
The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails - nancyhua
http://www.pathsensitive.com/2018/02/the-practice-is-not-performance-why.html
======
slm_HN
This reads like a very thinly veiled ad for the author's $500 Software Design
web class.

Project based learning won't work, traditional learning won't work, only my
class will work. In fact the source he quotes (himself) claims he can give you
a year's worth of experience in an hour.

But why doesn't project based learning fail? Well, in his example Bob, who
wants to learn network programming, pairs with Alice, who somehow mysteriously
takes over the entire project and does all the networking code so Bob learns
nothing. That's sort of like arguing that you can't learn guitar from a
teacher because a velociraptor might stroll by and eat the teacher.

I don't know what type of learning is best, but I know you need a little more
evidence then that for a post titled "Why project-based learning fails".

~~~
joshdance
agree with this. Theoretical example, seems to tilt to advanced the authors
view point. Would love some data on project based learning.

~~~
zaq_xsw
> 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.

~~~
tebugst
agree with you absolutely. In broad field like CS, one can't keep interest so
long unless there are some practical usefulness.

------
schoosi
I attended a university with a strong co-op program, and I personally believe
it is the best possible solution. Classes were focused on theory and my three
6-month co-ops were spent working on meaningful software projects at real
companies. As a result, I was able to build up a solid background in Computer
Science theory, didn't have to deal with the shortcomings of group class
projects, and learned how to ship production-worthy code under the mentorship
of real, senior engineers (and got paid to boot).

Why more universities don't leverage co-op programs, especially given the
exorbitant and rising cost of college tuition in the US, is beyond me.

~~~
ma2rten
I don't know.

I attended a regular computer science program and I am glad I did. The goal of
university is not to prepare you as best as possible for working life, but to
teach academic thinking.

Class projects usually have a specific purpose, like teaching computer vision,
operating systems or building compilers.

You'll spend the rest of your life working. There is no need to rush into it,
in my opinion.

Then again, I didn't study in the US, so I didn't have the tuition problem.

~~~
wcarss
For you, university was a means to the end of learning academic thinking. For
me, it was a means to the end of attaining a decent job.

There are certainly arguments to be made that university is by definition, in
original intent, and in theory solely a vehicle for teaching academic thought,
but I think the pragmatic counter to them is a poll of "why are you here?"[1]
, and should be considered valid.

The end result is that university is in practice not one or the other but
both: it must teach some academic thought, and provide some job-readiness.

I wish to digress for a moment into why that is not just a failing of many
students to understand school's true purpose: many people (hi) do not come
from a background where lifetime economic security is a guarantee, and while
programming is a rare example (at least in North America) where if you spend
the time, you can probably do it, and if you can do it, you can probably be
paid well for it, there are unfortunately still gatekeepers. HR departments
frequently resort to very base credentialism to sort through candidate
resumés, and those with schooling typically come first and get higher base
offers of compensation. Not to speak of the network social effects of spending
years with other entrants into the field, and the opportunities for extra-
curricular pursuits which also are well regarded by those gatekeepers.

These among other things have forced many people with mere occupational goals
to pursue university degrees. I wish it were not like this, because my
professors universally did not feel that that was a good reason to be there,
and occasionally avoided very useful practical topics on principle, but I (and
many within my cohort) felt there was no better alternative for a successful
outcome in life, and it has mostly worked out.

1 - I of course have not conducted this poll, but I do strongly believe that
at least a plurality would respond with job-attainment as their primary goal,
and would not be surprised by an even greater response.

~~~
cmplxconjugate
Well then, might it be wise to realise that “why are you here” is a question
that is based off perception?

A generation of financially secure parents have pushed the mindset of
Degree==Job. An understandable choice, based on the idea of attaining the best
start possible in life.

Whatever reasons, whatever perceptions, the role of the University is
unchanging and should remain steadfast; A University is there to create new
academics.

~~~
wcarss
I feel that the perception is in fact material to the reality, because if
people do go to university not to become academics, and do leave it not as
academics, and do feel it has met its purpose in those cases, then clearly it
is not presently there solely for that cause.

But I think we actually agree -- I would just amend your statement to be an
aspiration rather than a description: "A university _should_ be there to
create new academics."

I feel saddened that in practice (in great part due to the reasons we've each
outlined), it is not.

------
avmich
> So, for programming, we need to (1) figure out the core concepts to teach,
> and (2) pick languages that make the concepts readily available.

James, the main argument for project-based learning is ability to make
learning interesting. Considering that students aren't vessels that need to be
filled, but torches which need to be lit, this can trump other approaches.
Importance of being interested in the material can be hard to overestimate.

You may still be right, but I was surprised to see the arguments for project
missing this one.

~~~
themodelplumber
There's a lot of psychology at work here which is not being given due credit.

People who are theorists at their core typically believe that the learning is
interesting by itself, usually because they are focused on developing their
own models for how things work. It's a subjective-creative process that's
exciting: You get to play detective! They are getting creative outcomes
_while_ learning about theory. They do not need to wait for a project outcome
in order to feel accomplished. Their only other answer, like OP's, to learning
things that aren't interesting by themselves but still need to be learned is
rote learning, or drills. What other method could possibly educate the student
and yet not introduce other rabbit holes that distract from the topic?

Project-motivated people find this approach boring, and they are ready to go
down the various rabbit holes involved in the project, if necessary to achieve
their envisioned outcome. They are focused on _applying existing theory_ to
effect their concrete outcomes, which is an interest that straddles the
theoretical and real-world-application zones. They get happy brain chemicals
by e.g. watching people use a project they've built. These types use a
referential thought process for higher leverage and shorter timelines. So
rather than developing their own model from scratch (NIH, the theorist's pet
method) which will take them a long time and might not be that effective, they
borrow someone else's model ("hey, let's use Framework X, it has tons of
features!") and make it serve their subjective outcome-vision. Seeing the
vision brought to life is where their creative fulfillment is activated.

CS departments are stuffed full of the former case. Engineering departments
are stuffed full of the latter case.

