About
About
To prepare students for the future, they need to be engaged with lessons that are relevant, encourage Critical Thinking and Collaboration, and provide an Authentic Assessment of their understanding.
Mission
Defined Learning helps school districts achieve this through Real World Project Based Learning. We provide the tools educators need to implement and assess engaging PBL that drives student achievement.
how do we
Drive student outcomes?
We provide teachers with all of the essential project design elements they need to implement and assess high-quality project based learning: interdisciplinary performance tasks, literacy tasks, engaging videos, research resources, an assessment manager and more. Real-world videos set the stage for each lesson by showing the practical application of STEM educational concepts within a company/industry. Performance and literacy tasks built around a specific job ask the students to apply the knowledge learned in a real-world scenario.
Performance
tasks
Our engaging performance tasks present students with a real-world problem and ask them to solve it by applying their knowledge and skills learned in the classroom.
Literacy
tasks
Literacy Tasks ask students to read, synthesize and write informative and/or position papers around the real world career based topic.
About Our Parent Company,
Defined Learning
Defined Learning is a transformative K-12 edtech company that combines technology, creativity, and curriculum expertise to provide useful and relevant products to schools. The management team at Defined Learning has an extensive background in building content and listening to teachers to satisfy the ever-changing classroom.
Defined Learning was founded in 2009 with the simple goal of helping teachers bring real world experiences into the classroom. Our early test groups and research indicated that performance based learning and authentic assessment was the natural medium to connect the dots between standards, skills, and careers. To accomplish this Defined Learning built the service formerly named Defined STEM and developed their content using Wiggins & McTighe’s Understanding by Design framework.
In 2014 Defined Learning began to partner with Jay McTighe, co-author of Understanding by Design, to build an on-line professional development site that trains educators on how to teach towards success using the performance task framework.
In 2019 Defined Learning launched its assessment and portfolio features to compliment the projects being created within the Defined Learning platform. Over 1 million students have access to portfolios based on products they have created inside the Defined Learning platform. These new developments will allow teachers to authentically assess student work and give students a portfolio of real-world products to showcase to potential colleges and employers.
In 2020 Defined Learning is launching a career exploration component to bridge the gap between on-site work-based learning, career guidance tools, and classroom project-based learning. This career-based learning path with provide students with career guidance and real-world projects which align with their interests and personality traits. Completing these projects will give students practical knowledge and experience in specific pathways, giving them a head-start in career readiness.
