Pioneering Education Strategies in Software Developer Bootcamps: Always Projects

by Steve Brownlee

This article is part of the Follow the Science series where I share our team's journey in developing a learning experience based on modern cognitive science, learning science, and educational psychology.

Introduction

Project-based learning (PBL) is an instructional methodology that enables students to learn by engaging in projects that are complex, require sustained attention, and involve real-world challenges and applications.

PBL shifts the focus from traditional teacher-led instruction to student-driven exploration. Projects are typically centered around questions or problems that compel students to engage in design, problem-solving, decision-making, or investigative activities, giving them a sense of ownership over their learning.

Our Methodology

Everything is project work in our learning experience. There are no lectures. There are no repetitive exercises. There are no useless brain twisters or esoteric puzzles for the learner to solve.

PBL is especially powerful for adult learners who are in an accelerated bootcamp to shift quickly into a new career - especially when done in our collaboration focused learning experience.

Malcolm Knowles is a reknowned educator who specialized in the study of adult learninng. He distilled his research into 4 princples.

Knowles’ 4 Principles Of Andragogy

  1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
  2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for the learning activities.
  3. Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life.
  4. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.

    The Adult Learning Theory - Andragogy - of Malcolm Knowles

It is the last two principles that directly apply to how valuable PBL is for adults. By focusing exclusively on learning concepts and building competencies on a project has immediate relevance to their ability to quickly integrate with a team in their first job as a software developer.

Also, project work constantly feeds the learner novel problems to solve (i.e features to implement), and allows the learner to tap into an existing set of life experience that can be applied to the project, and shared with teammates.

Since we break the entire cohort of learners down into smaller teams of 3-5 people on a weekly basis, or when working on long-term and complex projects, we ensure a few things as they work on their individual or group projects.

  1. Psychological safety amongst the learners develops quickly.
  2. Each learner has a consistent group of people to explore concepts with and never are left isolated and lost.
  3. Instructors, as coaches, have the ability to learn the individual strengths of each teammate and can enable higher collaboration and more valuable guidance.

Collaboration

Another kind of project-based work that learners take part in is group projects. Group projects are different than the other project work they take part in because they are all working as a professional team to build a large scale project together. The core course projects must be built by each learner individually, even though they share ideas and problem-solve together.

Group project involve true teamwork, mirroring the collaborative nature of real-world problem solving. Students must communicate, negotiate, and manage conflicts, which not only aids in the learning process but also helps in developing interpersonal skills vital for the workplace.

Also, learners must gain a level of comfort with the workflow of building features separately and then merging it all together using Git and Github. Group projects solidify this for our learners. I am confident that, when they are hired as professionals, they will integrate immediately into an existing team.

While the final project is important, PBL emphasizes the full richness of the process of learning. Reflection on the project development process, decision-making steps, and the effectiveness of solutions is as important as the project outcome itself.

Engage

I would love to hear from you about the importance of having a learning experience built around the development of projects to develop core communication and teamwork skills.