A commonality of language, understanding, goals, and appropriate methods would all be factors to consider. If a community shares a clear understanding of what needs to happen, and exactly how to go about making it happen, the hardest part is over and everyone can get to work. An ideal situation would be for a community to learn together the most effective collaborative uses of the Internet collaborative tools and to put them to use without delay. Today, many communities consist of members who have moved in from diverse cultures and locations, thus creating the need to establish a common ground of understanding before members can work together effectively to achieve common goals. New skills must be learned to create the social info-structure with the intelligence to make good things happen on behalf of the community.
Youth literally embody the future of their communities.
Accordingly, they must be part of inventing the means by which they will be able to remain as contributing citizens in their communities. Many of these activities intentionally involve the community and community issues because the role of schools is to grow good citizens. Three of the most significant PBL models will be described briefly, followed by discussion on what an ideal project might look like incorporating the best of all three models. In a typical webquest activity, students would use the Internet to access specific information on a defined topic, researching first as an individual, and then engaging with others in a defined small group activity to share their research results and integrate them with those of others. The activity ends with a group presentation and often creation of a web page with the research findings.