PBL Simplified by Magnify Learning
PBL Simplified Podcast helps innovative principals and teachers like you bring Project Based Learning to your classrooms. PBL Simplified is in the top 5% of over 2 million global podcasts.
Hosted by Ryan Steuer, of Magnify Learning, we strive to empower school leaders and teachers with examples from Project Based Learning classrooms, leadership inspiration, and practical PBL resources.
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Whether you are a teacher or school leader, there is something for you on PBL Simplified:
1st Wednesday: PBL Leadership Episode
2nd Wednesday: PBL Showcase - a PBL facilitator shares a PBL Unit
3rd Wednesday: PBL Leadership Episode
4th Wednesday: PBL Interview.
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PBL Simplified by Magnify Learning
Unlocking College Success: The Power of Project-Based Learning | E207
Unlock the full potential of Project Based Learning (PBL) and transform the way students prepare for college. Discover how PBL not only equips learners with essential skills like collaboration and self-awareness but also empowers them to navigate the challenges of university life with confidence. Join us as Ryan Steuer, CIO of Magnify Learning, shares his insights and experiences from the classroom, illustrating how PBL bridges the gap between high school and the daunting college lecture halls of institutions like Purdue and IU. With practical tips and resources available through PBL Simplified, educators can seamlessly integrate this cutting-edge instructional model into their teaching repertoire.
In this episode, we also dive into the crucial aspect of making values-driven decisions when choosing a college. The Project Based Learning approach allows students to align their educational paths with their passions and career goals, setting the stage for both personal and professional growth. Whether you're an educator seeking to enhance your teaching methods or a student preparing for the next big step, this episode offers invaluable guidance on leveraging the power of PBL for a successful future.
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What are five ways that project-based learning prepares students for college? It's one of the questions we get often. It's one that I asked when I was in the classroom I was teaching eighth grade. We had 125 kids in eighth grade that were getting project-based learning through their four core classes and they were getting it what would have early on been called wall-to-wall right. So that was our instructional model from day one to day 184, and it was like we're working in small groups, we're presenting. That's awesome. What about when they go to Purdue or IU, which we had two definite options for our learners, and now they're in a class basic chemistry class that has 850 kids in it. Like, how do they survive, how do they learn how to take notes in a giant lecture hall where nobody knows their name? And I thought it was such a big deal for me, because I went to Purdue, that I actually had our janitors rip down one of the walls. It was cinder block walls. So over the summer they took down the whole cinder blocks for this whole wall right. It was pretty neat because you actually kind of carve out the mortar in between, you just take it down. It was actually a pretty clean process. They did a great job. So we had this room where we could fit all the kids in this one room and then they could be lectured to. I'm not going to tell you it was the best move. It fulfilled that piece for me, I think, and then I probably found out that we probably didn't need to do that. But now I've got five keys for PBL to prepare your students for college.
Ryan Steuer:Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast. I'm your host, ryan Stoyer, ceo, chief Inspiration Officer at Magnify Learning, and I'm glad you're here. What do we do here? We help inspire PBL movement makers so that you can lead, because we know that everyone wins when leaders are inspired. So whether you're leading a classroom, a school or a district, your leadership matters. We are obsessed with helping you transform your school. You're in the right place. If that resonates with you, if you can tell there's just something that's a little off or that there's a little more out there in the educational world, you're in the right place.
Ryan Steuer:We're not trying to replace everything. We're not trying to put down teachers or rag on the system. We just think there's a few things that you could magnify and we think the PBL process does a great job of that because it's a full instructional model. There's a standardized process really nationally through different PBL organizations, and you don't see that when you look at stem or service learning, which are pieces that I love, like I love service learning, a lot of that work and there are models, but I don't know if there's one that's fully accepted across the country and stem fits really well in your project based learning. But a lot of times there's not really a set process for that right, so you can get caught in random acts of stem that just happen over here. A little bit of science, science, a little bit of math, maybe an engineering piece, and you don't have a full instructional model that you can really transform a school with. Or maybe you've got the engineering design process right, which again I love right, it starts with empathy, right. Then you start to build out some prototypes. It seems to be a hard model to bring into K-12 schools as far as a full instructional model for that school. So that's where we land on project-based learning. If something better comes along that transforms schools to empower our learners, our students, then hey, we're in, we'll move towards that. But what we see is we see PBL changing schools across the country elementary, middle, high school and colleges and it's working and it's spreading.
