<aside> 🚧 Especially insofar as this work acknowledges that existing project-based learning has by and large failed, it is important to be explicit about what qualities will define and distinguish projects as contemplated by the Project Collection and "projects" as they exist de facto.

This document aims to summarize the core, non-negotiable elements defining great projects (and/or the programs which develop them). Inevitably, as a research and development effort, we may not succeed in attaining all of these. It is not comprehensive, and there will be many other heuristics, proxies, or other rules-of-thumb which we may use in design. But these represent the core of the design effort, and these goals will define and constrain the overall project's development.

</aside>

We believe project-based learning may offer something unique to the field as a result of at least two, important characteristics:

1. Increased engagement as a result of projects' capacity to support active, individualized work.
2. Increased rigor as a result of projects' capacity to require richer, increasingly applied, more multidimensional uses of knowledge. i.e. While it may be possible to pattern match your way through a worksheet, it is much harder to do so in a project.

From the point-of-view of the person doing the project, these suggest additional dimensions of performance, including but not limited to:

1. Is the project meaningful? ⇒ Does the doing of the project matter, independent of its use in a formal educational setting? And/or is the project necessary, useful, or beautiful to you or someone you care about?
2. Is the project ambitious? ⇒ Does the project stretch you in meaningful ways where you will have been able to honestly say you’ve grown for your efforts? Is the difficulty gratuitous? [That’s the wrong kind of hard.]
3. Is the project deep? ⇒ Does the project engage powerful ideas? Is the engagement itself deep, i.e. do you develop real ownership over ideas, leaving you in a position to independently use those ideas for your own ends?
4. Is the project real? ⇒ Is there an independent standard of performance for the project? Does it actually engage with the real world? i.e. could the project stand alone, separate from its context as having been done in a school?
5. Does the project excel on its own terms? ⇒ Insofar as the project is real [having its own standards of performance], it should be able to be evaluated on its merits. Does it succeed along these?

Does the project epitomize the XQ Learner Goals?

In addition to these basic goals for a great project in general, XQ has specific goals and perspectives which must be prioritized in this work. Included alongside the language from each XQ Learner Goal below is a collection of more operational questions targeting that goal, aiming to make design toward and evaluation along it more concrete.

<aside> 📍 Given that the XQ Learner Goals describe the entirety of a student's experience, there is some ambiguity as to which subset may apply in a given, domain-specific project, meaning every goal may not apply to every single project. Where appropriate, we have included some elaboration as to what design elements may require of projects and programs to concretize the goal.

</aside>

Masters of all fundamental literacies

XQ students will master the academic core necessary to succeed in college, career, and life: fundamental LITERACIES of critical reading, effective writing, mathematical and statistical reasoning, the capacity to navigate a complex and diverse global environment, and the ability to understand, create, apply, and communicate complex material in speaking, writing and digitally, and fluency in application.

Does effectively doing the project (or participating in the program) authentically lead to:

• critical reading of real texts ⇒ This implies embedding the work in a domain where real texts will be relevant and useful.
• writing for impact and effect ⇒ This implies writing for an audience with an authentic purpose in mind.
• mathematical, statistical reasoning ⇒ Note that this involves reasoning with those tools, not simply fluency with them.
• grappling with a complex, diverse, global environment ⇒ This requires either collaboration with others, or framing of issues and content which bring the complexity and diversity of a global environment into the context of the program or project.