Distance learning at the height of the pandemic took its toll on students academically and emotionally. Even though most students are back in class this year, things aren’t quite back to normal. Most are wearing masks and many are living with the impact of COVID-19 on their lives and in their communities. In our work with schools, we hear that students continue to crave connection and higher levels of engagement.

But how do we help students stay connected and engaged in deeper learning when being at school still means communicating through masks, dealing with student and teacher absences due to COVID-19 exposures, and catching up on lessons and learning experiences lost to distance learning? There is, of course, no one solution to the problem, but many educators are finding that project-based learning (PBL) provides a way forward by developing knowledge and skills through authentic learning experiences that generate student interest and enthusiasm.

Authenticity is a key feature of high-quality PBL. In our ongoing work codesigning and researching project-based learning with high school English language arts teachers in Colorado and Michigan, we created a set of literacy-related PBL projects that teachers can adapt to their own ELA curriculum and community. Students and teachers have given us great feedback on these resources and report that the most successful projects are those that feel real and important,  projects that call for students to do work that they and other people care about.

For example, a ninth-grade student we’re calling Sara (to protect her privacy) was in a project-based ELA class at a high school in northern Colorado. In one project, her teacher, Robert Laurie, supported his students to be “human interest storytellers” and consider the questions “What happened here?” and “How do authors use time, place, and perspective to tell a compelling story of what happened?” In project-based learning classrooms, students often have choice and voice in creating final products, and that was the case in Mr. Laurie’s classroom, where students could present their stories in a variety of formats. Sara ended up creating a short video, or “digital story.”

Her experience demonstrates the three main ways project-based learning activities can be authentic:

• to the learner
• to others
• through the tools and practices used

Sometimes, as was the case for Sara, a project is authentic in all three ways.

Authentic to the learner

Sara found the project to be personally relevant to her, as did many of her peers. First, the class read a series of short personal vignettes, such as one about the 2013 floods in Colorado in which days of historic rainfall led to massive flooding and dangerous mudslides. Then the students wrote vignettes based on the same themes but tied to their own lives and experiences. The themes included “a decision,” “your neighborhood,” “an event,” and “someone you know.”

After Sara wrote four personal vignettes, she chose the most compelling to build out into a video story. It told about the invasive back surgery she experienced a little over a year before because of her scoliosis. She felt the vignette was meaningful because it was so personally difficult and important to her and to her relationships with others. Composing a more elaborate story was an opportunity to dig= deeper.

Authentic tools and practices

When it came to how Sara went about making her video, she followed practices that professional filmmakers use—scripting and storyboarding—to plan the sequence of her video content, narration, and images. After doing some research, and with the guidance of her teacher, Sara used a software program called WeVideo that uses the same kinds of conventions that high-end video editing programs use. These tools and practices provided essential elements of scaffolding, as the storyboard provided a means for laying out the pieces and working on the flow, and the WeVideo program enabled Sara to try out the ideas in her refined storyboard.

What she was doing was authentic to film production as well as English language arts. Rather than asking students to complete separate, isolated assignments to fulfill ELA standards, Mr. Laurie integrated standards-based instruction into the long-term project. He supported Sara in developing skills such as effectively expressing herself and telling a compelling multimodal story. Part of the drive to craft and hone a compelling story came from the third element of authenticity: making sure it resonated with others.

Authentic to others

The ultimate goal of this project was to create a product that Sara would be proud to share in a public film festival. Mr. Laurie organized the festival with a flyer advertising the films that would be shown and scheduled it for a time when parents could come. After the screening, Sara admitted to feeling nervous because the project was so personal. But she said she was glad she decided to share it. She noted that it was “a way for me to connect to my parents about this, because one of the problems that I had after my surgery was that they tried to be there, but I didn’t really feel like they were taking care of me. They got angry at me, and I got angry at them.” After they watched the video, Sara and her parents talked about those tensions with the benefit of looking back.

Project-based learning can be a great way to engage students in deeper conversations not only with their peers but also with their families and the community around them, particularly through public presentations with authentic audiences. In the case of Sara, it led to a rich dialogue with friends and family about a topic on which she became an expert.

Bring PBL into your classroom

We know that project-based learning can feel daunting at first. However, it’s worth giving it a try. The teachers we have observed and worked with almost invariably attest to it being worthwhile, especially in these challenging times when young people are so in need of joyful learning experiences that feel meaningful to them. If you’re wondering where to start, just ask your students. They know what’s authentic to them!

Joe Polman and Alison Boardman are professors at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. Polman is a professor of learning sciences and human development who specializes in project-based learning environments. Boardman is an associate professor of equity, bilingualism, and biliteracy who explores literacy instruction that is supportive of all learners in inclusive classrooms. They are coauthors, with Antero Garcia and Bridget Dalton, of the book Compose Our World: Project-Based Learning in Secondary English Language Arts, a finalist for the Literacy Research Association’s Edward B. Fry Book Award for best books in literacy research and practice in 2021. They also are codevelopers of the ninth-grade ELA curriculum highlighted in the book.