It can be absolutely maddening to be either one, and then find yourself being
asked to accommodate the other's learning / executing style.

~~~
jacobolus
I think this is overly reductionist.

Plenty of “theorists at heart” still think it’s boring to do lots of rote
drills. :-)

It’s not like doing drills really helps you develop new models/tools/concepts
from first principles especially more than it helps you adapt existing
models/tools/concepts to new situations.

* * *

I think the article under discussion here misses the point in a different way.
He assumes that it’s impossible to get meaningful fast feedback about various
particular aspects of your work (and focusing on those deliberately) while
working on “projects”. But at least in computing (and probably most fields if
you look around), that’s not necessarily true.

We have tons of quality feedback available in computing, starting with tools
like a REPL or a debugger which interactively show you the results of small
actions, and then compilers and static analyzers and profilers and ....

Then there’s IRC and mailing lists and open source ticket trackers etc., where
expert strangers will spend tons of their time helping you out for free just
to pass the time. If your project happens to be something that other people
are interested in and you are working in the open, there’s feedback from
customers, other programmers, etc. If working in a group of mixed ability,
there are the other group members or possibly a skilled mentor/tutor, and if
working in a company there are coworkers.

There is oodles of open source code, documentation, free textbooks, targeted
videos of people demonstrating how to use particular development tools or
their general method, or showing off particular tricks, much of which is
reasonably searchable and can be called up from the internet on demand when a
particular problem/roadblock is stuck. You can relatively easily try to
implement parts of projects yourself, then go find an example project where
someone else implemented the same thing, and compare the two. Typically you
can find both toy examples and production code, with their entire version
history, internal project discussions, bug tracker history, ....

Arguably you could learn a whole lot by coding up 30 different examples of
data structures in C, one after another, getting expert feedback after each
one. And then moving on to coding solutions to 20 different dynamic
programming problems. And then 10 compilers for different little languages.
And then 10 different CRUD apps for made up restaur. Or whatever....

But you could also get lots of good experience by building a whole project
that you personally care about from bottom to top, using it for a while and
watching where the bugs come up, seeing what parts are completely wrongly
architected, etc., and then trying again several times (ideally with a bit of
introspection and research in between) until you have a better idea what to
do.

~~~
themodelplumber
What I'm saying regarding rote drills is, when you tell a theorist that
developing a model by yourself isn't interesting or helpful to you, their only
other thought is, "you must be one of those weirdos who benefits from rote
learning?"

Project-based learning simply doesn't come to their mind; it's completely off
their radar because it is, as op implies, potentially full of little all-
consuming rabbit holes that are unrelated to the CS principles in question.
Look at the great theorist Feynman and his "computer disease" theory. He had a
deep aversion to getting sucked into things like IT concerns, because
theoretical model-detecting was his core motivator.

~~~
jacobolus
Feynman was complaining about something different. He was in the middle of
working on large-scale projects and got annoyed that his coworkers got
completely distracted by irrelevant (but amusing) tangents instead of doing
their next task that everyone else was blocking on.

This is a problem of the coworker’s lack of executive planning / control /
time management skills, not anything about learning via projects or
theorizing. Arguably if the coworker had done a bit more project-based
learning he would have better practiced those skills.

------
eksemplar
In Denmark we have a two universities that almost exclusively do project based
learning. Basically students are put in groups and attached a mentor who is
responsible for teaching them CS.

To this is coupled traditional courses in basic math/algorithms/scientific
theory.

These lines produce candidates that are wasted supperior to our traditional
universities. Well, if you need them to actually work with CS in the real
world, I’m an employeer not a scientist, so I have no idea if they produce
better candidates for research. But for real world jobs, these kinds of
candidates are the only ones coming out of the universities that I can safely
put in a position and expect to see them become productive after 1-3 months.

Traditional candidates take 6 months of mentoring before they start earning
their salaries. They’ve often never even deployed a project in anything
resembling a real world project. They’ve never worked in teams, and simply
don’t know how to do so. They don’t know how to communicate with non-IT
people. And so on.

As I said, project based teaching may not produce better CS candidates in
terms of how good they are at CS, but it does produce candidates that can
deliver a finished quality product on time.

~~~
pdm55
"wasted supperior" Did you mean "way superior" or, better yet, "far superior"?

~~~
rdiddly
Vastly superior?

------
Everlag
As someone at the end of their undergrad, I have to agree that group based
projects trend towards being unpleasant. The article describes the
distribution of work harming full understanding of the content when all people
contribute, however that's usually the best case.

Most students are oversubscribed with four or five classes. There tends to
always be some portion of a group which contributes trivially or simply
doesn't. When you've got a group of five, one is typically unreachable,
apathetic, or just exhausted. Pairs are a gamble, a bad partner being a
massive workload. When you're the person who's carrying the group, you usually
end up grokking everything in the project because you touched all of it.
However, since you touched all of it, you're exhausted and likely pissed.

What I've found works is individual work sample projects, particularly those
timeboxed to 'hopefully a lab period but you have a week'. The GPGPU course at
my school has labs which are 'fill in the blanks' for cuda code. As the course
goes on, those blanks get progressively more complex and make you flex your
core understanding of the course. For more theory driven courses, the standard
set of assignments works nicely.

As an aside, group projects seem to be partially motivated by the TAs and
profs trying to deal with larger class sizes. Taking a senior level graphics
class with 30 people lets you write 4 gnarly opengl projects which the TA
marks in depth; a software engineering course with 200 people, a weekly
deliverable, and 5 TAs? Dividing that by 5 is more realistic.

(For context I go to a school not known for their undergrad CS program;
experiences may differ in other institutions)

~~~
jacobolus
You don’t need to have a group of apathetic students in an organized course in
order to learn via projects.

Lots of people have taught themselves to program (and many other subjects and
skills) by doing their own individual projects.

~~~
bluehat
Yeah, but there is no denying that the external structure is helpful and the
dedicated office hours can be a real lifesaver.

------
cthalupa
What a bizarre article. While the whole "Learning Styles" stuff is largely
debunked by scientific research, we do know that different things motivate
different people.

I would argue that motivation is the single most important aspect of learning
- if you're not motivated to learn something, you're not going to do it. I
tried to learn programming skills on and off all through my teenage years and
early 20s, but it always petered out because I never had anything I really
wanted to do in specific with them. I lacked the motivation to just learn the
theory without having a project to work on.

When I finally found a project that excited me and could be broken down into
manageable pieces to learn, I made infinitely more progress.

Recently I've been going back and learning actual computer science concepts.
I've got enough programming knowledge that the computer science things
actually interests me now, and I have the motivation to spend time on theory
and exercise that I can't immediately apply to a project.

But I never would have gotten to that point without project based learning to
begin with, because I never would have been able to stick with it. I wouldn't
have cared enough.

Jimmy might be motivated enough by learning the theory that it works for him.
But it doesn't work for everyone, and trying to act like there's any one
single right way to educate people, when people are so massively different in
so many different ways, seems to be fairly arrogant.

