In order to complete their college readiness PBL, juniors toured UNLV. After attending lectures and classes focusing on admissions, students were split up to tour their specified program area.

“Because I’m in culinary I was able to see the hospitality building of UNLV and I got to go to the kitchens,” junior Jessica Wiley said. “Coming into the tour I didn’t want to go to UNLV but after seeing everything it has to offer, it’s not a bad choice.”

While on the tour, students were expected to take selfies around the campus of what being college ready meant to them. Topics students focused on were listening, reading, writing and language.

“The hardest photo to get would’ve been the language aspect of college readiness,” junior Valentina Castillo said. “We had a lot of photos of us at the presentations or listening to our tour guides so the easiest ones were listening and reading because we did that a lot on the tour.”

After they returned to school, students were separated into classrooms based on their English teacher and last name. Students chose groups of two to three to create a presentation using their selfies to answer the driving question, “how are the reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills you develop in high school making you college and career ready?”

“Because we were only given a few hours to make our presentation I think it was little stressful for everyone,” Castillo said. “In the end, I said that Southwest does prepare us for college because of our PBLs and how alot of our assignments are technology based.”

Students presented their slides to 50 other students and were graded by their peers and a teacher. If students were absent or did not go on the trip, they were given an alternative assignment to complete.

“Overall, I don’t think this PBL was a bad idea but I don’t think a lot of people knew what we were doing,” junior Stephen Bingham said. “Whenever we would go to take a selfie, people would just stare at us and probably thought we were from out of state.”