4 Things to Consider Before You Retire a PBL Unit

Consistency can be an asset in many areas, such as exercise, eating fruits or vegetables, or building a financial nest egg. However, when it comes to project-based learning (PBL), just because you’ve “done it like this for years” doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to have continued success. The fact is, projects do have an expiration date, and that date is sometimes ignored by the teacher-designer. You should always be willing to consider shelving even your most successful projects.

In the writing world, this scrutiny is referred to as “killing your darlings”—a macabre phrase that describes when authors assess and remove parts of a script or book, like cherished characters, if they no longer serve the overall story or its purpose. In PBL, the purpose of our projects is to ensure that learners remain engaged and challenged through relevant and real-world examples. If the projects are no longer providing that, it may be time to look for something new.

Before you consider whether it’s time to put your project out to pasture, make sure that you’ve completed all of the essential steps that represent a full project development cycle; plan your project with the feedback and support of colleagues, implement the project, gather assessment data and learner feedback, and consider revisions that could improve the project.

High-quality PBL projects require a multiyear commitment, so I always tell the teachers I work with that the outcome they picture in their head doesn’t always come to fruition until after the first time they implement their project. Be willing to give any project a try or two, or as P.T. Barnum once said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit—there is no sense in being a fool about it.”

Here are four benchmarks that may signal that it’s time to retire a project and design something new.

1. Opportunity

PBL shouldn’t be an endeavor that is attempted solo. It works best as a collaborative endeavor that consistently involves community partners. However, people, priorities, and relationships don’t stay static, and changes could lead to the disappearance of a key part of your project.

For example, I worked with a teacher on a social studies project about local history. She made a connection with a local park ranger who was pivotal to a PBL project that she had facilitated for years. The ranger facilitated an in-class program that served as the entry event, shared outside expertise, and even provided a venue for her students’ final products to be displayed. After several years, the ranger was transferred, and nobody else at the park was able to fill the role. As a result, the teacher decided to develop something new.

If a key experience or resource is no longer available, consider whether the learner experience will be diminished or if you have time to invest in replacing the missing pieces. It might be a more expedient choice to do something new.

2. Relevance

Many PBL projects draw their authenticity from real-world issues, problems, and challenges that come from a student’s lived experiences. This relevance is key to illustrating how the learning goals matter and keeps students engaged by showing them how their work matters. Absent this important motivator, projects can feel performative or even pointless.

If your project revolves around exploring or solving a community issue or problem, and that issue no longer exists, where will students get their drive? For example, a teacher in a rural district did a project for many years that focused on a local waterway that was polluted by high levels of mercury and other heavy metals. The project revolved around exploring the best methods for improving the water’s quality. Then one day, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the river as a Superfund cleanup site. Within a few years, the waterway was resuscitated. Continuing the project no longer made sense, so the teacher retired it.

Likewise, if the focal point of the project seems less imperative than another issue, you might be missing an opportunity to create a better learning experience for your students. For example, a project where students write position papers about inequalities regarding access to technology is ultimately going to seem outdated—when every student has a computer in their pocket—and even more so when compared with a project where students discuss and debate the role and impact of artificial intelligence on society. The latter will have more current resources to draw on, given its relevance, so be sure to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s new.

3. Connection

Just because something lands well with one group of students doesn’t mean that it’ll land the same way with another. While including voice and choice in your project can help learners make it their own, always design it with the learner in mind. Draw on the interests, needs, and strengths of who’s sitting in the classroom. The makeup of these three things changes every year.

A teacher I know well experienced this with one of the first PBL projects she ever taught. The first year of facilitation was a great fit for her class. She described it as “rolling along on its own,” not just thanks to her work, but also because it was a good fit for the cast of characters she had in her classroom that year. In terms of their interests and their background knowledge and skills, all of these things lent themselves to the final product that she chose to produce—a podcast.

However, future attempts didn’t go nearly as smoothly, and the strengths and interests of the learners in her class in subsequent years didn’t align the same way. She eventually concluded that the needs in the classroom required a different project. So, she shelved the one she was doing and began to redesign the whole project—keeping her current class at the center.

4. Commitment

If there’s one thing that a decade of teaching middle school taught me, it’s this: Kids can tell when you’re faking it. No matter how good of an actor you are, it’s hard to dredge up enthusiasm for things that you’re just not excited about teaching or exploring.

If you can’t get excited about the project that you’re facilitating because it no longer gets you interested and excited, why would you expect your learners to feel enthusiastic? The effort that you’d have to expend just to get their buy-in might be a lot more than what’s required to create something new and interesting to you. The feeling of heaviness you experience trying to drum up false passion for something you’ve done a dozen times could be replaced by the lightness of creating something new.

If these indicators and anecdotes resonate with you, don’t look at them as signs of failure. After all, every project you create and facilitate teaches you new lessons and makes the next one that much better. Don’t be afraid to consider if it’s time to finally let go. Your next big project could be waiting for you to put a current one aside.