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In this workshop we will share some of the work we have done in our first year Great Problems Seminars program. We will talk about what it is like to work with first year students in a project-based environment (both benefits and challenges), and tools we have developed for scaffolding project work so students gain the skills necessary to work on complex open-ended problems even in their first year. We will also talk about the ways that PBL can be utilized as a general education strategy. Participants will be given the opportunity to collaborate and to think about how to adapt some of our materials to their own courses and environments

Materials

 Seeking Sustainability GPS course

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This session will address considerations in the design and delivery of project-based learning experiences in online environments.  We will focus primarily on strategies for team formation, setting expectations for peer collaboration, and active facilitation of project work.  The live workshop time will be used for active participation in discussion and exploration of strategies for incorporating online project experiences.  All participants will walk away with a set of tools and techniques that can be modified for their own implementation into their courses.

Materials
Project-Based Learning in Online Environments Slides
IPBL – Online Project Workshop
PBL Online Tips Sheet

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Meeting ID: 904 971 0079
One tap mobile
+16468769923,,9049710079# US (New York)
+13017158592,,9049710079# US (Washington DC)

Students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute experience project-based learning (PBL) at scale, completing multiple individual and team-based projects throughout their four-year curriculum. However, faculty often learn how to teach and trust PBL by starting small, with a single assignment designed to facilitate learning objectives not easily met with traditional pedagogies. This session will explore the unique assessment needs of course-embedded PBL at two levels: assignment and program accreditation. Explored through the lens of faculty development, examples will share challenges, successes, tools and frames for making meaning from assessment data.

Presentation slides

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Managing the complexity of open-ended projects can be quite challenging for students newly freed from the structured guidance of classroom assignments. Such projects are often assigned to student teams with the hope that students can learn from one another and distribute the workload. But collaboration can also introduce additional challenges. Students may struggle with time management and the division of labor; they may experience difficulty tracking and negotiating conflict. And in the face of information overload and competing ideas, they may have difficulty articulating a coherent vision to guide their work. This workshop complements training in team dynamics and diversity awareness, introducing specific literate practices and tools that can help students manage collaborative project work. We’ll review useful collaboration and task management tools, including the use of shared websites and online task schedulers, as well as team writing and discussion activities that can help with goal setting, conflict analysis, and self-assessment. In addition, we’ll discuss how faculty who advise student projects might assign self-assessment reports and “Assertion-Evidence” (Alley, 2013) presentations to help students communicate their progress and synthesize a more coherent conceptual framework from the research of individual team members. Participants will be asked to consider how such tools might support their own students’ collaborative process.

Materials
Task Management in Student Teams Handout
IPBL slides

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This workshop will focus on principles, strategies, and practices for designing equitable and ethical community-engaged project-based learning.  We will provide a theoretical overview of approaches to community-engaged work, learn about principles and strategies in action, and provide time for workshopping one’s own project or partnership. Outcomes include an appreciation for the different ways in which PBL can connect with community assets and goals, provide structure and frameworks for ethical engagement, and design one’s own potential community-engaged project. This is a workshop for any faculty, staff, or administrator who is seeking to create meaningful, reciprocal engagements with community in the project-based learning experience.

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This session will be highly interactive and largely driven by the interests of participants. It is aimed at those who wish to bring about change on their campuses, whether in pedagogical practices, curricular structures, or institutional support mechanisms for PBL. We’ll briefly frame the conversation by presenting a model for campus change, and share some of our experiences working with colleges and universities of different types and at different stages of the change process. Then, we will invite participants to describe the changes they hope to bring to their programs and campuses and the challenges they confront.

Materials
Presentation Slides

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We will discuss the difference between value, invention, value creation, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and how these all effect the impact student projects, as well as faculty research, will have. We will focus on three main concepts:
        1. How to focus on important problems and how to accurately identify end user needs

        2. How to prepare “NABC” value propositions and action plans

        3. How to iterate with one another and give and take feedback for constant improvement.

Materials

The Value Balance

The "NABC's" of Value Propositions

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This plenary session will introduce you to a model of stages of team development, different personality preferences and their impact on team functioning as well as differences in conflict management styles. All of these aspects of teams point to the theme that differences within teams are both a predictable source of tension and conflict and an important component of teams reaching their highest potential. These themes will be further developed by providing opportunities for participants to reflect on their own team dynamics in these critical areas.

Materials
Project Team Dynamics Presentation

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"How can I possibly add a project to my course!  It’s already packed!”  This is a common concern for faculty considering adding projects to their courses.  In this session we will discuss several strategies for creating space for projects, and the value in doing so.  Participants will identify an approach to use in their own courses and do some preliminary planning on how to gain the benefits of project-based learning without compromising the content of the course.

Materials
Handout
Presentation Slides

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In this workshop, we will address the translation of course objectives from traditional in-person learning to online and hybrid formats through project-based learning. Using examples from different academic disciplines and course formats, WPI instructors will discuss their experiences with transitions to online and hybrid teaching and learning, with a focus on course objectives that include creative problem solving, experimentation and measurement, and workshop collaboration and cohort building. Participants will be asked to outline their own course objectives and engage in exercises on how best to meet those objectives through project-based learning in online and hybrid environments.

