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Challenges in implementing project-based learning
Despite the fact that the majority of the research concentrates more on the positive effects as well as the successful outcomes of the use of PBL, it is challenging to shift from traditional approaches to PBL one. In an attempt to implement PBL into learning environment, some following issues should be concerned about.
Lack of student preparation
In order to achieve desired outcomes when implementing PBL, it is crucial that “students need to have sufficient knowledge of the content and specific skills to explore information” (Blumenfeld et al., 1991) (p.378), which means they have to find out and solve the problems on their own and minimize the teachers’ instructions. As Ge, Planas and Nelson (2010) indicates that “Evidence has shown that PBL presents a challenge to novice learners” (p.31). Apparently, as the result, students are under heavy load on their memory when doing PBL because they do not have enough proper schemas to generate their prior knowledge into the new one. Furthermore, most of the students have been familiar with learning styles in traditional classroom where they are recipients of knowledge rather than generators (Nguyen, 2014). They find it difficult to comprehend the teachers’ comprehension and try to apply the prior knowledge to solve the problems in real situation.
The changes in roles
In order to implement PBL successfully, there must be a transformation of teachers as well as students’ roles in teaching and learning process. Traditionally, teachers and students are more acquainted with lecturebased education; however, in the place of new model, they are forced to work in unfamiliar territory. According to Hoang (2012), it is teachers who are made to assume “new roles” in their teaching methodology. Spontaneously, instead of receiving the knowledge passively, students are encouraged to play more active roles in the classroom and take their responsibilities for “actively constructing” and “reconstructing their knowledge networks” (Dolmans, De Grave, Wolfhagen & Van Der Vleuten, 2005, p. 732)