PBL Showcases Are Worth the Investment of Time

One essential, often-overlooked element of project-based learning is the opportunity for learners to showcase their process and product to the public.

We understand why educators sometimes skip this step, prioritizing the doing of the project over reflection and sharing. Showcases demand significant time and coordination, and without proper support, they can feel anticlimactic: Students stare at their sneakers or their trifolds, speaking quietly and unconfidently, if at all, while polite but disengaged audience members learn little about students’ processes and outcomes.

Showcases are worth the investment, though.

If you follow the steps below, you can empower students to synthesize their learning, celebrate their growth, and experience membership in a learning community that extends beyond their classroom, all while exercising crucial communication skills.

Tip 1: Schedule the Showcase Now

Commit to the event by scheduling a date up front. There are three common scheduling approaches we like.

Example 1: Special-event stacking. By scheduling a showcase to coincide with other events, you can tap into preexisting audiences. Perhaps your fourth-grade students present to second graders after the younger children return from a morning field trip. Maybe Career Day speakers stick around to hear students’ internship presentations. If parents are already coming in for conferences, could they stop by a concurrent Civics Fair?

Example 2: An evening event. Evening events are more special and can be more accessible to families and community members than offerings during the day.

Example 3: In-class presentation. In-class presentations cause the least disruption to others’ schedules, though securing an audience can be trickier. Often teachers make arrangements with each other: I’ll bring my students to your showcase and you bring your students to mine.

Tip 2: Don’t Wait Until the Super Bowl to Hand Your Players a Football

Before a football team makes it to the Super Bowl, each player has benefited from countless hours of practice, from targeted drills to low-stakes scrimmages to consequential competitions with other teams. As the coach of your classroom, you want to set your players up for a winning showcase experience by embedding ongoing, low-stakes opportunities to build skills and confidence throughout the school year.

Thanks to your intentional efforts, your students are already likely confident in demonstrating many academic skills needed for project success. But what additional metacognitive and communication skills need attention? Support students to develop these skills by providing clear expectations, along with frequent modeling, practice, and feedback. Here are a few examples.

Example 1: Reflection practice. Assuming students close the year with a culminating project—one that requires deep, broad reflection on learning—schedule daily exit tickets that prompt them to gradually build their metacognitive skills by reflecting on the day’s work.

Example 2: Slide design practice. If students will showcase their learning with a slide deck, help them to gradually grow their understanding and skill as digital designers. Each week, schedule five minutes for the class to assess a model slide: What decisions did the creator make? Why did they make these decisions? How do the aesthetics support the content? What changes would you want to make, and why? Create your own class rules for effective slides. Then, give students a chance to experiment by making their own practice slide.

Example 3: Public speaking practice. Public speaking requires courage, and courage requires practice. At the culmination of a high school internship course that Maureen taught, students would proudly present to workforce supervisors and family members about what they did and what they learned. But first, they engaged in a series of smaller-stakes role-playing exercises, like attending a mock job interview, leaving a professional voice message (a task that students found terrifying!), or presenting to their peers.

During presentations, feedback protocols spur engagement and growth both for the presenter and for their audience of classmates. Maureen prompted students to share their favorite part of each classmate’s presentation. After students lauded a peer’s storytelling, other students began incorporating anecdotes in their speeches.

For deeper feedback, we recommend a structured protocol with prompts for observations, celebrations, and questions or ideas. This framing prevents the exchange of unwanted advice and empowers the presenter to decide what changes to make.

Tip 3: Make it Meaningful

Design the project to ensure that students are proud of their processes and products, because they understand their purpose, their audience, and their plan for engagement.

Example 1: Design for purpose. Begin the project with a structured reflection connecting the work to students’ lives. We collaborate with social studies teachers to develop student-led civics projects. Throughout these projects, learners build civic identity profiles. Following reflections about their values, strengths, and goals, they create a visual representation of who they are, what communities they belong to, and what matters most to them.

As a result, they pursue their projects with a clear sense of identity and purpose, which informs their goals. Are they aiming to educate? To inspire? To instigate? What techniques can help them reach these goals?

Example 2: Design for audience. Students have likely practiced tailoring writing to specific audiences. Prompt them to transfer these adaptive communication skills to their speaking. Introduce improv exercises in which students draw audience cards and play around with how they would open their presentation differently for, say, the mayor or a group of kindergartners.

Example 3: Design for engagement. Finally, to achieve purpose-driven goals, students must effectively engage their audience. We have all been in classrooms where one student is presenting and 19 students are… sitting. Ask learners to consider their own experiences as audience members: When have they been most engaged? How can they engage others?

For Maureen’s internship showcase, students prepared a handout and display for the audience to visit after presentations. Audience members were invited to ask follow-up questions and share about their own professional experiences. At civics showcases, audience members sometimes nominate projects for recognition based on specific success criteria, such as research, action taking, or community engagement. Effective showcases often limit the number of presentations any audience member experiences. Interacting with presenters at three stations is more valuable than passively listening to 15 presenters.

We hope these tips help you take a gradual, manageable approach to supporting students as they build the skills of metacognition and communication, celebrate their growth, and effect change that matters to them.