Thank you for your interest in The Future of Higher Education: A Symposium on Collaborative, Project-Based Learning. The symposium will be held Monday, June 26-Tuesday, June 27, 2023 at the JB Duke Hotel (230 Science Drive, Durham, NC).
Please review the information below to learn more about the symposium. We will continue to update this page as additional details are finalized.
Quick links:
Overview and Goals
Project-based learning has received attention as a high-impact educational practice for several decades, yet it often sits at the periphery of the curriculum. During this action-oriented symposium, we will explore how a diverse array of higher education institutions are embedding collaborative, project-based work into the student experience, and how your institution might better incorporate this approach to experiential learning on your campus.
During a set of plenary sessions on the first day, representatives from a range of diverse programs will share their perspectives on key questions and issues related to collaborative, project-based learning, such as:
- What is the case for collaborative, project-based learning? How does this model benefit students, faculty, and universities?
- What are the key building blocks for starting a new program? How do you cultivate institutional support?
- How can institutions integrate such projects and programs into departmental or school curricula, at all student levels?
- What are the best strategies and resources for preparing faculty and students to effectively collaborate on research teams?
- When projects are sourced from the community, what approaches foster equitable and sustainable community partnerships?
- What resources are required to facilitate compelling collaborative projects, and what funding models have emerged to support such undertakings?
- For interdisciplinary projects, how can institutions efficiently connect faculty and students across fields and help teams work together across disciplinary silos?
- What challenges complicate efforts to scale project-based learning, and what strategies best overcome those obstacles?
We will also hear from government and foundation representatives about the current landscape and potential opportunities for funding community-engaged research projects that involve students as well as faculty.
On the second day, symposium participants will work together in facilitated action planning groups to develop plans for piloting, adapting, scaling, and/or assessing project-based learning programs at their institutions.
Pre-Symposium Engagement
In advance of the symposium, we will share a set of short case studies, written by faculty and administrators who have implemented project-based learning programs in their institution, to illuminate challenges, best practices and lessons learned across a range of institutional contexts. These case studies will showcase the variety of “delivery models” for project-based learning in higher education, which range from courses, capstones, and interdisciplinary, problem-centered majors/minors to co-curricular programs, lab-based models, and community-driven programs. They will also illustrate a set of common features that include collaborative projects, experiential learning, and applied research.
We will also invite all attendees to complete a short survey in advance to collect information about key questions and issues that are of greatest interest.
Symposium Goals
- Offer examples and guidance on how institutions have adopted collaborative, project-based learning across a wide spectrum of resource settings.
- Build a network of administrative leaders across higher education who are invested in adopting collaborative, project-based learning.
- Raise awareness of innovative programs that deploy collaborative, project-based learning, identify emerging best practices and develop more standard approaches to assessing the value of these programs.
- Conceptualize research agendas that would more comprehensively test the impacts of such programs.
- Spur the adoption of more collaborative, project-based learning across higher education, where appropriate.
Detailed Agenda
Monday, June 26: Day One
Time | Activity |
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8:30-9:30 |
Check-in (Ballroom A) + Breakfast (MarketPlace) + Gallery walk (Ballrooms D-E)Upon arrival, please visit our welcome table near the entrance of Ballroom A to pick up your name tag. Once you check in, we invite you to engage with the gallery walk next door in Ballroom D-E and get breakfast downstairs at MarketPlace. Engaging with the gallery walk: The gallery walk is designed to jumpstart the sharing of ideas and best practices with an eye towards incorporating some of these ideas into your action planning efforts on day two. Please plan to visit the gallery walk in Ballroom D-E at some point during the breakfast hour (8:30-9:30) to engage with the prompts posted around the room. As you circulate, please read what’s on the posters, consider key themes, add new ideas using post-it notes and use voting dots to emphasize ideas you find compelling. As additional notes are added, you may also consider grouping ideas to illustrate emerging trends. Please note that we have pre-populated the gallery walk with many of your fantastic responses to the symposium pre-survey, so even if you are the first to arrive, you will have ideas to engage with and build upon. |
9:30-10:00 |
Welcome address (Ballrooms A-C)The welcome address will provide an overview of the goals and structure of the symposium, including a roadmap and expectations for participant engagement. Speaker:
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10:15-11:45 |
Plenary Session 1: Scaffolding and Supporting Effective Collaboration (Ballrooms A-C)The goal of this session is to provide attendees with an overview of the elements that contribute to team success as well as concrete strategies for preparing faculty and students to effectively collaborate on research teams. This conversation will likely touch on philosophical questions around teaching, learning, and research goals and outcomes, as well as practical advice for supporting teams across a project’s life cycle, including exploring how programs organize and manage project initiation, support team formation, assist with resource acquisition and management, ensure equitable internal and external partnerships, create and deploy timely trainings and resources, support mentorship across disciplines and levels, encourage the creation and sharing of robust outputs, build in mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation, etc. Facilitator:
Panelists:
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11:45-12:45 |
