Teaching for Meaningful Learning

The "dominant paradigm" that is showing signs of wear is the traditional instructional method where knowledge comes directly from the teacher through textbooks, lectures, discussions and readings. This way of teaching versus the new movement in instruction is not preparing our students for real world situations.

Unlike traditional teaching, in Project-Based Learning students are completing more complex tasks that typically result in a realistic product, event or presentation. It focuses on bringing real world problems into the curriculum.  Research has found:
1. "students who engage in this approach benefit from gains in factual learning" (Thomas, 2000)
2. students show an increase in the ability to define problems (Gallagher, Stepien, &Rosenthal, 1992)
3. students have an "enhanced ability to plan a project after working on an analogous problem based challenge ( Moore, Sherwood, Batemna, Bransford, Goldman, 1996)

Problem-Based Learning is where students work in groups on authentic problems to see what they need and produce a solution. Research shows:
1. medical students score higher on clinical problem solving and clinical performance (Vernon & Blake, 1993; Albanese & Mitchell, 1993)
2. students from correct hypotheses and are able to explain with accurate reasoning(Hmelo 1998b; Schimdt, et al., 1996)
3. teachers have a better acceptance of cultural diversity (Darling-Hammond & Hammerness, 2002)

Learning by Design allows students to design and create an artifact that requires deep understanding of what they're learning. Research shows:
1. Students have a better understanding of complex systems (Perkins, 1986)
2. ... increases motivation in both groups and individuals Fortus and colleagues (2004)
3. this approach leads to better learning outcomes ( Holton & Kolodner, 2000)

From reading the article I think the approaches are different in that project based focuses on creating realistic products, problem based is generating a solution to a problem, and learning by design is creating artifacts. 

In my opinion the most important benefit between the approaches is that they relate to real world issues and offer a different type of instruction rather than the traditional textbook and lectures. 

Resource:
Barron, B., & Darling-Hammond, L. Teaching for meaningful learning. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-teaching-for-meaningful-learning.pdf