Project based learning (PBL): Less project, more problem

Project based learning (PBL) has been shown to be an effective and engaging way of teaching. Though it has been used in many disciplines, it has been specifically employed in physics and engineering often and has been written about in many journals showing the effective outcomes and student growth when this technique is employed. Therefore, when I had a small intimate class of 8 students for introductory physics, the prospect of designing a PBL based course to engage students in thoughtful projects and effective teaching seemed exciting. It took only four weeks before the course structure began to fall apart. By the end of the course, my carefully planned course was completely unrecognizable. In this presentation, I will outline some example projects and what went wrong. I will also discuss how I was able to pivot during the course, the course outcomes and some lessons learned.