The team at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport, Maine, has spent over a decade laying the groundwork for multifaceted reforms--including interdisciplinary curriculum, project-based learning, education outside of the classroom walls, and meaningful career exploration--all of which are student-centered and aim to deepen rigorous academics into…

This critical reflection briefly chronicles the transition of a general education program from a distributive model to an integrative model and the resulting Capital Capstone Course (CCC) at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). The article describes a year long, team-based, experiential course that "caps" off our…

The complex nature of contemporary challenges requires a culture of cooperation between academic disciplines. However, to what extent do educational systems prepare students to think beyond the boundaries of austerely defined and often entrenched academic fields? UNESCO has successively called for Environmental Education, Education for Sustainable…

Experiential learning (EL) has great potential to prepare students to work on interdisciplinary and global challenges across traditional boundaries, as well as support them in the development of reflective skills. In this study, we explore reflection as a central element for EL in the university wide interdisciplinary course Experts in Teamwork…

In this article, Lori Varlotta, president of small liberal arts institution Hiram College, describes how she and her team have launched a systemic change process that includes modifying the entire academic structure: first-year experience, majors, core curriculum, graduation requirements, and student learning outcomes. Hiram's model for academic…

Academic programs and educators face numerous challenges related to teaching digital marketing. Today, the world of marketing is digital and marketing programs have struggled to maintain pace with the changes influencing marketing practice. The authors describe the M-School program at Loyola Marymount University, a program developed to address…

Reforms in undergraduate engineering curriculum to produce engineers with entrepreneurial skills should address real-world problems relevant to industry and society with active industry support. Technology-assisted, hands-on projects involving experimentation, design simulation and prototyping will transform graduates into professionals with…

Higher education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faces a number of challenges. There are many calls for STEM education to make significant changes moving forward, including calls for competency-based learning and greater integration of the humanities. These efforts require systemic change. Systemic change has significant…

There has been increasing recognition for the need to reform doctoral training practices to foster students' personal epistemology. This study describes the design and evaluation of a learning experience designed to help students understand the scholarly publication process. Firstly, this study discusses the design of the learning experience,…

Many educators have created successful innovative models but have had difficulty sustaining, re-creating, and scaling these models. Classrooms and schools characterized by student-centered learning practices typically deviate from the norms of transmission teaching and the many structures and procedures that David Tyack and Larry Cuban called the…

One of the mysteries of education reform is how leaders and educators can successfully instantiate, sustain, and spread student-centered pedagogical practices from a few schools to many others. Advocates for "deeper learning" grapple with this mystery as they seek to transform teaching and learning to prepare students to meet the demands…

This article is the third of three case studies of successful implementation of experiential education at very different types of institutions. This case study discusses the use of David A. Kolb's Experiential Learning Model in the implementation of innovative graduation requirements in experiential education that began in 2008. Purdue University…

In many North American schools, the acquirement of knowledge is encouraged in the most fractious of ways. At the high-school level, knowledge is often channelled into separate, specialized units of study. Rarely is an effort made to develop cross-subject, unifying themes that can help students recognize important points of curricular overlap.…

Since 2005, the first-year engineering program at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, has been significantly restructured to include more hands-on learning. A major grant (2004-2009) under the department level reform (DLR) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) facilitated this restructuring. A number of hands-on learning modules were developed…

This article addresses issues regarding implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within formal education systems. In particular, it seeks to identify the basic essential components of ESD pedagogy. The authors present a theoretical pedagogical framework based on accumulated theory and experience in the field. The framework…