Pedagogies of Engagement:

AAC&U’s conference on Pedagogies of Engagement brought together more than 300 faculty members, academic leaders, and research scholars. Collectively they are both advancing and studying one of the most important developments in higher education: the shift toward teaching and learning practices that engage students with complex and unsolved problems confronting their society.

AAC&U’s Greater Expectations report describes this shift as the emergence of a "New Academy" - an academy that seeks both to strengthen the quality of student learning through engaged pedagogies, and also to help students acquire the knowledge, skills and values that make college learning a resource for contributing citizenship.

The conference explored research in cognitive science which documents the increased educational effectiveness of engaged pedagogies such as problem-based learning, service-learning, community-based research, learning communities, and student engagement with unsolved societal, scientific and public health issues. Conference sessions provided rich opportunities to see how faculty in different fields are making engaged pedagogies essential rather than elective to learning in their disciplines.

The conference also explored ways of moving engaged pedagogies from the margin to the center, including: assessment strategies to provide evidence of educational effectiveness, support for faculty and staff who are adopting engaged pedagogies, and academic leadership to create campus cultures of engagement.

Resources and handouts from the conference sessions will be posted on this Web site by the end of June.

For more information, please e-mail us at meetings@aacu.org.