The U@Uni Inspiring Teaching Blog connects educators from schools, UTS and the Department of Education through the sharing of emerging and best practice in the Project Based Learning space. We believe that by building a strong community of practice through the collective sharing of resources, experiences and ideas, we can support you to continue creating learning activities that challenge and engage your students.
The blog is a tool that we hope you can use to inform your work, learning from the experiences of others. We also encourage you to share your advice and practice through contributions to the blog. You can find out how to contribute here.
Why PBL?
Effectively designed Project Based Learning encourages self-regulated learning and deeper understanding of content in a way that is empowering and respectful of students’ diversity and differing abilities – a characteristic that we believe is essential in encouraging students’ aspiration, and building their self-confidence and academic attainment.
In our work with schools, Project Based Learning has been highlighted as an emergent teaching and learning approach that is gaining traction across a wide variety of curriculum. Through Project Based Learning students gain knowledge and skills by investigating an authentic and engaging problem, challenge or question. Students are engaged in hands on and interactive activities that are transactional rather than more traditional passive approaches to learning, allowing for more ownership over their learning.
Some of the key elements of project based learning involve authenticity, student voice and choice, collaboration, reflection and feedback, and public product whereby students make their work public by displaying it beyond the classroom. This type of learning lends itself to transdisciplinary and cross-curricular opportunities, reflecting how projects occur in the real world. Through this process students build their skills in collaboration, critical thinking and self-regulation – essential for the 21st century.
What we do
We look after the U@Uni program (links to external website), a key component of the UTS Widening Participation Strategy (WPS) which provides a whole-of-university approach to increase the number of students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds successfully completing university study.
We do this by offering an integrated suite of activities for high school students that aims to:
- build aspiration for tertiary study
- support academic attainment
- widen participation in higher education
In addition, part of our commitment to supporting students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds includes building capacity in the schools in which they attend.
We welcome you to the U@Uni Inspiring Teaching Blog.