Materials

COVID-19 has forced us to reimagine higher education. We now have numerous online teaching tools or strategies that could possibly be useful in a post-pandemic classroom. Transitions of laboratory-oriented and workshop-based courses are especially difficult during the pandemic. Before we start our workshop, we invite all of you to think about at least one teaching activity, which prior to the pandemic required students to be on campus and to work/experiment/do a project with materials, such as chemicals, motors, sensors, etc., or was otherwise built around in-person interactions among students. How did (or would) you transition this activity to online, and how did it help students reach course objectives?

Please view- "Prepwork for Projects Anytime, Anywhere."

Presentation slides

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In this workshop, we will address the developing and refining of projects in large enrollment courses. Using examples from diverse academic disciplines, WPI instructors will discuss their experiences with an emphasis on choosing between open-ended and structured projects, building community and enriching feedback to students. Participants will be asked to engage in an exercise to plan a concrete project or activity that could be implemented in one of their courses.

Materials
Welcome Video
Pre-work Slides
Pre-work word doc

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Meeting ID: 892 4396 7577

Passcode: 893719

Reflection is an essential part of project-based learning because it offers students the opportunity to process and analyze their learning. It also encourages students to uncover key lessons and results that faculty might not have anticipated.

Pre-work for this session will include reading 1 article about reflective writing and a short presentation available on-line on major approaches to reflective writing. Participants will be asked to submit their goals for a reflective assignment before the session to help guide our work in the face-to-face session. Participants will also have an opportunity to submit sample reflective prompts that didn't (or did!) work well to share with the group.

In the face-to-face session, participants will compare and contrast effective and ineffective prompts and assignments. Then, participants will individually brainstorm reflective prompts for their project. The group will share and discuss these potential prompts. Participants will leave the workshop with a draft of a reflective prompt to share with their team and ideas for implementation.

Materials
Pre-Workshop
https://sway.office.com/UJamYaYlGUxCWa5G?ref=Link [sway.office.com]

Post-Workshop
https://sway.office.com/l1Y0k5dcC62F9x16?ref=Link

If you cannot access the link, please double-check that your VPN or firewall is not blocking links to Microsoft Office 365 (apparently some firewall and VPN programs do). If possible, please disable your VPN temporarily OR enable access in your firewall to Microsoft Office 365 so that you can view the presentation.

If this is not possible, please email Liz directly at lclark@lagcc.cuny.edu. Please put “PBL Institute–Need Materials” in your subject line.

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Research shows that team and project-based learning has multiple benefits for students. However, our research, and that of others, shows that bias and stereotyping on teams can eliminate these benefits and reduce student learning. Drawing on asset-based approaches from Critical Race Theory in education, we have developed several tools and modules to help students and faculty identify, manage, and mitigate these issues. Asset mapping and team asset charting are two tools we have used with over 500 students on project teams. Our research shows these tools can help to enable more equitable and effective teamwork by overcoming stereotypes, building student confidence, and minimizing task assignment bias. Workshop participants will engage with these tools on teams as their own students would. They will fill out asset maps and discuss their assets (backgrounds, experiences, interests) with their team members. Team members will then determine who will take on what parts of a sample project based on each member’s assets and areas they want to develop. Workshopping the tools will enable participants to adapt them to their own classes, assignments, and projects.

Materials
Presentation Slides

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Faculty reward systems are a key lever for institutional change efforts aimed at strengthening high impact teaching practices and student success.  Numerous scholars have noted misalignment between espoused institutional missions and values and how they are enacted in faculty reward systems. Misaligned reward systems also contribute to reproduction of inequities in faculty advancement by gender and race. Participants in this workshop will share progress and successes in addition to problems and concerns about rewards for teaching at their institutions. Each will leave with short-term and longer-term ideas for action and change.

Materials
Pre-work Inventory
Tenure and Promotion Policy Changes at WPI that Elevate Recognition of Teaching
Helping Faculty Use and Provide More Data about Project-Based Teaching and Learning
Presentation Slides

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What are OERs? In this workshop, we will examine Open Educational Practices (OEP) and the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in a project-based learning context. First, participants will consider why they may want to integrate open projects into their curriculum. The session will be interactive with time to engage attendees with similar goals in small groups. Questions participants will be encouraged to explore include: How does the design and use of OERs connect to your learning outcomes? How open is the project learning experience? How can you remove disposable assignments and engage students as contributors to OERs? What types of projects can be integrated into your curriculum? What dimensions of openness does the project experience incorporate and generate for students? How can OERs align with social justice principles? We will share examples, ideas, and tools to generate and share open projects.  

