Easy and Secure Project Based Learning
Renzulli Learning makes Project Based Learning (PBL) easy with our platform by providing a safe and secure environment for students to work on and showcase their projects!
Students who use PBL are engaged with in-depth research experiences of real world problems that offer enrichment, engagement, and accelerated learning. Renzulli Learning’s Enrichment Database offers students their own personalized differentiated resources, as well as the ability to search the full fifty thousand-plus differentiated resources to support their PBL experiences.
Before School, during school, and after school, teachers and students can integrate the ready made Super Starter Projects into the curriculum or use these templates to customize their own unique project plan. Renzulli Learning’s PBL has been successful in engaging students in community related activities that ignite curiosity and often result in Renzulli Learning community exhibits.
View Examples of Student’s ProjectsCollaborate on Projects with Students from Around the World
Global Collaboration within Renzulli Learning gives students the opportunity to work collaboratively on Project Based Learning with other participating schools around the world. Participating schools will partner-up with schools on an opt-in basis through Renzulli Learning.
Students can be grouped into PBL enrichment clusters based upon any criteria within the system including interests, learning styles, expression styles, or can be sorted into custom groups by teachers. The projects culminate with a group presentation in which students will present their work to an authentic audience.
Problem Based Learning (PBL) and the Type III Enrichment Component of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM)
Renzulli Learning provides many pathways to Project Based Learning, which is based on the Enrichment Triad Model and more than four decades of research from University of Connecticut professors Dr. Joseph Renzulli and Dr. Sally Reis. Through the Enrichment Triad Model, students lead up to the Type III Investigation process which is the best of Project Based Learning intertwined with Problem Based Learning – “PBL” at its very best!
There are similarities between PBL and SEM but there are also some important differences. PBL is designed to cover topics in the prescribed curriculum using innovative grouping and teaching practices that involve all students. The outcome is mastering the topic more effectively through these different teaching methods and this approach has had positive effects in promoting more student engagement. In PBL the work is usually carried out within a regularly scheduled time period for a particular unit of study.
SEM is problem-based learning but it is much more personalized and follows the modus operandi of what scientists, writers, artists, and creative adults do in the outside-of-school world. The problems within SEM are personal to the individual student or small groups that share a common interest. They are selected by students on student-based interests and passions rather than prescribed curricular topics, even if the interest is restricted by the teacher to a general subject area or unit of study (e.g., students may want to investigate the music, fashion, movies, or a particular politician in a unit on the Great depression). A defining feature is that they are intended to bring about some kind(s) of changes in the world beyond the classroom. They are evaluated by a Student Product Assessment Form which includes items that reflect the use of authentic methodology and impact upon audience rather than merely testing the mastery of information covered in a unit of study.
The Type III component of the SEM also goes beyond simply working on a problem. The time period for a Type III is determined by the nature and complexity of the problem and sometimes takes months or even years. SEM projects do not have “a right answer” or even a single best-way of addressing the problem and they always culminate in a product or service for an authentic audience. The problems are meaningful and the solutions to the problems are impactful.
Joseph Renzulli