I read Educational Leadership's insightful article titled 'Seven Essentials for Project-based Learning' by John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller, which describes seven elements the authors have found that every meaningful project needs to have. Before I further discuss these elements, I'd like to elucidate on the following keywords:

• Active learning
• Project-based learning

Bonwell and Eison defined strategies that promote the concept of active learning as "instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing." Approaches that uphold active learning places more emphasis on developing students' skills than on "transmitting information and require that students do something"^[1] - they could read, discuss or write - that entails the skill of higher-order thinking. They tend to focus on the student's own consideration of their attitudes and values. Ideas on these strategies and approaches tend to imply the concept of active learning as involving "students' efforts to actively construct their knowledge."

The direct implication of the concept discussed above, project-based learning is a model of the teaching and learning process where students acquire content knowledge and skills in order to answer a "driving question based on an authentic challenge, need, problem or concern."^[2] Due to this aspect, it becomes crucial that the educator encourages the students to seek the learning need of that question.

In the article "Seven Essentials of Project-based Learning", it has been highlighted that certain projects that are assigned by educators border on mere busywork. Few others, however, involve meaningful enquiry that actually manages to engage students' minds. You can find the link to this article here:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Seven_Essentials_for_Project-Based_Learning.aspx

Continuing, looking back in time one can think of countless examples of assignments given to us by our teachers that focused more on embellishing content rather than the process of acquiring that content for using in the assignment. And this is the idea that needs to be hinted at - an educator cannot assess the depth of the learner's cognitive engagement only through the resultant product - the artefact - but, through the active process of the student's learning that goes into the artefact. Here the teacher will act as a guide to encourage students into actively creating knowledge and producing the artefact.

So, from the learners' standpoint in the classroom, what is it that a good project requires? Here are the seven "essentials" (and in the article, they have explained this through the example of a fictitious educator who assigns a meaningful project to her students):

1. Introducing an "entry event" - this can be absolutely anything - videos of a guest speaking, a lively discussion etc - anything on which they can give their honest comment, instead of assigning a pre-decided topic that might look like a "prelude to busywork". Many students find schoolwork meaningless because they don't perceive a need to know what they're being taught.
2. A "Driving question"- which is nothing but the project title in form of a question - acting as 'the heart and soul' of the intended project work. Without this, the learners might not even understand the project. Forming a question provides them with a direction and they can give it their own trajectory.
3. Student voice and choice - it is crucial that the educator provides the learners with choices - the mode of the project (could be a presentation, an essay, explanation through a diorama), or choices even in the driving questions. Students must feel that they have the agency to choose from a variety of topics and mode of presenting their ideas.
4. Usage of 21^st -century skills that they could further make use of in their future workplaces - skills like teamwork and working in collaboration, critical skills, use of technology etc.
5. Initiating innovation - students must be assigned a topic that challenges their innovation and real inquiry. Here the teacher acts as a guide and a facilitator. There must be openness to new ideas and perspectives so that real inquiry could be performed at students' end.
6. Teachers to provide direct feedback; online platforms could provide a provision for feedback from friends or even experts and adult mentors.
7. The final product of the student could be publically presented to a real audience - parents, peers, representers of community - so that students take pride in the artefact that they have actively created and they remain motivated to create more in the future.