The next world is AI-integrated, project-driven, future-focused, and human-inspired
Is AI bad? Is AI good? Should we recoil in fear or embrace a new technology that some believe holds the seeds of our own destruction as creative human beings?
That’s the divide now. And schools, more than any other institution, are destined to face the dilemma of AI. Schools teach vital information. In the process, they aim to make young people more intelligent. Now comes along a truly wild technology that does both—and possibly better.
In fairness, no one knows the answer to these questions. But enough is known about learning and the limitations of present schooling to undertake the fundamental reforms that give young people the best possible start on finding answers in their lifetime. That should be the adult goal: Ready the young generation to be ‘smart’ enough to figure out AI.
It’s time to jump the AI divide and create a new vision for learning that embraces AI as a creative tool integrated with human intelligence in service to a positive future.
It’s not possible to achieve that goal by remaining focused on recall, compliance, and other staples of the existing system. Unless the focus shifts to more creativity and authentic problem solving, the known threats—cheating on essays, copying homework, or the blurred line between original work and prompt engineering—will become more acute, raising the fear level yet another notch.
Let’s be clear about the true challenge: Human capacity is at risk of being dethroned by AI. And schools, in very short order, will be disenfranchised by a new world with technologies that break the traditional rules of curriculum delivery and testing. Virtually every assumption about current classrooms and teaching practices will be questioned.
Where does education go from here? What practices fill the void? How does the system evolve?
One answer is familiar to school reformers: Project based learning. PBL is back.
I couldn’t have said that two years ago. In fact, two years ago I couldn’t have written this article.
I’ve been working nearly 30 years as a PBL teacher, advocate and professional consultant to schools globally. I’ve worked with over 400 schools and 6000 teachers. I’ve always believed PBL was the future of education.
But I felt disappointed recently. The movement towards PBL was driven underground or watered down by testing requirements and a sluggish system. I saw numerous schools and teachers start the PBL journey with great enthusiasm and fanfare, only to end the experiment or settle for low-level ‘projects’ a few years into the process.
It’s never been difficult to figure out why PBL failed to overtake education. It bumps directly against a system designed for delivery of information rather than inquiry and problem solving. PBL focuses on mastering durable life and workplace skills, not test-taking. It’s learner and relationship driven, not teacher-directed. It tries to get deeper into people, not just curriculum.
And it works—beautifully—but only in systems that value teaching and learning designed to highlight and foster human strengths and creativity. It appeared education couldn’t make that leap.
Then, the world shifted rather quickly. Two years ago, as AI made its entrance, I began to see that a project-based vision fit the times perfectly. AI was the right partner in a process aimed at helping students solve problems collaboratively, contribute to their community and world, and enhance their research skills and domain knowledge.
I didn’t realize at the time how effective AI would be at helping teachers design projects by removing the traditional barriers of time and imagination that prevent implementing good project ideas.
PBL 2.0
PBL is back but in a different form.
I am committed to the core values of Project Based Learning, which center on solving meaningful, authentic problems through a collaborative process that results in solutions and products shared with a public audience. But I also wanted to make PBL more accessible to teachers while retaining the creative and critical thinking aspects of PBL that emanates from original, human centered thinking.
At the same time, my partner Phil Alcock and I searched for ethical AI methods and tools that could shift project-based work in the classroom and engage students in personalized, relevant, and meaningful projects that invoked interest, curiosity, and purpose. This was Phil’s area of expertise and interest, and over time he found ways in which AI could illuminate the project design process, turn standards into project ideas, and incorporate AI as a valuable learning tool into the collaborative work of student teams.
We term it AI-integrated, project based learning—or PBL 2.0.
Phil and I debate over which comes first, PBL or AI. But it doesn’t matter. While PBL 2.0 does retain the best practices from ‘back in the day’, adding AI to the mix is not a simple grafting of artificial intelligence onto the existing model of PBL from the past 30 years.
The more expansive version of AI-driven PBL encompasses design thinking, place-based versions of PBL, shorter learning ‘missions’ as well as long form projects, and a thoroughly updated set of skills that replace the 4 C’s and lead to a broad definition of AI ‘literacy’.
The vision is to offer students choices and variety while retaining the full flavor of PBL and its commitment to collaborative, authentic work in the classroom. For teachers, PBL 2.0 still offers a methodology that engages them as facilitators, co-designers, and knowledge guides in a student-driven classroom.
But AI shows extraordinary potential to overcome traditional barriers to PBL implementation by speeding up the design process and answering the key question that keeps many teachers from experimenting with PBL: How do I teach content through a project? This is where machine technology reveals what we couldn't see previously. It enables teachers to ‘break apart’ and incorporate standards and curriculum codes into project-based work in ways that leave teachers confident they’re meeting the demands of their subjects.
This is where AI is showing its true power—and it’s been amazing to me to see how many teachers who hesitated about PBL have turned into advocates as they learn to use AI tools in the PBL design process.
I’ll describe some of those innovations in a moment (and Phil will do a deep dive into AI in a companion article). But I’ll step back. The journey for teachers–and for students–has just begun. It’s important to recognize how long the journey may take–and the bumps along the way.