Ryan Steuer:If you want some more information to go study on your own, you can go to pbl simplifiedcom pbl simplifiedcom and what you're going to get there is you can sign up, whether a teacher or an administrator. We've got two separate tracks for you and you'll get a youtube series. So if you want to watch your content in short bursts of five minutes or so or less, then it's a great way to take in your content and we've got a lot of really good reviews. We've taken 20,000 plus teachers through the Teacher PBL Simplified series and we get great feedback. So highly recommend that and we know people that use it for their PD. They got a short burst of PD. You can kind of start off with that being your entry event and then maybe you talk about group contracts and what's it going to look like for your staff. A lot of different ways to use it. Totally free resource pblsimplifiedcom. Enjoy it.
Ryan Steuer:But today we're talking about five ways that project-based learning prepares students for college and you're going to want to stick around for number five because I've got a great resource for you in number five. But the very first one is that as a learner, they learn who they are and how they learn, and that's invaluable, I think, in a K-12 education. Are we still going to teach slope-intercept form compound sentences? Yep, absolutely those same things. We also want our learners to know who they are, how they learn and what they want.
Ryan Steuer:And from my experience, like I did school exactly how you were supposed to do it. I got a 4.2. I was a three-sport athlete. I ran, I played basketball, I ran again, I ran a lot in high school. But I did all the things that you're supposed to do National Honor Society, you know, captain or president of the Letterman's Club, like all those things. And then I was good at math and science.
Ryan Steuer:So everybody said, well, go to Purdue and you get in-state tuition, top engineering school in the country, go be an engineer. And I said, copy that, I'll do it. And nobody ever actually asked me like what I wanted to do and I never even asked myself, like it wasn't a, it wasn't part of the equation for me. I was just doing what was put in front of me and I went to be an engineer. I went to a fortune 50 company, went to found a big company, be an engineer and did a great job. I loved it. But I didn't love it as much as the two days that we worked with United Way. We worked with kids in a United Way program after school-school program and I loved those two days, just loved them. Like this is it, like this is my passion, like this is what I want to do. I want to help kids.
Ryan Steuer:So I jumped ship and started teaching eighth grade English on the southwest side of Minneapolis at an urban school, and I don't regret that path. But I would have loved for someone to have said you know, ryan, what do you want to do? What do you enjoy doing? Never even thought about it. And I think, as we get kind of stuck in some traditional teaching methods and ways of doing school that just kind of maybe stagnate I think if we have an enemy at Magnify Learning, it's kind of the stagnation of education. We think you should be moving, we should be, you know, finding best practices, using something new. Not that everything has to be new, but we should be exploring these things to say, could we do this just a little better? And I think it's one of the things we do really well in PBL is figuring out how learners learn and figuring out who they are introducing them to community partners so they can really figure out what they want to do before they make essentially a big gamble. They make essentially a big gamble, right? I've got a student story where she went to go be a pharmacist $80,000, all said and done and she hated being a pharmacist. It was just a gamble. It's like well, it's a well-paying job and I'm good at these things and I like school. But it turns out she didn't like the profession, she just hadn't been opened up to some of these ideas. And so it becomes a huge gamble and our kids can leave college with debt and no degree, and that's just not okay, friends. So we've got to figure out where they want to be, what they want to do, what they're passionate about, and I'm going to tease this again. Number five is going to magnify this point of number one and give you a tool. So stick around for that.
Ryan Steuer:The second way that PBL prepares students for college is the collaboration skills. And you might say well, how does working in small groups help you in college when you're in a giant classroom of 250 kids and you're kind of faceless in that arena? Well then, you've got a smaller class where you break out with a TA and what we find is that our PBL learners, when they're in college, is that they're the ones that start study groups. Right, I was in engineering, industrial engineering. It's ridiculously hard and if you don't find a study group I just don't think you survive. Or you have to have somebody that's going to help you through this process, and the professor and the TA. You don't have to try real hard, just can't do it for that many kids. So you've got to form your own study groups and our PBL learners understand how to lead those. They understand how they should work and as they invite people into those, people will jump in. So we find those collaboration skills, those group contracts that you're giving them right now, that you're really teaching them how to create study groups and how to be in groups successfully, and it pays off in college big time.
Ryan Steuer:The third way that project-based learning prepares students for college is is empowerment. So we're moving our learners from apathetic to engaged and from engaged to empowered, and when you're empowered in college one, I think you're safe. I think if you're not empowered and you're floating through and you're not sure why, I actually think college is pretty dangerous because there are a lot of things that can throw you off track and again you end up with no degree, in debt, and that's just not okay. So in PBL we're moving our learners to be empowered, to know what they want, to speak up for their learning, your need to know. Start that process, tell us what you need to know to fulfill this mission, this PBL unit, if you will. And as we're building that empowerment, it bleeds over into their college career. And I'll give you an example.
