We have found, along with others, that it is difficult to discuss project-based methods without discussing motivation (Blumenfeld, Soloway, Marx, Krajcik, 1991; Fan, 1996; Orey, Fan, Zhao, & Crenshaw, 1995). From our perspective, project-based methods of learning can be framed by a combination of the ideas from cognitive apprenticeships (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989) and motivation (Turner & Paris, 1995). The key concepts from cognitive apprenticeships are scaffolding, coaching, and modeling. While there is much more to cognitive apprenticeships and the parallel idea of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) such as the importance of context, these three concepts are well suited to our project-based methods. 

The key concepts from motivation are the six C's of Turner and Paris (1995)Ûchoices, challenge, control, collaboration, constructive comprehension, and consequences. A description of these perspectives will follow the individual researchers' stories. 
 

"A characteristic feature of this approach is that students write about what they know very well and have the additional motivation of knowing that their stories and articles will be read by many other people."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

"If school knowledge were learned in the context of solving "real" problems, then perhaps the application of this knowledge would be more readily apparent."
 

Project-based education has reemerged as a popular instructional approach. The roots of this approach date back to Dewey's (1938) notion of experiential education. Dewey demonstrated his method by involving a group of students in the first-hand construction of a building. In the process, the students could learn such diverse topics as geometry, construction, management, cooperation, mathematics, and language arts. Once the building had been built, however, the question became "what do you do next?" The current answer may be to build metaphorical buildings using computer technology. For our purposes, these buildings are the documents created by children using a variety of materials including photographs, video clips, graphics, charts, audio clips, and text. The buildings can be social studies reports, science reports, creative writing pieces, or any other document that a student chooses to construct. 

The Foxfire approach has used this method for years (Wigginton, 1985). The building created in the Foxfire program was a book, written and edited by students, then sent to a publisher. There have been more than ten of these books published over the years with topics centered around the culture and heritage of the students in the classesÛthe Appalachian mountain communities in northern Georgia. A characteristic feature of this approach is that students write about what they know very well and have the additional motivation of knowing that their stories and articles will be read by many other people. This long-range goal remains a consideration throughout the duration of the project and results in students taking greater care in editing and finally completing their documents. 

Katz and Chard (1995) suggest that the process learners go through as they participate in a project approach includes planning, research, and generation. With the strong emphasis on publishing, the learners will also focus on editing and formatting. In addition, because our approach includes the use of technology, strategies are needed to help learners with the technology, or at least to minimize its complexity. One of the outcomes of this approach is that a knowledge of multiple disciplines is required for project completion. While technology is a definite part, other disciplines such as science, social science, mathematics, art, and language arts are often necessary for success. 

Besides the integrated curriculum, the project-based teaching method has other conflicts with traditional curriculum. Scott (1994) found that standard class periods, standard curricular goals, and traditional time requirements are impediments to a project-based approach. In a traditional forty-minute period, once students have planned the day's goals, set up equipment, and/or made arrangements to collect data, classroom time has been reduced to approximately twenty-five minutes. The project-based method is an immersive activity, which usually requires longer class periods. 

A parallel to the project-based approach is the problem-based method employed by the medical education field (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). The problem-based method emphasizes an application orientation to medical education that has been largely missing in recent years. Medical educators have complained that many doctors are beginning their internships with very little ability to apply the knowledge they have acquired in their formal schooling. In an effort to facilitate the application of school knowledge, medical schools have widely adopted the problem-based approach. In this approach, traditional knowledge is acquired in the context of problems, which are presented via cases. Diagnostic methods are employed to gain information about the patient, while a knowledge of medical procedures, anatomy, medicine, and other relevant knowledge is required in order to solve the problem. As with many problems, there is no one correct answer, but many possible solutions. 

The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (1990) have linked the problem-based approach to the literature on situated cognition. One of the most important results of this paradigm is that knowledge learned in one context often is not readily transferred to another context. For example, knowledge learned in school is often not transferred to real life situations. This seems to be what is happening in medical education. The knowledge that medical students gain in traditional classrooms is learned in a way that can be efficiently retrieved during tests, but not so easily accessed in an applied medical situation. One of the classic examples of situated cognition is one taken from Lave (1988). In this case, there was a man who was involved in a diet program. He was trying to cut his intake of food by three-fourths. One of the menu items was a two-thirds cup of cottage cheese. Instead of selecting the appropriate school-learned algorithm and performing the calculation, this man used a somewhat unorthodox approach. He measured a two-thirds cup of cottage cheese, emptied the contents of the measuring cup on the counter, shaped the substance into a circular (pie-shaped) figure, cut it into quarters, and removed a one-quarter section (Lave, 1988). 

If school knowledge were learned in the context of solving "real" problems, then perhaps the application of this knowledge would be more readily apparent. This can be as true for learning to communicate using the latest technologies as it is for using concepts from mathematics. If knowledge is applied while it is being learned, then the learner may be organizing this knowledge in a way that it can be applied later. Cognitive apprenticeship is the instructional model that has emerged as a consequence of the data collected on situated cognition (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1991). 

One of the main strategies of this model is scaffolding. Essentially, the idea of scaffolding is to provide supports to the learner in the context of their learning in such a way as to allow them to perform beyond their abilities. During this performance, they are actually acquiring the knowledge. For our efforts, we developed a set of job-aids that could show the learner exactly how to put photographs, video clips, and audio clips into a word processing document. The learners needed to have a basic knowledge of typing and the word processor before beginning the project. Further knowledge could be gained while they engaged with the project. Therefore, most of their time was devoted to designing and developing their project, and not spent on formal instruction in how to use technology. In fact, no formal instruction was provided except when specifically requested by the learner. 

While cognitive apprenticeships inform some aspects of what we were doing with project-based education, further insight is provided via the paradigm of goal-based scenarios (Schank, 1990). This paradigm suggests, in part, that people store information in the form of stories (Schank, 1990), an important element for the present discussion in two ways. One, this memory structure is quite relevant to the project. That is, all of the knowledge components acquired through participation in the project are organized around the story or stories learned in the context of its design and development. The second aspect of this theory revolves around the methodology employed in this experiment. The qualitative data will be reported in the form of stories. The fundamental unit of analysis for this study is the story. 

Goal-based scenarios are grounded in the idea that all learning occurs in the process of trying to meet a goal. For a toddler learning language, verbalizing a grammatically acceptable sentence is not a goal. Rather, their goal is to communicate with parents and siblings. As a consequence of this goal, the child learns to speak in coherent sentences. The former goal is one typically found in traditional education, while the latter is a goal that is internal to the learner. Another aspect of these two goals is that the latter is achieved in an efficient and effective way by all those who have this goal (with the exception of some mentally handicapped individuals), while the former is difficult to achieve and often is forgotten long after it has been achieved. The mission of goal-based scenarios is to prompt learners to internalize their goals and facilitate learning as the consequence. While some of these goals can be artificial (like creating a new animal based on existing animals), it is most important that the learner internalizes the goal. In our context, the learner's goal is to create a multimedia document that will be published on CD-ROM or on the World Wide Web. The learning that occurs as a consequence is technology literacy, planning, and all the content that is inherent in their particular project. 

Schank (1990) suggests that curriculum ought to be changed to three primary emphasesÛcommunications, human relations, and reasoning. These are the three kinds of knowledge competencies that we should expect of people in our society. Again, the project-based approach that we are proposing here focuses on communicating the ideas in their project. The project itself is so large and complex that it constitutes a problem requiring complex reasoning. Finally, because the projects revolve around groups, it requires learners to gain competence in human relations. 
 
 

To page 2 of 3