Project-based learning (PBL) or project-based instruction is an instructional approach designed to give students the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills through engaging projects set around challenges and problems they may face in the real world.

Project-based learning is more than just “doing a project,” in the way you might remember from your own school days. As the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) explains, with PBL, students “investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex problem or challenge” with deep and sustained attention.1 ArchForKids, an organization that provides STEAM programs for young learners, puts it even more succinctly: PBL is “learning by doing