~~~
jibreel
Can you please explain what you mean by "Learning Styles is debunked by
scientific research" ?

~~~
aidaman
"I am a visual learner." That has been debunked.

------
simplify
The author is not criticizing project-based learning in general, but instead
how some curriculum (I wonder who's?) uses _group projects_ as the _only_ form
of learning.

This feels a bit like a strawman. I agree group projects are not the best way
to teach individual concepts. However, they're the best way to put what you've
learned _into practice_. To use the author's martial arts analogy, group
projects are like sparring in a safe environment.

Group projects are also the best way to practice your group communication
skills, something isolated exercises cannot help with.

~~~
watwut
Group project communication and work communication are different. I have
rarely had problem to communicate in work, but group projects were usually
crap.

The worst about group project is when one person picks all the interesting
tasks and learns, others don't. Which means that people who know least and
need practice most, are the ones that are pushed to anciliary roles with only
little practice happening.

~~~
simplify
> The worst about group project is when one person picks all the interesting
> tasks and learns, others don't.

The reason this happened is because of a lack of group communication skills. I
would blame your instructor for not pre-addressing problems like this before
things got started, or not checking in at all.

~~~
watwut
Pre-addressing these problems won't make shy person instantly not shy. It wont
make controlling person not controlling nor change someone who is not self
aware or don't think much about others.

While these exist in workplace too, setup is different, goals are different
and dynamic is completely different. And you can usually find yourself non-
group setup with own accountability and tasks.

Most important difference is that in school you are supposed to learn and this
turns whole thing to waste of time where you don't learn - and then you miss
stuff you was supposed to learn.

~~~
simplify
> Pre-addressing these problems won't make shy person instantly not shy.

Of course. But it at least _sets the expectation_ that these things _need_ to
be talked about. Otherwise students won't know what to do, or even realize
what's happening until after the work division has been decided.

Not just that, but a competent instructor should have checked in with the
groups to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen.

------
fishtoaster
I think this has some good points, but ultimately comes to the wrong
conclusion. The key idea, from my reading, was "isolate subskills and drill
them."

I don't think that's necessarily separate from project-based learning.

To steal an example from another commenter, I'm actually nearing the end of a
figure drawing course at a local community college (because, you know,
sometimes I want to not be coding :) ). The three components of drawing (as
described by this professor) are line, value (shading) and gesture
(shape/flow).

One way you could teach that class would be: \- Drill line. You're gonna
straight lines, curve lines, squiggly lines until you can draw any arbitrary
bezier curve you want. \- Drill value. Just draw a metric ton of gradients. \-
Drill gesture. Draw lots of figure shapes without every really worrying about
filling them in. \- In the final class, try to put it all together and draw a
whole person.

A much better way to teach it would be: \- Draw a whole person, but don't
worry too much about value and gesture- just try to get the line right. \-
Draw a whole person, but don't worry too much about line and gesture- just try
to get the value right. \- Draw a whole person, but don't worry too much about
value and line- just try to get the gesture right. \- Draw a whole person at
the end using everything you've learned.

The latter way "drills" subskills, but it also practices the overall skill of
"drawing a person."

In the same way, I'd strongly advocate project-based "drilling." Build an app
to learn guis. Build an api-consuming cli to learn about apis. Build a chat
app to learn networking. And if you want students to learn about networking,
either assign it as an individual project or make sure all students work on
the networking code (his chat app example was just a poorly-implemented
assignment, not a problem with project-based learning).

Overall, it's hard to argue that someone who's spent most of their time
building projects won't be better at building projects than someone who has
not.

------
heisenbit
Let's be clear here: An academic is writing about project based learning. Of
course concepts are important. But then according to Edison Genius and many
would argue Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Academic success or conceptual understanding alone are not good indicators of
professional success. Perseverance and collaborations are at least as
important as is the ability to sell. Also let's not forget: The market is
usually buying experience and not conceptual knowledge with unproven track
record for application.

Projects may not be the best way to learn in depth about an isolated aspect if
the project is end to end. But that is setting up a straw-man to be torched. A
proper way to learn about networking e.g. would be measuring TCP performance
and experimenting with the ramp-up. Or writing a protocol decoder for
something non-trivial.

------
mlazos
I disagree with this article for the most part, it doesn’t make sense to say
that just because some group projects are not optimal implies all project
based learning is bad. I think doing projects individually is hugely important
both from learning theory and also learning software design. In college we had
group projects and individual projects going on simultaneously, one of which
was building google maps for a US state given only some location data. This
project simultaneously taught me about various data structures and algos (Kd-
tree, graph search, autocorrect) and we later extended it to use networking in
a client server architecture. I think it’s invaluable to have students do many
parts of a project individually and then come together to build larger
projects and this addresses the concerns of the author.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I think this comment touches on the idea that, given a few hundred students
enrolled in a course, there will be some subsets of students who get more out
of one type of teaching/learning methodology vs some others.

Therefore, at random places at random times there will be courses that
emphasise some methodology/ies where a majority of the students do well, or
not, given some kind of bell curve distribution of student-methodology
success.

The outcome of which is that, occasionally, someone can write a convincing
argument for or against some particular methodology.

Teaching and learning, at scale, is difficult; outcomes are ill defined and
hard to measure; correlation, causation, competing priorities and influences.

------
PeterStuer
The 'in industry' equivalent is 'on-the-job-training'. Employers love the idea
that a software professional instead of taking a few days to acquire a new
skill or technology, can just do it by using said skill on a client's project
without preparation and learn as you go along.

This always fails as there is never time budgeted for this in the schedule, so
the software professional is not just facing the traditional underestimated
deadline, but is now faced so doing with partially unknown tools and under
intense pressure to just cut every corner and rush the first ting that doesn't
blow up completely. Next project, the 'new tech' is now considered 'known' and
so the kludges become practice and decent learning never occurs.

------
sitkack
Ironic that this [0] is the top story at the same time as this article is on
the front page.

How can an academic be arguably arguing against Constructivist Learning Theory
[1] without mentioning Piaget [2] or Papert [3], from the birthplace of
Scratch [4] no less.

The author recommends, "design drills for it" but at the same time deriding
project-based learning as simulating work. I cannot think of a better way to
encourage stimulus-response coding than, "doing drills". Projects provide
context, which provide anchors for knowledge. Projects provide a constant
stream of problems with a motivation to solve them, the teacher should be
there to guide the student towards the knowledge and skills to solve the
problems as they arise.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16453192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16453192)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_\(philosophy_of_education\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert)

[4] [https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

~~~
srtjstjsj
This advertisement article is on the front page because a voting ring promoted
it.