Materials

Angell, N. 2019, Nov 21. Open Learning Experience Bingo 2.0. Licensed via CC BY 4.0, http://xolotl.org/okp-learning-experience-bingo-2-0/ 

Bakaitis, E. 2019, Jan 18. OER and Student Privacy. City Tech Library, City College of Technology, CUNY. https://library.citytech.cuny.edu/blog/oer-and-student-privacy/ 

Jhangiani, R. and R. DeRosa. 2017. Open Pedagogy. In: DeRosa and Jhangiani, editors. A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students. Rebus Community. http://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/ 

Lambert, S. R. 2018. Changing our (Dis)Course: A Distinctive Social Justice Aligned Definition of Open Education. Journal of Learning for Development 5(3): 225-244. https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/290/333 

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This session will engage participants in a skill- and philosophy-building workshop to create more effective, engaged online learning environments for robust community engagement. We will explore the importance of the instructor/facilitator in making intentional design decisions to ensure a space that is flexible, inclusive, and prioritizes learning objectives both curricular and developmental. Participants will work in small teams to design online communities to maximize cohort-building, bonding, personal accountability, and motivation. Using their own courses and contexts to inform the design, we will discuss ways to ensure the course experience is replicated, and even enhanced, in the online space. We will then reflect as a group on the educational design and strategies, and how they might be adapted online, but across contexts from 1:1 student/advisor research work to small-team collaborations to large-format cohort-building. This is an ideal workshop for anyone who is seeking to build an engaged classroom, build bonds for project-based learning online, and who seek to ensure a more inclusive, flexible space for learning amid challenges in our current context and beyond.

Materials

Pre-Workshop
Hamraie, Aimi. (10 March 2020). “Accessible Teaching in the Time of COVID-19”. Available: https://www.mapping-access.com/blog-1/2020/3/10/accessible-teaching-in-the-time-of-covid-19
Krause, Caitlin. (15 April 2020). “How to Forge a Strong Community in an Online Classroom.” Available: https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-forge-strong-community-online-classroom
ASU. “Course Design: Tools Review”. Available: https://teachonline.asu.edu/tools/
Structuring Online Environments to Build Community Worksheet

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This session will focus on many of the ways that rubrics can be used with project work: to convey quality standards to students, to evaluate student work, to support student self- and peer-assessment, and to evaluate programs. The session will include discussion of how to construct useful rubrics and the differences between a) using rubrics for purposes of grading and b) scoring with rubrics for broader purposes such as program evaluation. Examples of different types of rubrics will be shared. Rubric construction is new for many participants, so we will ask participants to consider the costs and benefits of using rubrics in their project work with students.

Materials
Presentation
Executive Summary
Problem-Solving Rubric
Rubric Image
Workshop Overview

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Meeting ID: 829 224 7976
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,8292247976# US (Chicago)
+16468769923,,8292247976# US (New York)

Will your students write as part of their project-based learning experience? If so, for what purpose and for whose eyes? This workshop will help you reflect on the role(s) writing can play in student projects, and the ways those projects might also help students improve as writers. You’ll leave the workshop with more clarity about foundational principles on which to ground your decision-making about writing’s possible roles in your PBL design, and you’ll have dedicated time to brainstorm and prioritize the competing purposes, communicative genres, audiences, and forms of assessment that you might lean on as you move forward. This workshop is equally appropriate for those who imagine writing to be a central deliverable to PBL (wherein PBL is in service to developing student writing competencies) and for those who envision discrete writing activities in service of advancing other PBL goals.

Materials

Pre-workshop
Reflective worksheet
Reading

Post-workshop
Infographic project- prompt
Infographic Project-Team CS reflection and rationale
Infographic project–Team CS Presentation
Jr Level Project–Student sample 1 of booklet deliverable
Jr Level Project–Student Sample 1b of supplemental materials for booklet
Jr. Level Project–Student Sample 2 (academic report AND implementation guide for a sponsor)
Kickstarter Project–Student sample of Kickstarter page
Kickstarter Project–Student sample of Reflection (Abbey)
Revision Project–Prompt for Rhetorical Analysis (groundwork for final project)
Revision Project–Prompt for SAVE revision (brochure and reflection)
Resource Handout

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Research shows that team and project-based learning has multiple benefits for students. However, our research, and that of others, shows that bias and stereotyping on teams can eliminate these benefits and reduce student learning. Drawing on asset-based approaches from Critical Race Theory in education, we have developed several tools and modules to help students and faculty identify, manage, and mitigate these issues. Asset mapping and team asset charting are two tools we have used with over 500 students on project teams. Our research shows these tools can help to enable more equitable and effective teamwork by overcoming stereotypes, building student confidence, and minimizing task assignment bias. Workshop participants will engage with these tools on teams as their own students would. They will fill out asset maps and discuss their assets (backgrounds, experiences, interests) with their team members. Team members will then determine who will take on what parts of a sample project based on each member’s assets and areas they want to develop. Workshopping the tools will enable participants to adapt them to their own classes, assignments, and projects.

Materials
Presentation Slides

Join Meeting

This session will be highly interactive and largely driven by the interests of participants. It is aimed at those who wish to bring about change on their campuses, whether in pedagogical practices, curricular structures, or institutional support mechanisms for PBL. We’ll briefly frame the conversation by presenting a model for campus change, and share some of our experiences working with colleges and universities of different types and at different stages of the change process. Then, we will invite participants to describe the changes they hope to bring to their programs and campuses and the challenges they confront.

Materials
Presentation Slides