This case study describes a project designed by university museum curators, managers and educators working in collaboration with curriculum designers to elicit new uses for university museum collection objects in the delivery of tertiary, secondary and primary education programs. It involves an object-based learning community of practice experimenting with the inclusion of objects to expand pedagogy and content engagement in established programs. Specific, new cross-disciplinary pedagogic applications for collection items are being established. The paper gives a brief introduction to object-based learning, describes the institutional setting and timing of the project, outlines some initial results and argues that the project methodology, as an example of advocacy for material collections in higher education, is transferable to other tertiary education institutions.