------
nickjj
Project based learning works really well for me and it seems to work well for
the 20,000+ people who have taken one of my courses (based on feedback I've
gotten over the years).

For example, in 10 hours of time I went from 0 knowledge about Elixir /
Phoenix (or functional programming) to having my own Phoenix app up and
running with multi-login passwordless token based auth, webpack integration,
etc, etc.. I now feel like I have a really good handle on how an Elixir app
can be set up with Phoenix and how all of the front end aspects of a web app
fall together with it (routes, templates, views, endpoints, plugs, etc.).

I spent the least amount of time possible just looking at Elixir's beginner
guide to get a feel for the syntax and then I started my own app and just
looked up stuff as I needed it. Nearly all of that time was spent doing
"feature based development" on the app.

"I need to add a /faq page, ok, how do I generate a controller and hook up a
new route, let me check the docs."

"My app layout is getting a little gnarly, how can I use template includes to
split out my navigation, let me check the docs."

This style of learning is how I teach my
[https://buildasaasappwithflask.com](https://buildasaasappwithflask.com)
course too. We cover over 50 general web development topics, but topics are
went over in the context of building a real world app, implementing features
as we go. Then there's self guided homework assignments to implement even more
features into the app.

How do you prefer learning?

------
PeterStuer
I agree in general with the argument put forward. However:

While it is true that principles of programming are better taught in
environments that are more suited to that (in my days that meant Modula2 and
Common Lisp), one should not just assume that those skill acquired can be
transferred by students unaided to different contexts. As a TA later I watched
in horror how students that did perfectly well in programming classes reverted
to the bad habits they had thought themselves in hobby programming before
college, once they were asked to do a project in the 'industrial' IDE's an
languages they were used to back then.

Our 'learning' is far more contextualized than we believe and transfer is
hard, not automatic.

------
muzani
That's funny. I came to the same conclusion as this article after reading The
Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin, which the writer also mentions.

Project based learning is inefficient because you repeat things you know lots
of times. The repetitions are spread out too far to be burned into memory.

I find that even after 6 years of experience, I still have to Google to
convert an int array to string array. I've done dozens of projects, but this
thing was never optimized for. It works fine to complete a project, but
becomes a drag when trying to implement more complex code.

The ideal would be to internalize as a kind of instinct. When something is
instinct, the subconscious can calculate it and work out solutions.

I think the best kind of learning would be to a kind of coding dojo, where
they repeat similar routines until it becomes a part of their instincts.

------
madsbuch
Hmm, I would say that the key is figuring out what the project should be and
how it should be carried out. That's where you need somebody mentoring.

You really don't learn network programming from programming a a chat app. That
project is broken for that learning outcome. If you asked a network expert he
would probably suggest to implementthe OSI model as a C library or something
like that.

I would also be very cautious about the group aspect of project work. And
again, you would need somebody with experience in the field to help you divide
the tasks, if you insist on doing group work. Another suggestion would be to
do it alone, and get to communal experience into the project in other ways,
maybe through reading groups with people doing similar projects.

------
KirinDave
Project based learning is not inherently better at teaching a given subject.
But it's a superior method for teaching how to write computer software because
it's an opportunity to motivate, train, discuss and drill on core software
developer tools.

#1 problem with folks out of college? They have no idea how to start or
maintain a basic workflow. Project based learning provides space for this.

------
blairanderson
If two people were racing to "learn" a programming language then yes, project
based learning would fail.

This dude doesn't recognize the audience that most blog posts target.

Most people reading blog posts about learning code are NOT in college and ARE
NOT employed by colleges.

So the challenge for learning is more about motivation and projects tend to
help you stay motivated more easily that little learning lectures and
components.

~~~
bluehat
How do you know?

------
quadcore
It's an interesting article. I'm not sure I agree with everything though, but
maybe I do. Let me explain.

Let's compare _programming_ to _figure drawing_ for a minute. What you could
do to learn for example is, you could learn the details of some part of the
figure, like the eye. Well, that's cool but it's not gonna teach you. That's
because the hard part in drawing the figure is dynamic, balance and
proportions. It's not so much that the details are "easy" and that they don't
require to be learnt, it's that, if your dynamic, balance and proportions are
off, the details will be too.

~~~
solipsism
_Every member of the team must be an expert in drawing the mannequin right._

Why? That's not at all clear, even from your example. "If the mannequin is
wrong the details will be wrong" does not imply "everyone involved must know
how to do the mannequin". Just that _someone_ must.

Let's go from figure drawing to true multidisciplinary art -- 3D graphics. At
least in the gaming industry, the rigger (creator of the skeleton and joints,
relative expert in anatomy) is not necessary the modeler, is not necessarily
the animator, is not necessary the texture artist, is not necessarily the 3d
shader expert. None of these need to be particularly good at any of the other
skills.

------
akritrime
Well, I am self-taught. Actually, I am still learning, I just started a year
back. And IMO, project-based learning has been really beneficial in my case.
In school, I always grew up knowing I am a bad student, I don't learn anything
because I am too stupid to learn. Now, after my attempt at learning to
program, I understand that it is not my inability to learn but more my
inability to enjoy learning just for the sake of knowledge. When I learn
something I need to know where I need it, where it fits into the bigger
problem. And this is where a project-based learning has been helpful, what I
know about topics like formal grammars, parsing, concurrency, distributed
consensus, which data structure to use for a particular use case, basics of
cryptography, sockets and protocols etc. is mostly because I took up projects
that I found interesting and these projects needed me to have an idea about
these things. And this is also project-based learnings biggest disadvantage.
Whatever I learn, I learn from googling and reading the top few links. This
leaves with serious gaps in my knowledge until I come across another article
or resource that explains the gap or someone in some forum points it out to
me. Learning in a formal setting is pre-emptive, but this also means there is
an authoritative figure who gives you a structure that you follow to gain a
thorough understanding of the topic. So I guess rather than saying one is
superior to the other, attempts should be made to mix and match the good
things from both styles.

------
bluehat
A really core question(/assumption in many comments) is "is a computer science
education only for SV job prep?" As usual, we could stand to remember that the
world doesn't revolve around us. People learn to program for a lot of other
reasons too.

