Employers want graduates who excel in communication, collaboration, and teamwork. But implementing activities and assessments to support this skill development can be challenging in higher education large-enrollment classes where the balance between the extra work it creates for faculty and perceived value for students must be carefully…

Computing technology is reshaping the way in which professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries conduct their business. The execution of construction tasks is changing from traditional 2D to 3D building information modeling (BIM)-based concepts. The use of BIM is expanded and enriched by the introduction of advanced…

Scholars of leadership education have recently called for more "practice fields" that combine leadership experience with deliberate instruction, reflection, and feedback. The value of experience and reflection toward leadership development is widely espoused; yet, few studies assess best practices for their integration within leadership…

This study analyzed individual peer-review assessment data to understand the contributions of individual team members to in-class permanent-team outcomes, social loafing and loss of social interdependence among team members, and the achievement of team-lecture hybrid (TLH) instructional strategy learning outcomes in a team learning environment. A…

Project Citizen is an interdisciplinary curriculum for students, youth organizations, and adult groups that encourages citizens' competent and responsible participation in local and state governments in about 35 countries worldwide. In this article, based on an example of Project Citizen activities done with university students, the application…

Collaborative, project-based learning models have been shown to benefit student learning and engagement in the STEM disciplines. This case study evaluates the use of highly collaborative project- and problem-based learning models in introductory courses in the geosciences and biology. In the geosciences, we developed project-based modules with a…

Middle school students learned about their community when they created documentaries as part of a state bicentennial celebration. Students gathered multiple primary and secondary resources and worked with community members to interview them for their perspectives through video presentations as part of the inquiry process. Students work with local…

A laboratory sequence is described that is suitable for upper-level biochemistry or molecular biology laboratories that combines project-based and traditional laboratory experiments. In the project-based sequence, the individual laboratory experiments are thematically linked and aim to show how a bacterial antibiotic sensing noncoding RNA (the…

This design case covers a graduate course in educational software design that focuses on semester-long projects in response to client requests. The course was intended to address the need for professionals across disciplines, such as instructional design, computer science, and human-computer interaction design, to usefully collaborate on…

Agile methods such as Scrum that emphasize technical, communication, and teamwork skills have been practiced by IT professionals to effectively deliver software products of good quality. The same methods combined with pedagogies of engagement can potentially be used in the setting of higher education to promote effective group learning in software…

There have been calls by the Federal government and policymakers for improvements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education through the development of excellent teachers with the content knowledge and skills to teach and motivate students. A shared goal among teacher professional development (PD) programs is to improve…

This article describes four different mechanisms for preparing teacher candidates from a liberal arts institution to teach in project based learning (PBL) classrooms: Observe it, Experience it, Create it, and Become it. For each of the four mechanisms, the authors also provide concrete examples of candidates' PBL experiences and candidates'…

Students used a compass trail to show how they could perform service to their school. When students performed service learning, they completed a real task that was needed for a grateful audience conjoined with academic content in the lesson. Students worked on the school grounds and used content from their regular curriculum while looking for…

Undergraduate students at land-grant institutions across the country are often unaware of the depth and breadth of Extension services and careers. Agricultural communication students collaborated with an Extension programmatic team in a blended and project-based course at Purdue University to develop online videos about small farm agricultural…

Learning is most effective when accompanied by doing. If someone desires to become a baseball player, being told how to play the game, watching others play and even understanding the rules of the game are mostly ineffective if the individual never "swings the bat". This paper outlines the implementation of this method (swinging the bat)…