First, integrating AI and PBL into one holistic process provides the right direction for schools, but the future is too humbling to think two minds will transform education. It’s going to take the 85 million teachers across the world to get the job done. And reinvention in the age of AI poses a challenge educators have not faced: Reinventing themselves.
This is not the responsibility of one system or one country. It’s a global transformation.
Part of our vision at PBL Future Labs is to spur that global conversation, add to it, and help connect the many minds needed to anticipate the future and guide students forward. That means all of us will need to be nimble—and willing to ask difficult questions.
One set of questions revolves around emerging, unforeseen technologies. AI is in its infancy. How will it play out in the metaverse? Once in the hands of students, what will they invent? How do we educate children who can explore the world at the touch of a screen?
As large language models scour all the information in the world, condense it into prompts, and provide answers to nearly every question raised by a standard curriculum, how do we reframe learning as a meaningful endeavor? Is our goal to fill heads with existing information, or create a better world?
These questions will not go away. Rather, they will raise existential issues: How intelligent are humans? Can we master the very technologies invented by the human mind? What does a young person ‘need to know’ in this new world?
This will not be a comfortable challenge for any of us. And the entire scope of what’s coming is mysterious. But we do know where to start.
Building teacher capacity
Right now, schools vary in their approach and acceptance of AI for student use. WE offer schools a sensible set of guidelines that we’re happy to share with leaders and faculty, to be put in place as guardrails until AI is so ubiquitous that students use it easily as their mobile phone.
A deadline exists for this work—like tomorrow. AI is advancing exponentially. But it’s still likely that student use will lag behind teacher usage of AI for several years. In this preparation phase, our goal is to introduce PBL 2.0 as an expanded umbrella term that signifies a process of problem solving, and encourage teachers to venture into a design and collaborative mindset that invites students to tap into their creative human intelligence skills.
One critical step is to remove the chief barrier I mentioned earlier: Standards and curriculum codes. This is where AI not only excels but reveals its amazing power. By submitting prompts based on the standards for any subject, AI can suggest a myriad of project ideas that teach those standards through immersive project work.
I think of this breakthrough in the same way AI is changing geography and history. Traveling above a flat desert landscape, we see only sand. With AI technology, the outline of cities buried for centuries and unknown to us comes into view.
AI can take a set of standards and achieve the same result. Rather than a laundry list of standards to be covered, a ‘doingness’ emerges that can excite and energize students, challenge their native intelligence, and remove the motivation to ‘cheat.’
What else? Given the right prompts, AI can easily take off hours of the PBL planning process by offering up a fully designed ‘learning’ experience (or ‘Learning Mission, we term them). It may be a short form design sprint kind of activity, a longer project, or simply serve as a springboard for further reflection on a potential project.
This brings up a critical point: None of this works entirely on the computer. Once an idea or design is generated, human intelligence goes to work. Which projects appeal to students, or are most doable or appropriate? How much of the design will continue in the hands of the teacher, or how much is co-created with students?
And given that a significant, meaningful, wicked problem should lie at the heart of the project, how will students work in collaborative teams to solve and present their findings? This draws attention to another benefit of AI: Reducing the amount of front-end time normally required to envision and design a project frees up facilitation time. It returns the focus of project based work to the process, not the mechanics.
You may begin to see an analogy here. Just as AI speeds up workflow and automates many processes in industry, it can do the same for education—if the system moves to a project based approach that values genuine problem solving and creativity-friendly instruction.
If we want youth to grow into curious, deeper thinkers who can master an AI-world, there is really no choice.
The ultimate vision: A positive future
But let’s pay attention to warning signals. Teachers won’t be enough to overcome many of the difficult problems outside the classroom. Neither will PBL 2.0. It’s our job to help students learn to do the heavy lifting necessary to improve their communities and the global environment.
There is also the question of intrinsic motivation versus a curriculum ‘delivered’ by educators. How long will students continue to follow traditional pathways to success when the world around them shows signs of crumbling?
Our ultimate vision is to help schools design the right ecosystems for PBL 2.0 by focusing student work on sustainability, regeneration and social impact. As educators, we know purpose matters. It engages students at a higher level of performance. It makes cheating irrelevant. And it fosters creative intelligence.
These are the underlying but true goals of redesigning PBL, drawing on the power of AI, and enhancing the learning experiences of students. To make it through the next two decades or so, the world needs a cadre of informed, committed, masterful youth.
I know the challenges of redesigning education, so I won’t predict if we can succeed. But I do know that success requires a village of educators willing to explore and question current practices.
That, in fact, is how Phil and I operate. Phil lives in Acapulco, Mexico, with an excellent view of the bay and a beach where he can sit and watch the manta rays jump out of the water.
Why do they jump, I asked? Are they mating, feeding, or jumping for joy?
No one knows.
Welcome to the future of education.
About the author
Thom Markham is an author, PBL pioneer, positive psychologist, and global entrepreneur who has shared his expertise with over 6000 teachers and 400 schools worldwide. The founder of PBL Global and current Co-Founder of PBL Future Labs, Thom is the author of Redefining Smart: Awakening Students’ Power to Reimagine Their World—a book that reflects his commitment to collaborating with educators and leaders to mobilize youth globally to become design thinkers, insightful citizens, and empathetic collaborators focused on sustainability and the common good.
