Hi there~

I'm Dr. Jacqueline Preston, founder of Project Syllabus

Years ago, as a graduate student, inspired by my own experience as a student of working class background, I became interested in understanding more about the challenges students of diverse background faced in the classroom.

In the hope of engaging students of all backgrounds, I began incorporating project work in all my courses. I knew in short order, I’d hit on something. I was amazed at how engaged my students were and astonished to see their focus on grades fall to the wayside, as they began focusing on what they needed to learn in their efforts to design meaningful projects.

My experience teaching with projects inspired me to continue my research in this area. As a doctoral student, I wanted to first understand my students and secondly, to fully understand the phenomenal shifts I witnessed as students' relationship to learning transformed before me.

I refined my approach over the years, focusing on projects that tapped into students literacies, histories and experiences. As a tenured faculty, I designed courses for my department, presented work at national conferences, published articles and books, and worked closely with the university’s office of teaching and learning, helping faculty across the curriculum build PBL courses in their discipline.

As I worked with instructors across the disciplines, who were using projects in their courses, it became clear that not all PBL experiences are the same. In a traditional PBL classroom, instructors are often excited and students interest is peaked_at the start, yet over time many of the instructors I worked with reported feeling overwhelmed and overworked as their students increasingly lost interest in the project. This experience taught me the importance of focusing on the learners.

While PBL models lay the foundation for active learning, a learner centered approach focused on shifting the onus for learning to the student is vital to keeping students stay engaged to the end.

I founded Project Syllabus in the hope that instructors and their students might fully realize the promise of project based learning.

I hope you’ll join me in charting a new era in education with learner centered project based learning.

Jacque