Ryan Steuer:I had a friend when I was going to college again, let's go in the way back machine and Kevin came from out of state. He came from Pennsylvania and he was then paying out of state tuition right, which was a lot more than I was paying in state. There's a huge difference. And our professor canceled the class and it was like awesome, I'm going to go play basketball at the rec center. Kevin was like no, no, no, I paid for that class. He's going to give me that class. I want my hour back or I want a refund. He was empowered and he didn't just stop to complain, he went and talked to the professor and said this is completely unacceptable. I just loved it because I had never even heard of this idea of I'm going to demand that you teach me this class, right? I was, you know, sliding in and out. I probably should have gone more than I did to some classes and Kevin was going to say, no, I paid for this class and you are going to give it to me.
Ryan Steuer:And it's that empowerment that we need our learners to have, right. We look at college perseverance rates and say are you getting from your freshman year to your sophomore year? Like, what percentage is that rate? Because a lot of our learners drop out. They just they can't take the workload. There's too many freedoms, there's just so many variables when you go from high school to college. That first year is super important. But if you're empowered to ask for help, a lot of colleges have help now for that first year. We were talking with a university here in the Midwest and they have actually hired an executive director to run an entire program around this first year and around retention of keeping kids in college.
Ryan Steuer:Our college friends don't want any more than we do. They don't want our learners to have debt and no degree. They're not looking for that either. It's not in anyone's best interest for that to happen. So they're trying to create programs. But if our learners are not empowered to take advantage of them, they don't do any good. And we see that we see study groups or study halls that are put out there for our 21st century learners, that we see study groups or study halls that are, you know, put out there for our 21st century learners and they're empty. Right, I've been those. I've tutored folks that were when I was in college and they were in 21st century and I had two people right that were trying to make it and they were going to make it, they were going to persevere because they showed up. But how many didn't show up and how many didn't take advantage of the benefits that were ahead of them? If we can teach our students to be empowered right, that's past engagement, right and get way, way, way way on the other side of apathetic, empowered and saying I'm going to make it and I'm going to use every resource that's here to do that, that perseverance rate can go up and, I would like to say, skyrocket. I would love to see that.
Ryan Steuer:The fourth way that PBL prepares your students for college is that they know where college fits in the big scheme of things. They know where college fits in the big scheme of things, they're not just going to get a piece of paper, or they know why they need a piece of paper, because if you're going to be an engineer, you've got to have a piece of paper, right, you can't do that on Udemy and you've got to have. You're going to go into the medical field, you have to have that piece of paper and you have to learn these things because they're going to directly apply to what you do every single day and it might be different than if you've got a learner who wants to go into coding, for instance. They want to go code with Python. They don't, in my opinion, don't even need to go to college by the time they're done in four years. It's probably a different coding language. If you can code, people will hire you because you have a portfolio that you have coded right. So if you're going in for coding, you should be coding right now and then you should have a portfolio that you have coded. I don't know if that's really a verb, but you should have a portfolio and we see that happen all the time.
Ryan Steuer:But when we get into college, our learners should be looking, because they've seen community partners during their PBL units in their K-12 career. They've looked, they've seen what a firefighter does. They've seen what a lawyer does. They've seen what a doctor does. They see what a researcher does. They've seen what a lawyer does. They've seen what a doctor does. They see what a research assistant does. They see what a dental hygienist does and they've seen these different careers and they know that college is a path to these careers that they want. It's not the end, all be all, it's not the best days of their life. It's a pathway to get them to a place that they want to go. So they're putting that in context and again, I wish I would have had this when I was in college. Right To have the perspective that some of our PBL learners are going into college with. And again, we're trying to move that perseverance rate from freshman year to sophomore year, because once they get to sophomore year we've got a much better chance, if they can get through sophomore year, of them actually graduating. Now are they going to graduate in four or five years? I don't know that answer. That's still pretty tough, but I know that they can persevere if they know how college fits All right.
Ryan Steuer:So the fifth way that PBL prepares students for college and I've been teasing this one. Right, it's important, it's a big one. Number one, if you remember, was learn who you, who you are, know how you learn and who you are. Number two is you've got collaboration skills. You're going to make your own study groups so that you can survive college. In some of these majors it is you have to survive. Number three empowerment. You're going to talk to your professor, you're going to go and demand that you learn these things and people are going to help you. Number four you're going to know where college fits in the big scheme of things. You're going to have importance behind it and you're going to have a why behind why you're there.
