I came across a web site that intrigued me, even though I am not a K-12 classroom teacher. Their concept of Project Based Learning as a motivational construct is something that may have possibilities in the corporate world where I develop training.

At first blush, I thought that the author had read Keller or was familiar with the ARCS model but after having read their section on Student Motivation, it became clear that they had developed their model based on other research. They began their description of how PBL could increase student motivation by identifying how students’ attention would be heightened in the process of choosing different strategies and approaches to their learning. They established relevance in their summation at the bottom of the first web page. “Learners who can see the connection between a project based task and the real world will be more motivated to understand and solve the problem at hand.” I don’t know if Keller would have stated it any differently. Stating that students gain a “sense of ownership and control over their own learning” pretty clearly show how their confidence is enhanced through this learning process. Finally, the process encouraged teachers to provide a self-evaluation tool that would give the students an opportunity to reflect on their accomplishment and instill an intrinsic responsibility for their own learning. This capped the model and identified the satisfaction factor.

Without one reference to Keller, they built a pretty good defense of the ARCS model and clearly showed how it could apply to the PBL process they linked it to.