If you want the quickest path to a SV job, you learn the most modern
frameworks and drill them until you scrawl the boiler plate in your sleep.
Project-based learning is extremely appropriate for this. You absolutely don't
need four years of education to crank out a comfortable 6 figure salary off
this knowledge. (In fact, it might be a liability if your pet framework ages
out). You only have to be able to fill a need (even one will do) which a lot
of companies have.

If you're looking for anything else, a diet of only back-to-back projects
might not be the best way. If you're jumping head first from javascript into
kernel modules you might consider a book. If you're looking to automate some
bio or physics lab equipment, you can't expect getting good at a few popular
frameworks to carry you. If you're learning math there are advantages to
having people grade your work and offer office hours.

And if we're being really honest, this non-project-based stuff is pretty
useful as SV job prep too. Not knowing things like linear algebra, statistics,
and discrete math can be career limiting. I mean, how many of us are really
ready to jump the gap to doing serious ML work?

------
tomxor
> After finishing his first two Android apps

I think this guy's definition of project based learning is "large finished
project".

My idea of project based learning (which as a self learner I use quite a lot),
is very _very_ small examples, try to make those examples work in the most
unpolished way from a user perspective (focus on the core functionality) and
explore the different ways in which they can work as a way to explore the
topic or idea that you are interested in. _not_ "try to make some end product
based on this idea", that's a whole different venture.

In his example of making a chat app to learn about networking:

> Over the next three weeks, Bob spends a lot of time building the GUI for the
> app, which he already knows how to do, and only a couple hours implementing
> the client protocol.

If he wanted to learn about MVCs and GUIs this is indeed a good project. If he
really wanted to learn about networking from the perspective of chat, he
should have either avoided the GUI and come up with the simplest possible CLI
based interface... or avoid the interface all together and just experiment
with the core networking code and send hardcoded strings or pipe in some text
without a nice CLI. I mean this smartphone chat app is really a strawman IMO.

Disclaimer: I've read nothing about project based learning, I only recognise
it as a concept that has emerged in my own personal learning strategies as I
am sure it has in many others.

~~~
osteele
> Disclaimer: I've read nothing about project based learning, I only recognise
> it as a concept that has emerged in my own personal learning strategies as I
> am sure it has in many others.

You may not have read anything about it, but you've nailed it.

If it's project-based _learning_ , the _learning_ has to take precedence over
the _project_.

This is why I had side projects when I was a software engineer.

Most day job projects have to _work_ , with minimal (technical, schedule,
etc.) risk, and minimal development time and other costs. For a low-innovation
project, this generally means using familiar tools. For an innovative project
there's still plenty of skill development, but often in circumscribed areas.
(This is true for journeyman to master engineers. When you're early in your
career, you get learning opportunities for free out of any halfway-decent
environment.)

A side project can take an arbitrary amount longer, or fail, without letting
your team or organization down. (Or, a side-project with a team can be a
designed as a learning experience, if that's a shared team goal. This is
gigging with your band, not building with your crew.) This creates the space
for prioritizing new concepts and skills, and practice on weaker skills.

------
nadam
The problem with teaching programming in functional languages is that those
languages use a different PARADIGM than imperative languages. Learning the
functional paradigm is very useful, but it cannot replace programming in like
C. They are different. They teach you different things. For my taste and my
carrier as mostly a performance / graphics programmer reading the source code
of DOOM was a much better, interesting, and inspiring school than learning to
program in SML in a university course.

------
xupybd
Yeah but the problem with the current method is introducing solutions before
the problem. Learning a tool is way easier if you see the value of that tool.
I had assignments writing XML schema. No idea why but we had to write them. I
didn’t retain any of that but found them very valuable to define interfaces
later on. If I’d known the use I’d have been more motivated to learn how to
create them.

------
closed
I agree that small exercises are good for teaching individual skills (e.g. a
chess player practicing with only a few pieces on the board), but projects put
the reason you are practicing into context. It's a motivator to practice. It
shows smaller skills combined to produce some desired behavior.

I think a critical piece left out of the article is the role of emotional
affect. Many people are learning because they want to produce a big, realistic
set of behaviors (a project), so a good learning curriculum will motivate
through a project and drill through small, independent exercises.

Another example, the article mentions Haskell being more useful for teaching
cs concepts compared to node, or piano for teaching musical theory. While this
might be true, we also need learn how motivated students will be to use these
tools over others. At the end of the day, the usefulness of a tool for
teaching concepts will be (its effectiveness when used)*(how motivated people
are to use it).

------
sagefy
The author suggests there's a choice between scaffolding and project-based
learning. There isn't. Scaffolding -- or breaking things down, and 'putting on
training wheels' so the learner doesn't get overwhelmed -- is an established
successful teaching strategy with plenty of research to defend the technique.
Project-based learning lends to the idea that making things real, instead of
just drills, leads to better learner motivation and retention. Project-based
learning also has evidence-based support. The idea that these two learning
strategies in are opposition is false. You can absolutely break down
activities in components, teach those first, and then do integration practice
-- all while doing project-based learning. Think 'mini-projects'.

Disclaimer: I'm working on [https://sagefy.org/](https://sagefy.org/)

------
greysonp
I think you need a mix. When I was in high school, I taught myself how to
program through making games. Progress was slow, and I wrote bad code, but I
had fun, and it's the reason I'm a programmer today.

Then I went to college and learned the fundamentals. I started doing projects
in my spare time (often by attending hackathons), and now those projects were
getting a lot better. The academics were crucial. However, I had friends that
never did projects outside of class, and as a result it hurt their learning.

Then, fast-forward to my first job, and I learned just as much in my first
year there as I did during my entire time in college.

So IMO, project-based learning without fundamentals (which is what I was doing
in high school) ends up being really slow can produce poor results. But just
learning fundamentals can be equally as bad. You need both!

------
natecavanaugh
This article reads to me like someone arguing whether it's better to learn by
reading or watching videos. Maybe both? Neither?

For me, what good is it to learn all of the fundamentals if I'm not sure those
fundamentals are getting me closer to my goal? Especially in the world of
tech, there is no short supply of "critical fundamentals", but woefully less
in actual implementation.

And in the tech world, there's a lot of implementation that lacks even a
cursory understanding of fundamentals.

IMO, this isn't a problem in the approach of learning, but the learner
stopping at a superficial understanding on either side.

Some people don't like to jump into new endeavors without understanding the
concepts. And others don't want to be bothered with abstracts until they can
see the results.

Good students beat bad ones, regardless of the journey that took them there.

------
RandomCSGeek
I think the author has confused engineering and science.

For example, for learning Web Development, I'd prefer a project based model
where I learn concepts and apply them to my project side by side. This way,
although the end result would be mess and likely incomplete, I get to learn a
lot from the mistakes and issues that come in the way.

On the other hand, for learning about compilers, a tradional semester-based
course, with 2-3 lectures/week, and maybe an coding assignment/week that can
be completed in an hour or two would work best. In this case, while I don't
have any real project at the end, I do learn the core concepts.

------
red_admiral
My own experience both as a learner and teacher is that project-based learning
works great once you know the fundamentals and terribly otherwise.

Imagine you want to teach a cohort of incoming CS students to build simple
web-server-with-database applications.

The "traditional" way to do this is to first teach them classes on web dev,
OOP, and databases. Afterwards, you give them a software project.

I agree with "modernists" that if you just teach the three classes, but don't
set a project at the end that integrates the knowledge, you end up with people
who are really good at passing whatever style of exam you set them but can
still be poor at actually building applications. That's one reason why
recruiters care about your portfolio as well as your CV, I guess. It's also
why universities, since time immemorial, have required individual projects and
dissertations to get a degree - after teaching you the classes, for your
"masterpiece" you work on a project.

The problem with making everything a project and assuming they'll learn or
teach themselves the basics as and when they need them, is that without some
understanding of what the building blocks are to build an application you end
up bogged down in the details and developing by trial and error.

Real examples I've seen: spending the best part of a week on code to manually
parse incoming HTTP headers (missing the fact that the server library already
does that for you); writing custom code to serialise lists into a database
field because you don't understand foreign keys (and of course breaking 1NF in
the process); loading individual items for which you have an "id" by "SELECT
*" on the whole table and then doing the filtering on the server, in O(N); and
of course writing code that's vulnerable to both XSS and SQL injection left
right and centre.

Even in a project unit where every student has a slightly different and very
open-ended project, there's some common ground, e.g. "using prepared
statements" for which there is such thing as a "one right way to do it" and my
experience is that actually teaching this kind of thing in isolation is the
only way that works.

------
dwaltrip
The nice thing about project-based learning is that it is well grounded, by
definition. Theory is useless without some form of grounding.

Group projects... well, that is a another thing entirely.