Lunch + Discussion with students (MarketPlace)During this informal lunch, we will be joined by approximately 10-15 students and recent alumni who have participated in project-based learning programs at Duke. Students will be seated (either individually or in pairs) at tables across the the MarketPlace space and will be eager to answer questions about their project team experiences and the impact of those experiences on their academic and professional trajectories. Once you've gathered your lunch, please join the table of your choice, and we encourage you to talk to students and each other about your experiences, perspectives and insights on collaborative, project-based learning. |
12:45-2:15 |
Plenary Session 2: Scaling and Embedding Project-Based Learning in the Curriculum (Ballrooms A-C)The goal of this session is to provide attendees with an overview of main components, challenges and strategies involved in bringing a program to scale. In particular, the conversation should touch on models for embedding project-based learning into curricular structures across disciplines and student levels; mechanisms and strategies for incentivizing faculty and students to participate; organizational structures and operational strategies for managing scaled/embedded programs and concrete examples of collaborative project-based courses and how they’re structured and taught. Facilitator
Panelists:
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2:30-4:00 |
Plenary Session 3: Fostering and Managing Community Engaged Research Projects (Ballrooms A-C)The goal of this session is to provide attendees with an overview of how programs can effectively and equitably engage community partners. This includes a focus on strategies for helping faculty identify and connect with community partners, best practices for fostering sustainable partnerships, methods for sourcing projects from the community, guidance for training faculty and students to work with community partners, and models for funding community-engaged work. Facilitator:
Panelists:
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4:15-5:30 |
Plenary Session 4: Resourcing and Sustaining Programs (Ballrooms A-C)The goal of this session is to provide attendees with a better understanding of how federal funding agencies view the challenges and opportunities for project-based, community-engaged research involving faculty and students. This includes a focus on how such programs support agencies’ goals around community-based research and workforce development. It is not designed to provide a deep dive into specific funding vehicles, but rather to provide a big picture view of the landscape, as viewed by federal agencies, given their extensive engagement across higher education. We hope that participants will leave with a deeper insight into the priorities of major federal funding agencies and a sense of the types of activities that align with those goals. Facilitator:
Panelists:
Resources: |
5:30-7:30 |
Dinner + Action planning group signup + Gallery walk, continued (Ballrooms D-E)Dinner is designed to be conversational and dynamic. Food and drinks will be arranged buffet-style in several stations, and you will be invited to move freely between the mix of sitting and standing tables to talk with each other about what you heard in the plenaries and where you plan to focus your action planning efforts. Revisiting the gallery walk: At this time, you are also invited to reengage with the gallery walk. As you can, please revisit the prompts around the room, read what other participants have written and add your own ideas and insights. You might also consider taking photos of the posters that are of most interest to you so that you can revisit these ideas during your action planning work on day two. Signing up for an action planning group: During dinner, you must also sign up for an action planning group. Outside Ballroom D-E, there will be a table with sign-up sheets with action-planning topics listed at the top. Please scan the suggested topics and write your name beneath one topic that is most interesting to you. Suggested topics include:
If you are interested in working on a topic that isn’t listed, you may propose your own topic and try to find other participants that want to work with you. Please try to frame any new topics broadly enough that others will be able to understand and identify with it, and please make sure that it is truly distinctive from the existing topics, which are designed to be quite broad. After dinner, our planning team will use these sign-up sheets to form groups of 6-8 participants to work together on day two. When you arrive on Tuesday morning, you will find these lists posted. Please note that you will still have the option to move to another group if you change your mind. |
Tuesday, June 27: Day Two
Registration and Accommodations
Unfortunately, we have met capacity for the symposium. If you have registered for the symposium but can no longer join us, please fill out this form.
The symposium will be held at the JB Duke Hotel (230 Science Drive, Durham, NC). Guests are expected to arrange their travel and accommodations. If you are flying, the Raleigh Durham International Airport (RDU) is about 25 minutes away. The room block at the JB Duke Hotel is now full. Guests seeking accommodation may still contact the JB Duke by calling (919) 660-6400 and requesting reservations. If you are looking for alternative lodging, the AC Hotel Durham is one mile from the JB Duke.
The symposium is free and open to all registered university faculty, staff and administrators with an interest in project-based learning, as well as higher education funders and leaders of scholarly societies and other higher education organizations. Breakfast and lunch will be provided to all attendees. To ensure representation from a diverse mix of institutions, we recommend that each university send no more than 2-3 individuals.
All attendees should be vaccinated against COVID-19 and we encourage up-to-date booster shots. At this time, masking is optional.
Please contact Laura Howes (laura.howes@duke.edu) if you have any questions.
Featured Programs
The pre-symposium case studies and discussions on day one will draw on lessons learned from a variety of innovative and unique programs including:
- Appalachian State University: Research-to-Action Multi-Disciplinary Projects
- Arizona State University: Humanities Lab
- Ball State University: Immersive Learning
- Boston University: BU HUB Cross-College Challenge (XCC)
- California State University, Chico: Housing Research Group
- Duke University: Bass Connections
- Georgia Institute of Technology: Vertically Integrated Projects Program (VIP)
- Lehigh University: Creative Inquiry
- Loyola University Chicago: Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL)
- Trinity College & Capital Community College: Liberal Arts Action Lab at Trinity College & Liberal Arts Action Lab at Capital Community College
- University of Michigan: U-M History Labs
- University of Waterloo: Knowledge Integration
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Project-Based Education