Episode 34: Supercharging Project-Based Learning Design

What if offering to work on a few projects with a homeschooled student sparked the idea to partner with a school? And what if then, groups of students started asking to make that project-based learning model their entire high school experience? That’s what happened when Saeed Arida, a PhD student in the Architecture department at MIT, tried running a design studio with a handful of kids. The result was NuVu, a unique studio education model that’s catching on worldwide.

Guest: Saeed Arida

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

“I have not figured out exactly why this happens, but their expectation is that when they are working on this idea, is that you give them only the technical feedback. They don't want you to talk about the conceptual framing of the idea. My explanation for this is that, you know, in our kind of traditional schooling system, the only thing that we give the students is content. We never really talk about ideas and their ideas, and it feels very personal and vulnerable.” (8:47)

• “To assume that they're gonna, like, you know, by the end of the four years that they're gonna learn everything that is, that's being kind of taught in these textbooks, it's not gonna happen..there are a lot of studies about these subjects and like after six months, basically a lot of the kids fail on them anyway. A lot of that info is not sticking anyway. You know, so it's like, why are we committing to this idea that we need to learn all of that stuff in four years? If at the end of the day none of the, like, not, or a big part of it is not sticking.” (31:27)
• “For me, it still does not really address the central question whether this tool is ultimately helping the students or not, which is for me why we are doing-- like there, there is no reason to do any tracking or an assessment unless it becomes a really empowering tool that would help the students kind of grow.” (41:28)

Related Episodes: 31, 29, 27, 26, 21, 6

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