[cpkpad]

8-year study of progressive education from a hundred years ago is probably the oldest result showing project-based learning works well. Miki Chi's ICAP is the current one. You have the same result repeated with a new methodology every couple decades in education research.

Neither shows project learning is the only thing which works well; just that it works better than the model the author proposes or than traditional classrooms.

The key fallacy the author makes is that free-form project working doesn't work. Let's say I want you to learn machine learning. I need a carefully designed and sequenced series of projects which exercise all the skills along the way. That's not an uncommon fallacy; many progressive schools made the same mistake and basically failed.

The random coding project model, in isolation, as the author described, falls flat on its face just as the author describes. It works pretty well for simple/broad things (e.g. learn an API), but for anything with depth, expert sequencing of knowledge and design of projects/assessments becomes important.