Teaching is complex; teachers and school leaders crave more meaningful collaborative experiences to make sense of that complexity. However, the structural, cultural, and historical factors involved with schooling impede the extent to which teachers can collaborate. Teachers spend five to six periods of the day teaching classes, largely working in…

This article encourages students to think multidimensionally and in a multidisciplinary fashion with this challenge, and choose a team that can support this kind of thinking. Presented is a challenge in which a major home improvement company makes tools and accessories for use by experienced and new homeowners. This company would like to provide…

Because quantitative biology requires skills and concepts from a disparate collection of different disciplines, the scientists of the near future will increasingly need to rely on collaborations to produce results. Correspondingly, students in disciplines impacted by quantitative biology will need to be taught how to create and engage in such…

The various ways natural resource agencies and programs are structured and how that impacts leadership style and products is an important concept for students to understand. Leadership style and organizational structure determine visions, missions, goals and objectives that set the tone for organizations. This exercise demonstrates organizational…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a coaching and teaching methodology that develops knowledge, abilities, and skills. It also encourages participation, collaborative investigation, and the resolution of authentic, "ill-structured" problems through the use of problem definition, teamwork, communication, data collection, decision-making,…

Describes the benefits of teaching students using research lessons, focusing on Japan's use of research lessons to teach elementary school science. Research lessons are planned collaboratively and bring to life in a lesson a particular goal or vision of education. The paper notes how research lessons impact teachers' instruction and describes…

Difficult to teach and learn, information literacy is a set of skills and knowledge that must be mastered through practice. Advances in the learning sciences reveal that students are not receptacles for wisdom deposits. They decide what they will learn. Problem-based learning exploits that insight. It calls for faculty/librarian collaborations.…

Problem-based learning (PBL) presents an opportunity for librarians and instructors to collaborate on designing learning experiences that will allow students to acquire information-gathering skills as part of their subject curriculum. This article describes a pilot course that incorporated PBL in the School of Information Sciences and Technology…

Group investigation is an organizational approach that allows a class to work actively and collaboratively in small groups and enables students to take an active role in determining their own learning goals and processes. As part of reform and restructuring efforts, Beaverton High School (Oregon) implemented the Group Investigation model with…