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LEEF’s Teaching Hub is hosting a symposium to explore how project-based learning brings together classrooms, community partners and workplaces to support student success through applied education. 

Learning That Works: Transforming Teaching for Impact through Work-Integrated and Project-Based Learning is May 1 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Led by UNT Department of Multidisciplinary Innovation faculty, the event builds on years of innovative teaching and scholarship in project-based and work-integrated learning. 

Visit the symposium website to see the agenda and register. 

LEEF spoke with symposium co-chairs Rochelle Gregory and LeeAnn Derdeyn about what participants can expect from the event. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Question: What is project-based learning? 

Derdeyn: Project-based learning gives students an opportunity to grapple with a particular problem over an extended period of time and offer a solution. It can be done in one class, but generally we want sustained inquiry in a module, an entire semester or even a calendar year. 

Gregory: It’s aligned with high-impact learning practices. Students get to select their approach to solving the problem and it’s centered on a real-world example. Then there’s the creation of a public product. It’s not enough for students to talk about the problem and come up with a solution, they have to present it publicly and get feedback. 

Q: What can symposium participants expect to take away from the event? 

Gregory: Ideally, when a participant leaves the symposium, they’ll have a repository of high-impact classroom activities and ways of implementing project-based learning at both the small, daily classroom activity level, but also sustained over the course of a semester. 

Derdeyn: Many of UNT’s core courses are moving to flipped classrooms, so we’re going to be exhibiting relevant hands-on activities across multiple disciplines. Our colleagues who are feeling any anxiety about these flipped classrooms and what they are going to do to engage students in these periods, we want to give them some confidence and some excitement, some ability to recognize that this is good for students, but it's also good for them. 

In addition to the workshops, we’ll have some more generalized plenaries that cover what project-based learning is and what work-integrated learning looks like. 

Q: What topics will be covered in the breakout sessions? 

Gregory: We have poster sessions with examples of specific projects, so participants can see how they were implemented. We’ll also have presentations on flipped classrooms, zines and multimodal writing, engaging the community in heritage management, applied exams in core courses, gamifying topics to promote problem solving, and more. 

Q: How does the symposium’s content connect to UNT missions and initiatives? 

Gregory: The president’s strategic plan includes promoting student success with retention, graduation and career readiness. The symposium speaks specifically to that because we’re thinking about engaged opportunities for students in the classroom. When students are engaged in class, they’re more likely to stay in their programs. 

The president’s strategic plan also emphasized research centered on real problems. Project-based learning offers faculty models for how to integrate research that aligns with this into class activities and over the course of the semester. 

Derdeyn: This is faculty support. We can focus all of this on students, but we also have to make sure that faculty have what they need to put these initiatives in place. This is an opportunity for faculty development to increase their comfort and professionalism when implementing some of these initiatives for students. 

Q: The event is open to educators outside of UNT. Why was it important to include other institutions? 

Gregory: We have an opportunity to share with our colleagues. Rising tides raise all boats. If we can connect with our community college partners, our high school educator partners, it helps us prepare for students coming into UNT. 

Derdeyn: We have a vibrant workforce in the North Texas area. The more that all the colleges and universities can work together to provide what students and eventually employers need, it’s going to help the reputation of the area. 

It is a collegial thing to provide this for other universities and for us to participate in what they might do be doing so we're all providing what our local students need as best we can.