Collaboratively Defining Success Criteria in Project-Based Learning

Empower students to assess their own learning and take charge of their educational experiences.

DR. CRISTINA COMPTON
Director of Program Development
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One of the most exciting things about project-based learning is that it lets students take control of their learning experience, allowing them to lead their educational journey. However, understanding what this truly means and visualizing what it might look like in practice can sometimes feel unclear and ambiguous.
 
For me, the above means fostering student discovery and embarking on a shared journey with students to achieve specific goals. One way I support teachers with this approach is through collaboratively establishing success criteria with students, rather than dictating them. Moss and Brookhart (2015) advocate for this process, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that students comprehend the learning goals and have a clear understanding of what exemplary work on a project looks like. This ongoing process involves teachers regularly monitoring and assessing students' understanding of learning goals and addressing any misconceptions that may arise.

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Empowering student discovery

The significance of success criteria lies in empowering students to assess their own learning and take charge of their educational experiences, fostering a sense of self-efficacy. Students who believe in their ability to succeed are more likely to persist in their work, even in the face of challenges (Bandura, 1997). In essence, success criteria become a means to provide students with an opportunity to actively drive their own learning.

Teachers play a significant role in this process by posing essential questions such as: What do I want my students to learn? How will I teach it? How will I know they got it? Similarly, students are encouraged to inquire about their own learning: What will I learn? How will I learn it? How will I know that I got it?

When it comes to communicating success criteria, we can tell students explicitly, show them through modeling, offer examples, or support them in discovering the criteria themselves, whereby students are actively exploring, uncovering, and understanding concepts or knowledge on their own. Student discovery leads to deeper understanding, greater intrinsic motivation, longer retention of knowledge and skills, as well as promoting student ownership over their learning. To facilitate this discovery, I want to share four promising practices.

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Promising Practice: Questioning

Engage students in questioning to ensure a deep understanding of project goals. Techniques such as putting learning targets in their own words, Think-Pair-Share, and an iteration of KWL (what we know, want to know, what we will need, what learning/skills we can lean on) can be effective.

An example of series of teacher-facilitated questions as part of a project on the water cycle could sound like:

• "Robert, can you tell me one thing about the water cycle you already know?"
• "Sarah, can you tell me one other thing about the water cycle?"
• "Jaden, can you put those two things together, so we have a definition of the water cycle?"
• “Why is it important to know about the water cycle?”
• “What would a good report on the water cycle look like?”
• “Alison, what do you think of Max’s idea about the way to create a picture of the water cycle?”
• “How long would the report have to be to show you really understood the whole water cycle?”

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Promising Practice: Envisioning

Support students in visualizing their goals and the final project outcome. Creating planning charts, breaking down tasks into smaller parts, and involving teachers in the planning process can enhance students' understanding and success.

Here is an example of a student-created planning chart for a high school social justice project: 

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Promising Practice: Using exemplars

Expose students to examples of past work, encouraging them to analyze and describe its traits, features, and styles. This inductive approach allows students to discover project expectations through inquiry and exploration, promoting a deeper understanding.

This could look like: 

• Students analyze examples (real-world, teacher-created, or previous student work) and based on their analysis, a list is created that can be shared in the classroom as checklists for their writing.
• Students analyze a range of examples and sort them into quality levels, e.g. great, good, getting there, etc., and write descriptions about these levels. This can also inform rubrics.
• Note: I love the Student Press Initiative’s Analyzing Genre Template to do this work!

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Promising Practice: Rubrics

Utilize rubrics not just for evaluation, but as a guiding tool throughout the project. Students can assess examples, rephrase or recreate rubrics in their own words, and use them to evaluate their own work and that of their peers, informing revisions.

An example of this could look like: 

• Teacher rubric language: Proficient (3 points): “The essay presents a clear and compelling argument. It includes a well-defined thesis statement, logical organization of ideas, and effective use of evidence to support the argument.”
• In my own words: “The essay has a strong and convincing argument. It starts with a clear main idea, follows a logical order, and uses good evidence to back up the main point.”

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The journey toward student-driven project-based learning is marked by the collaborative establishment of success criteria, enabling students to actively participate in their own learning. By implementing these promising practices, educators can create an environment where students not only understand the goals, but also take ownership of their educational path, ultimately promoting continuous growth and exploration.

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