When I was a student in school, we turned in our work (yes, written on parchment paper with a quill pen, haha) to the teacher and that was the end of it. We didn’t get it back until it had been graded. Sometimes we did write rough drafts of essays in English class, and some teachers would labor over their corrections and comments in the margins, while others would simply write “More detail” or “More examples” or some such general request on top. When I was a teacher, I would mark up my students’ papers in the dreaded red pen and hope they heeded my carefully-worded feedback. So that was critique and revision back in the day.

Today, at least in a PBL classroom, things are different. Critique and revision is not just a private transaction between the teacher and the individual student, but a much richer process. It’s important for producing the high-quality public products that are a hallmark of Gold Standard PBL, which is why we made critique and revision one of the Essential Project Design Elements. I discussed the why and how of bringing students into the process in a recent hangout with three members of our current or former National Faculty, Veronica Franco, Erin Gannon, and Dave Philhower.