QEP-Real World Problem Solving

Science, Practice and Policy 20013, 9(1): 64-75.
Ever since the word "sustainability" entered public discourse, the concept has escaped definition. The United Nations has christened the years 2005-2014 "The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development" and has called upon universities "to make education for sustainability a central focus of higher education curricula, research, physical operations, student life, and outreach to local, regional, and global communities." Nevertheless, the indeterminacy of sustainability as a concept has challenged those designing university sustainability efforts, in terms of both campus planning and curricula. Some instructors and campus sustainability planners have chosen to stabilize sustainability concepts into a technical and ethical "greenprint" based on some agreement concerning shared (or imposed) concepts and values. Yet others have realized that this is not a problem to be "solved" but instead presents an opportunity to advance and implement alternative approaches to teaching and learning "post-normal" or "Mode 2" science. This article describes a curricular design that attempts to maintain both canonical disciplinary learning about the techniques of sustainability and training in the reflexive skills necessary to explore sustainable change through post-normal learning processes, which we delineate as three "modes of knowing." By training students to practice these ways of knowing sustainability, they come to understand the "how" of sustainable practice, process, and design, while allowing the "what" of sustainability to emerge from group interaction in a collaborative context.
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Human Resource Development Review 2017,16(1): 3–34.
Experiential learning methods for leadership development have grown in popularity, but empirical research to support design, implementation, and ongoing evaluation has not kept pace with the demand for these programs. Problem-based learning (PBL) and action learning (AL) are two examples of these interventions used for developing agile practitioners while solving challenges found in the workplace. Addressing the complexity of these approaches, this article presents a framework that integrates PBL and AL design features to facilitate research into these similar interventions for management and leadership development. The PBL and AL literatures are compared to reveal analogous characteristics and to highlight gaps in research. The integrative framework is applied to make recommendations for human resource development practitioners conducting program evaluations.
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Journal of Management Education 2004, 28(5): 578-590.
This article describes a problem-based learning (PBL) project that incorporates active learning into an organizational behavior (OB) course. It describes a six-step process for designing a course around problems that students identify in their work, school, or personal lives. In addition to researching an OB concept to address their problem, students develop a solution plan, carry out objective measurement of results, and engage in structured reflection on project completion. The article suggests some ways to adapt PBL for classes of different sizes or duration and offers some advice to faculty regarding how to structure the project for best results.
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