~~~
tebugst
Absolutely agree with you. Without context and purpose there is no meaning in
action. And CS is very broad field. Learning theory without practical is like
wondering forest without knowing path. Now if forest is small, it may work but
if forest is big then you will definitely lose.

------
Sytten
I study computer eng. with a projects based approach (teams of 2, 2 weeks
projects) and I believe that it is much better than regular classes. Yes you
miss theory, yes you don't go into the details of everything, but you get more
real-world experience and you actually need to work by yourself to learn
something. In regular classes, you can be passive and just listen, but with
projects you have to research, talk with people, try (and fail). If you have
great mentorship, you will gain more during those "sprints".

We also have a co-op program which is the best thing in the world really. I
simply don't understand why most universities don't have one. We do 4 months
of school then 4 months of work in a company (then repeat). 5 internships
during a 4 years bachelor give you almost 2 years of experience when you get
out of university. Since they are paid internships, you can live well during
school semesters and you don't have to work while studying. In addition, you
know way more what type of job you want to do since you tried so many
different companies. I personally know that I like smaller companies that
operate in the fintech market and that I like backend more than anything else
I tried.

------
njstraub608
The author argues against project-based learning but then states his "5-minute
attempt to come up with an alternative way to teach these skills" which are,
effectively, all projects or pieces of a project. Ultimately it doesn't boil
down to project-based learning being ineffective, but lack of teaching for
communication in engineering teams. If a student's goal is to learn network
programming, then they should speak up that they want to focus on that aspect
of the project. I took a few CS course post-grad after already beginning my
programming journey and found the methods of teaching to be highly ineffective
(the practice problems were too abstract and most students couldn't draw the
connection to real-life problems - this is at a uni with a top CS program).
Upper level courses should definitely keep focus on the complexities of
theory, but entry-level CS courses would serve students better by fostering
their interest in a topic and showing what it's like in the work force, and
then if it's still something they want to pursue then teaching the theory
makes sense as it's something they would end up trying to learn about on their
own anyway.

------
shawnee_
It's hard for me to agree with much of anything the author states here. This
snippet is why:

> I don’t teach network programming and haven’t tested these specific ideas.
> But, in my specialty of software design and code quality, I use exercises
> built on similar principles all the time.

In the real world, learners do not come packaged with all the tools and links
and resources they need to hammer out their solutions. Classrooms are great
when you can have a textbook and pre-defined problems and such, but that is
not now it works outside of the classroom (or the virtual classroom, as the
case may be).

"Software design" is not an isolated component from network programming. It is
that bridge between big data always getting piped in to (app / product /
website) from the network, and how to help ( user / customer / other
developer) where most engineers are hired to create value.

It is a good idea to attempt to design software with "code quality";
conceptually that sounds like a fantastic idea. But it is impossible to do
without also factoring in a predictive element of how it will be used or
accessed or even discovered over networks, stores, whatever.

------
nathan_f77
I think the author misses one major point: doing lessons and homework is
boring. Building real apps and making things is fun and exciting. I started
teaching myself Chinese when I was a teenager, and I decided to study it at
school. As soon as it turned into a routine with lessons and homework, I lost
all interest.

Project-based learning is an awesome way to learn a new framework or language,
especially if you already have a lot of experience. I also learn very well
from tutorials when I'm a beginner at something. For instance, I followed some
Blender tutorials to learn 3D modeling, and I think that's the only way I
could learn. The Blender UI is far too complex to just click around and figure
things out.

However, there are cases where you really do need to study a book and sit
exams. I have many years of experience with AWS, but I'm not an expert and
have lots of gaps in my knowledge. I've been thinking about getting an AWS
certification, so that I can deeply understand all of their services.

------
anonytrary
> I do want to dispel the idea that everything would be better if only we
> switched to project-based learning. The opposite is closer to true.

Both of these maximalist notions are so far from true, it's not even worth
asking which one is closer.

> Project-based learning is the most inefficient form of learning that still
> works.

