4 Tips for Creating Powerful Challenge Based Learning with Students

Being a 21st century educator comes with many perks, including continuous opportunities to learn from learners. Some of my best moments as an educator have come from taking on the challenge to learn alongside students. Challenge Based Learning (CBL) has provided me with an added impetus to reflect on what meaningful education for 21st century learners can look like and reconsider my own pedagogical practices.

Since becoming a teacher in 2009, I have always dared to improve educational outcomes for my learners by introducing things like entrepreneurship education and financial literacy to my school. Combined with Challenge Based Learning, this type of real world learning increases learners’ motivation by pushing them to find a mission, to develop that mission, and to impact the world in the process.

During the investigation stage of Challenge Based Learning, encourage learners to involve those who stand to benefit most from the solution. In our case, the primary stakeholders were other teenagers, so they needed to have teenage voices represented in the development of their solution.They also looked beyond their target audience and considered other stakeholders such as the wider school community and parents. Using a variety of tools, students were able to gather information and come up with an objective view of the challenge itself and the solution that they were working on.

“In Challenge Based Learning, teachers take the role of an advisor and coach, which gives learners the opportunity to lead…and to come up with appropriate solutions to the challenges that they and their peers are facing.” – Jobert Ngwenya, teacher at Eveline High School

Challenge Based Learning allows me to be a lifelong learner, not just through more common formal professional development, but everyday in the classroom alongside my students. Having grown up with technology, most of my learners have the sixth and the seventh senses that make them appreciate technology far better than I could imagine. To build on this, I encourage them to teach others—including me—whatever new knowledge and technology skills they develop. What joy this brings them to see themselves as a teacher to teachers!

Challenge Based Learning takes learning outside the classroom and brings the world into the classroom. Throughout the Ciena Solutions Challenge, I used my contacts in media, civic, and business spaces, to invite guest speakers in and to take learners out on field trips to gain real-world knowledge to see examples of successful entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.

Some learners may be working behind the scenes during the development phase of a product and not receive the spotlight they deserve. Consider what types of communication platforms you can use to capture and promote the overall story and contributors to the project, from its earliest development stages to the end. In that way, learners can see that the project becomes successful because everyone is involved.

In all of these ways, Challenge Based Learning gives learners control over their own learning as well as opportunities to acquire conceptual knowledge and develop soft and hard skills. Ultimately, from my experience, the key ingredients for successful Challenge Based Learning were a supportive school environment, a strong network of community connections, engaged parents, and an educator willing to take risks to gain new understanding.

• Join our Ciena Solutions Challenge Educator Roundtable on August 24 to learn more from Jobert Ngwenya.
• Register to join the 2022-2023 Ciena Solutions Challenge
• Learn more about the Mystery Munch Nutri-Bar Project in the Project Gallery on the Ciena Solutions Challenge website
• Explore the Ciena Solutions Challenge Resource Library for additional resources, including a sample Challenge Builder based on the real world example of the Mystery Munch Nutri-Bar Project.