value of what they're learning, and then it just snow-balls.

Some good points raised in the article, but perhaps a little click-baity and one-sided.

I attended a program that had a program that was built around Team Based Learning (TBL) and projects. The program was very well designed around ensuring that you kept up with the course, and put the topics into practice in realistic situations (projects) as both an individual and then as a team.

This is incredibly effective because it reinforces your individual learning with the knowledge of your peers and provides a feedback loop to the professor who would tailor lessons based on what the class was having difficulties with.

TBL is not an easy program to run though, and requires a lot more forethought and time from the professor that is running it for it to be effective. There are some courses where it is a huge improvement over traditional teaching methods and some where I would argue it isn't.

The answer is that you've learned to learn.

You got some breath of knowledge, not everything is relevant but it helps putting things in perspective. This is crucial.

But the most important thing is that you've learned how to quickly adapt and pick up new things. This is what is valuable and in combination with a broad understanding is very much worth the education. It is okay if the understanding is shallow or even obsolete, point is you have the tools to recognize what you need to learn and you've learned how to quickly brush up on the relevant parts necessary to solve the problem at hand.

What kind of answer did you expect? My BSc amounted to me being very proficient in framework X? That would have been a waste of time and that is also what often is the alternative to an education.

People who self-learn are often very good at a specific tasks but have vast areas which for all intents and purposes is magic.

Maybe lack of education is why everything has to be made in javascript today?

No, a BSc in physics should and can impart actual skills in physics.

It would require the whole process to be lead by a tutor in small groups. And each day you would work through experiments, mathematics related to them, writing reports about them. You would read books together, and work through their practice exercises together.

You would be set to individual practice as often as a piano student is. And tutored as often as a piano student is, or much more often, given the compressed time.

For computing, you would need daily tutored high-skill computer use. You need tutored programming. Your time would be mostly in projects, with seminars where you read through the theoretical things together. The tutor would be guiding your progress individually, dealing with your issues and showing you the skill of programming, etc.

The "lecture" is a spoken textbook delivered to hundreds of students. It isnt giving you any skills. It's not designed to do that. Mistaking it for skill acquisition, which is what most people do, is pathological.

> Maybe lack of education...

You've confused the worst excess of the current educational system (knowledge about a framework!) as what I am arguing for.

That is what we have now.

Skills are modes of thought, imagination, creativity, attention, deliberation, etc. They require a lot of training in each. To be a programmer is to think, imagine, attend to, and deliberate differently.

A framework has nothing to do with it. This is confusing "skills" with whoknowswhat, recalling how to solve a problem.

In your terms, all of education is at the moment, learning the API of a framework.

What it should be is how to think and act like a programmer.

All of education is learning the pattern of notes in beethoven's fifth.

What is should be is how to play the piano, and compose for yourself.