Ryan Steuer:And number five number five is be ready to choose a college based on your values. Based on your values, not just because it's closest, cheapest or opposite, that is really expensive and it's got a fancy name. You're choosing a college because it actually fits you. If you want to go to a Big Ten college, great. If you don't, because you feel like you'll get lost, then you make a conscious decision to say you know what? I know a bunch of people in my class are going to a Big Ten college, but that's probably not for me. I need smaller class sizes. I need people to know me by name, like that's just how I learned well. Like that's how I started doing well in high school. Right, I liked PBL because I relationship with my facilitators and I need that, I want that, and then they make that decision based on values and how they learn. That would be a huge difference.
Ryan Steuer:Right and again, in my high school, for the most part, you chose one of the big, big colleges Purdue or IU or a community college, and anybody that did something different. I'll honestly, I was. I didn't understand why. Like Well, why are you doing that? Because I went to Purdue, because my dad went to Purdue. Now, again, every learner has a different story. My dad was a first-generation college student and Purdue got him out of the rural poverty that he grew up in and he didn't want me to have that same experience. So he said, hey, take the same path I did. And now that allows me some freedom to look at my children and say, look, grandpa, put us on this path, put me here. So now we're in a position like we're going to look at colleges from a values-based perspective. Where does this fit into what you want to do with your life and where your passions are and how you best learn. So so every learner has a different scenario of how they're going to choose, but if we can help them figure out values-based processes, learner-based processes for their, for their commitments processes, learner-based processes for their commitments, it makes a huge difference.
Ryan Steuer:And here's the resource I've got my friends at forgettherankingscom Forget the rankings. Jared and Jen are the founders. They're actually going to be on the podcast next week, so you're going to want to hear directly from them, because they're phenomenal and their whole premise is that they don't want a learner to pick Yale because it's Yale. And then they freak out and they've got anxiety about whether or not the letter comes in or if it doesn't come in, like, what does that mean? What does that mean for me as a person? And if I go to community college, what does that mean for me as a person? Like, am I less of a person? And the answer is obviously and of course, no. Like, you're going to go get an education and your value is in you as a person and the things that you're going to, you know, help society with. You've got these dreams and passions and they're all valuable. Now where should you go. And what Jared and Jen have done is they've got a whole set of cards that you can go through that helps learners figure out where they want to go to college based on their values.
Ryan Steuer:And so many times we don't get to have this conversation with learners about what do you value and how? Do I know that? Because I have the conversation with adults. We talk about core values of your school, of your ministry, of your business, and by the time we're done in like just 30 minutes, there's so much clarity for these adults. Like what would that do for our students to say what are the things that you value and why do you value them? And it's okay that your, your value system is different than mine, right, but let's choose a college based on things that are important and passionate for you. So it's forgettherankingscom. We'll put a link in the show notes and again, I've got to highly encourage that you check out the podcast next week, because I'm going to have Jared and Jen on the podcast. We're going to talk to them.
Ryan Steuer:So those are the five ways that PBL prepares students for college. Number one they're going to learn who they are and how they learn. Two is collaboration skills. Three is empowerment. Four they're going to know where college fits in the big scheme of their life. And five we want them to be ready to choose college based on their values. And in project-based learning we're looking at employability skills. We're looking at learning styles. We're helping learners figure out yes, we are mastering the standards and the content and as we do that, we're giving them a bigger picture of the world and a bigger picture of the opportunities that are before them. And as we do that, it gives them a huge leg up for college.
Ryan Steuer:Pbl is not a disadvantage for college. It is quite the opposite. It is having empowered learners go into a place that is big and different and sometimes scary, and they're coming out all right. In fact, they're coming out better than all right. They're figuring life out while they're there and they're coming away with a degree and maybe some debt, but they've got a job on the other side that can help with that process and it's such a big deal.
Ryan Steuer:I think that's one of my new enemies. I actually talk about it in the next podcast because this interview with Jared and Jen, like I can already guarantee it's awesome. I've already talked with them, but you get to talk to them next week. But it's like one of my big enemies is really that idea that kids go to college and they come back with debt and no degree. And again, that's the enemy. It's not college, it's not the professors. They want the same thing we want. They want our learners to be successful and we all need to help prepare them, and I think we can do that with project-based learning. That's why we're obsessed with transforming your school using PBL as that instructional model. If you want to get again a free taste of that, go to pblsimplifiedcom pblsimplifiedcom, and we'll give you some great free resources via YouTube, and I'd love to get some feedback from you on that as well. So let me know how that lands with you and your team. In the meantime, again next Wednesday, you're going to want to make sure that you hit this episode with Jared and Jen, so mark your calendars, look in the show notes, while I forget the rankingscom in there. Until next time, go lead inspired.
Ryan Steuer:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and honor that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning and PBL Simplified popped up. When they see those reviews, they know that high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune into and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you you.
