WPI science, engineering, and business students travel to more than 40 off-campus locations across six continents. Immersed in new cultures, they tackle unstructured problems in ways that are meaningful to local sponsors in real communities. Our diverse project centers—strategically positioned in locations ranging from large international cities to small mountainside villages—are host to interdisciplinary and major capstone projects, and humanities and arts projects.
This course introduces students to the work of changemaking and the field of social innovation. Students will explore principles of social innovation and social change, while developing the skills to analyze social issues, generate solutions to those issues, and become an effective social change agent.
Harvard Professor Eric Mazur is well known for his decades of innovation within science undergraduate teaching. His featured course, AP50: Physics as a Foundation for Science and Engineering, is a one-year, team- and project-based introduction to physics. In the course, Mazur assigns students to small groups and challenges them to solve real-life problems using fundamental physics concepts.
Are you ready to use team projects in your course? Use this rubric to assess your readiness for launching a team project in your course. (University of Maryland, 2016)
PBL Works - Dive into this collection of videos, planning forms, rubrics, blogs, and more. Whether you want to learn about PBL, or find classroom resources, our materials will support your journey.
Sharing Public Products: Presentation Tools
Adobe – Students can create professional looking webpages and presentations about their PBL projects with Express; they can create media campaigns and flyers with Express as part of the public products, and/or students can share their work by creating videos using Express.
Canva - Students can design just about anything with Canva, and it will look professional. And it is free!
Flip Grid - Students can use Flip Grid to share their PBL public products by walking through what they learned and what they created on video. Peers in the class compose video responses, providing positive feedback on the work completed.
Google Slides – Similar to PowerPoint, students can create and work collaboratively on their PBL public products/presentations in Google Slides and share easily be sending links to professors.
Powerpoint – The classic presentation tool – students are familiar with it and can work collaboratively on their PBL presentations/public products if they use Powerpoint in Teams.
Powerpoint Research Posters – Click here for Powerpoint research posters templates student can use to share their public product. Students can use Powerpoint to create professional research posters to display on MDC Commons, at MDC symposiums, and professional conferences.
Prezi - With Prezi, students cancreate moving, zooming public products that grab attention and keep it. Prezi offers video and design tools as well.
Sway – WithMicrosoft Sway, students can easily create professional looking public products like presentations and web pages.
Zoho Show - Students can design and collaborate on professional looking public products with Zoho Show.
Flip Book Makers
Flipsnack - With Flipsnack students can create and share their public products by transforming their PDFs into online flipbooks.
Yumpu- Students can use Yumpu to publish their public products as flipbooks, magazines, newspapers, e-zines, and brochures.
Simplebooklet - Students can make digital content from their slides, portfolios, brochures, or pamphlets with Simplebooklet.
