Project-based learning is a teaching and learning strategy that engages students in complex activities. Projects may focus on the development of a product or performance, and they generally call upon students to organize their activities, conduct research, solve problems, and synthesize information.
Projects are often interdisciplinary.
Furthermore, the student products created during projects provide the means by which teachers can include authentic assessment in their instruction. If we believe that standards are the expectations of what students should know and be able to do in any given discipline, then linking them together within disciplines and across disciplines, just as they link naturally, gives students a reason for mastering them. When students are presented with a group of standards in a project-based learning experience, concepts are not taught in isolation. As a result, students have the opportunity to practice and develop their ability to function in complex thinking environments that reflect the type of work environments they will encounter in the twenty-first century. Consider the concept of friction, an essential content element in any physics course.