Gurugram : ‘The Big PBL Meet’ at Vega Schools on 19th March, Sunday saw hordes of Gurugram based parents come out to understand the project based learning methodology and its application in the real-world context.
At the event, Dr Steven Edwards, Co-Founder, Vega Schools, (Former advisor to the White House on education issues) addressed the audience and walked them through the rationale on how presenting a child with a problem can deeply engage them, thus giving them more opportunities to learn independently as opposed to everyday rote learning in traditional schools.
The PBL meet also catered to the children in attendance; they were made aware of the delicate balance between The Sun, Earth and the other planets through various activities like gazing at the Sunspots through a telescope. Additionally, engaging story telling sessions, replete with role play kept them occupied, while their parents focused on understanding the nuances of PBL.
The highlight of the session was where parents understood and appreciated that PBL is a student-centric approach: driven by students, for students, with an emphasis of curriculum through problem-solving and creating real world solutions. This helps the learners to develop acumen required to sustain them in jobs that require specific skills which cannot be developed through rote learning methods. An example of PBL success would be where students begin to treat exams as projects and apply their problem-solving abilities to come up with unique solutions.
Sandy Hooda, Co-founder, Vega Schools expressed his pleasure at the session and the turnout. He also went on to state how important constant training for teachers is, in order to enable learning in classrooms through this pedagogy.