Where it lacks efficiency in learning, it boasts incredible precision in
application. Project-based learning is practical, if not fundamental. You will
learn to do something tangible, but of course this may not be the most
efficient way to teach conceptual lessons. Concepts and understanding (aka
"the math") will be required to decrease learning curves for future
applications.

So yes, both project-based and course-based learning are important, it isn't
useful to completely eliminate one or the other, but I do feel the world is
currently partial towards course-based learning.

------
mgeorgoulo
It fails to address an important aspect of learning by projects: Being exposed
to the problems. You are _orders of magnitude_ more productive when learning
the solutions to problems you have encountered before. This kind of motivation
can only be achieved if you really do stuff.

------
starky
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.

------
stephen
Seems like having to choose only one learning/teaching style is a false
dicotomy.

E.g. I've been doing software a long time, so like the github guy in OP who
liked project based learning, that works really well for me when I basically
already know what I'm doing. E.g. I know C-based languages really well, put me
on a project with a new language, and I'll pick it up, np. Learning a new
language by drilling would be very boring for me.

But if I'm learning something truly new/novel to me, e.g. machine learning or
Haskell, where I have zero existing intuition for how it works, then drilling
constitute parts is very useful.

------
forkLding
I think whatever learning method depends on your goals, are you trying to get
immediate deep experience that a general (still quick-feedback) but intense
brushover of all the fundamentals can not provide, then project-based learning
is good for you, but if you're looking to not only master the fundamentals but
also advance in terms of being able to offer more on the fundamentals, then
traditional course-based learning is good for you.

I don't think there is a real good or bad but rather depends on your goal and
motivations. Depending on the goal, some people might learn more from projects
than course content and vice versa.

------
ergothus
I do a little teaching on the side. My primary objection to common (can't say
if it is traditional) programming instruction is not theory vs practice, it is
"of what"

Most of my time coding is spent pouring through code that i didnt write (at
least not recently), building the design in my mind, finding the spot to
change, and then making that change.

In contrast, most school coding assignments are write-from-scratch one-offs,
usually involving only one students' code.

------
websitescenes
CS grads are so insecure when it comes to this subject. Truth is most schools
burry you in theory and barely teach you anything that is used in the field. A
motivated self starter can easily surpass someone that went the traditional
route. I only recommend school if it’s free. If you have to take loans or go
in debt, don’t do it. That money would be far better used to start your own
venture and learn on the job.

------
taurath
I think the author is totally wrong and is just trying to sell some classes. I
learned 3/4 of my skill set by coming up against examples when joining a work
project or coming upon problems when trying to fix things. There is no
functional difference between practice and performance when it comes to
writing software, only the goals of the exercise.

------
Joboman555
I think this is missing the main point of Project Based Learning: you choose
what you want to learn. You cannot treat motivation as a constant when
comparing educational methods. Students get much more from their learning when
it is intrinsic and specific to their interests, as is the case when doing a
project.

------
brooklyn_ashey
Some great point in OP's critique. But CS isn't music theory. Music theory is
not really known well by most musicians who are excellent players. Theory is
for theorists. I'm not saying that most musicians know zero theory-- they know
what key they are in--but seriously, that only happens after they can play
lots of concertos. Pianists tend to know more, but that's because it's staring
them in the face every time they play. (speaking as a career musician:
performer, composer, teacher of performance and theory) Yes, musicians drill
lots of different things, but honestly, it depends what it's for. If
practicing improv withchord changes, one needs to know those changes inside
and out, but that is truly just one way-- if one is improvising freely, one
needs to practice by doing. It really is the only way. Improv is the creative
aspect-- classical is the perfect reproduction aspect. I'm thinking software
development is a kind of hybrid. Also-- there isn't a pro music job on earth
that anyone could learn well enough in a bootcamp for even six months with no
prior experience, so the good news is-- no software engineer is regularaly
competing with Horowitz yet. Sure, there are virtuosos in programming, but as
a musician, you are surrounded by them and are already one yourself as an
undergrad-- at least! This is good news for creativity in teaching
programming. In terms of motivation of students: from what I have experienced
as a programming student in several programs and as an observer-- the material
studied is not inspiring. In music, we study Mozart and Thelonious Monk.
Puccini and Stravinsky. Reich and Cage. In programming, we studied models and
diagrams. We never looked at "great code". When I asked if there was indpiring
code to see, my teacher guided me to online lessons made by the school. I
asked if there was. jupiter Symphony of code somewhere, desperately looking
for a way to be indpired as I am with great writers and composers. My teacher
treated me like I was "being difficult". I dropped out of this program and
learned on my own. This was one of the tippy top bootcamps in NYC. I was
hoping it would be there for me in these ways-- it wasn't. I'm left with this:
I can't imagine any musician getting hired to teach with such low level
understanding of ... the world of interesting examples- even a beginning music
professor can direct students to inspiring examples of greatness in the field.
Teachers need to be paid well for the time it takes to develop interesting
methods of teaching. Teaching is a complex hybrid science and art. Like all of
these, it requires time and mastery, but most important: innovation!

~~~
tr0ut
Programming can be creative but it is not performance art. I'm not sure what
you were expecting? Even if you found something (subjective) it may not be
very functional. Completely different animal. You seemed to be missing the
point of software engineering.

Funny you choose Horowitz, Monk, Starvinsky and Cage as examples. Which either
never attended, rejected or had limited academic education.

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
Actually, software engineering isn't a completely different animal from music-
ing. It's the most similar animal I can think of. Its pedagogy is behind
music's pedagogy by two, maybe three hundred years. (for obvious reasons) It
could learn a lot from the errors in music pedagogy. For one example I can
think of off the top of my head, the OP mentioned that we practice scales.
Well, yes. But it really is "how" we practice scales that matters. Practicing
a scale from bottom to top and back isn't really useful. But lots of people do
it like crazy. They drill this. But nowhere in music (maybe performance art,
though?)is there a scale in any key all the way up in four ocatves and all the
way back down. Nowhere. So practicing that is really a waste of time. It isn't
a waste of time if you want to just learn how to play anything fast though,
because you "know those notes". Playing fast is a different physical feeling
that is counter-intuitive really. But people practice scales like this for the
key's sake, and that is really not a great use of practice time. A better use,
in this analogy, would be if you wanted to see if you could get around a key
in any direction, with leaps and figures and all the things that may show up
in a key. Then practice that. Practice figures, loops, improv leaps- in a key.
That will make you a better sightreader a better player in that key way faster
than scales. I I have the data for hundreds of students, myself and colleagues
to prove it. This information doesn't get to the regular Saturday student, but
believe me, it is known by professionals and great teachers. It isn't
unconventional at all, despite the many parents who get worried about their
kids not playing scales like they did or like they heard in movies or TV
commercials. Mozart practiced like this. Paganini practiced like this. I have
to make the argument to concerned parents at least once a year anyhow. Not
sure why. I'm not saying drilling isn't important. It is. But it's what to
drill that is the thing. It is also not churning out a bunch of meat compilers
and calling those musicians-- or programmers. One thing programmers cold drill
right off the bat would be typing for programming. I see a lot of bad typing.
I'm bad at it. I realize that's a basic idea. Programming is creative in
exactly the way that playing the blues is creative. Everybody does it
differently- those who develop their own style are the greats, but in the end,
it is still blues. Not sure why academic education of those composers has
anything to do with anything. Certainly those composers were some of the most
educated, intellectual people who have lived, Monk being the least traditional
in his expertise, but he sure understood social history. And even he headed
over to work with Hal Overton when he wanted some respect from the
establishment at Juilliard and for his Town Hall concert. My point being, in
current educational models for programming (not talking MIT or Stanford,
because I woldn't know and I'm sure it's different there, because they really
pay for it to be so) we aren't reaching for great teaching. We aren't reaching
for inspiration. We aren't reaching for technical innovation. But there is a
whole lot we can learn from master teachers who have come before in other
fields. I think the OP has a point, but I think project-based learning is very
important. NOT, however at the exclusion of drills that are creative. Not at
the exclusion of coming up with techniques that other fields have not thought
of yet. I mean- sheesh- we have accessible mountains of teaching/learning data
in computing. No one is using that to make their education better. Why?

------
cbhl
If you're interested in going through the literature about learning, I
recommend starting with _Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary
Classroom_ by Marilla D. Svinicki.

------
seangrogg
I feel like articles are just stumbling onto the reason why many sciences have
coursework and labwork as part of the curriculum.

------
tebugst
Your actions are recognized as skill only if they are useful in real life.

------
osteele
PBL works best in the presence of learning objectives, such that the project
has domain deliverables, but is also explicitly designed to lead to learning
outcomes. (In a team project, these objectives are mostly defined at the level
of the student, not the team.) Ideally, these learning objectives are shared
with, and maybe even, in a college course and maybe earlier, co-developed with
the student.

“5 PBL Pitfalls to Avoid” [^1] may not be the final or best word on PBL, and
it focuses more on PBL in primary education, but it's relevant and I was able
to find it in ten seconds via Google. ([^2], which links to this, is the top
hit for “project based learning”.) “The Practice is not the Performance” would
be a stronger article if it either (1) responded to PBL as it's actually used
(in my understanding and experience) in schools, or (2) argued that, and why,
college-level applications typically stumble into the pitfalls in [^1]. (Which
may indeed be true, but I'm not prepared on the content of “The Practice” to
weight the authors claims over my own experience.)

The author's other point is around isolation practice. Well, yes. Olin's
current Software Design course (intro to Python and programming, typically
taken in the second semester) takes a textbook approach[^3] to the basic
concepts of programming and computational thinking, and introduces projects as
concurrent stream. But also — musicians, athletes, and other performance
practitioners are often advised not to perform isolations to the exclusion of
longer phrases or entire pieces, lest (1) they forget how to combine the
elements into a fluid whole, or (2) they remove the feedback loops that tell
them what areas of weakness to isolate. The software analogue of (1) might be
design principles and practices that don't appear with isolated elements or at
small scale. The software analogue of using isolations within a project
context might include discovering that you don't understand a language feature
well enough to use it or debug it, taking time out to explore it by reading or
experimentation, and then returning to the project. This doesn't downplay the
importance of isolations, but it uses them as a complement to PBL, not a
substitute.

I think there's a lot to be learned about software engineering (which I think
is what the author means when he refers to “CS”) from instruction in music and
in studio arts, but it's better learned from a deeper look at both formal and
informal instruction in these areas.

There are some open questions, not (I believe) mentioned in the article but
raised in some of the comments here:

* _Who_ is PBL appropriate for? For example, Olin College uses PBL — mostly within the context of Team-Based Learning (TBL) — extensively. However, the Olin admissions process[^4] evaluates candidates within the context of a group activity, which overlaps substantially with PBL and TBL, and provides not only information about the candidates to the students, faculty, staff, and alumni on the team, but also provides a taste of the TBL/PBL experience to prospective students, that they can use to self-select prior to matriculation.

* _In what domains_ is PBL applicable? It seems to me a clear win for many engineering, design, and entrepreneurship topics. Olin's Quantitative Engineering Analysis[^5][^6] is a multi-year experiment in applying PBL to introductory-college-level math and physics.

[^1]: Frank McKay, “5 PBL Pitfalls to Avoid”.
[https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-pbl-pitfalls-
avoid](https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-pbl-pitfalls-avoid)

[^2]: Edutopia, “Project-Based Learning”. [https://www.edutopia.org/project-
based-learning?gclid=CjwKCA...](https://www.edutopia.org/project-based-
learning?gclid=CjwKCAiAt8TUBRAKEiwAOI9pAA3kmvdJzyt_GGWPL9YsLIZd_ZNqJbAkmHTSWpbW1b62GL8bYwbf2hoCH4QQAvD_BwE)

[^3]: Literally. Allen Downey, who designed an early version of the course and
is on the faculty, wrote the textbook: _Think Python_.
[http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-
python-2e/](http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/)

[^4]: Olin College, “Candidates Weekends”.
[http://www.olin.edu/admission/candidates-
weekends/](http://www.olin.edu/admission/candidates-weekends/)

[^5]: Olin College, “QEA”. [http://meet.olin.edu/olin-isms/quantitative-
engineering-anal...](http://meet.olin.edu/olin-isms/quantitative-engineering-
analysis-qea)

[^6]: Olin College, “Changing Course”. [http://www.olin.edu/the-
wire/2016/changing-course/](http://www.olin.edu/the-wire/2016/changing-
course/)

------
jasonlotito
tl;dr: If you only do one type of X-based learning, it will fail to teach you
everything you need to know. This is literally covered last in the disclaimer.

The author never talked about whether this was actually a problem.

And frankly, it's a shameless plug for a course that literally uses project-
based learning in it.

