What happens when a university rethinks the whole higher ed model rebuilds it around hands-on, project-based learning?
Matt Kirchner dives into the bold model pioneered by Worcester Polytechnic Institute with Dr. Kristin Wobbe, Director of the Center for Project-Based Learning. A biochemist turned curriculum innovator, Kris has spent nearly two decades helping WPI embed real-world projects into every stage of a student’s education.
From first-year seminars on global challenges to immersive junior-year team projects with community partners around the world, WPI’s model turns students into creators, collaborators, and critical thinkers from day one.
Whether you're a university leader or an instructor in search of a better way to teach, this episode offers a masterclass in how to make learning stick.
Listen to learn:
- Why students don’t need to “know everything” before they dive into hands-on learning
- How WPI redesigned its calendar and credits to prioritize deep project work
- What first-year students can accomplish when they take on global problems
- How project-based learning transforms both faculty culture and student confidence
- Why WPI students are more prepared for the workforce than their peers
3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:
1. Project-based learning works best when it starts early and is embedded across the entire student journey.
At WPI, students can opt into the Great Problems Seminar in their first year—a two-course sequence that explores global issues like food security, energy, and AI through interdisciplinary teamwork. By senior year, every student must complete a Major Qualifying Project worth three full courses, often in partnership with faculty or industry, making project-based learning a requirement, not an add-on.
2. The humanities directly enhance technical learning and student outcomes.
WPI’s alumni data shows students who complete their humanities and arts curriculum earlier perform better in technical coursework later on. These experiences sharpen communication, interdisciplinary research, and critical thinking skills—essential for identifying problems worth solving and communicating solutions effectively in STEM fields.
3. Project-based learning is scalable far beyond polytechnic institutions.
Through WPI’s Center for Project-Based Learning, Kris and her team have supported schools ranging from the Air Force Academy to community colleges and liberal arts institutions like the New England Conservatory of Music. With 85% of WPI faculty incorporating projects into their courses—and over half of student work now project-based—the model proves adaptable across disciplines, schedules, and resource levels.
Resources in this Episode:
To learn more about the Center for Project-Based Learning at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, visit: https://wp.wpi.edu/projectbasedlearning/
Other resources:
- Read Kris's book Project-Based Learning in the First YearBeyond All Expectations
We want to hear from you! Send us a text.
Instagram - Facebook - YouTube - TikTok - Twitter - LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Kirchner (00:00):
Matt, welcome into this week's episode of The
(00:10):
Tech Ed podcast. My name is MattKirkner. I am your host. How
many times have we said here onThe TechEd Podcast that I was a
and continue to be a hands onkinesthetic learner. I was never
a classroom learner. I was neververy good at learning by
reading, but when I could get myhands on something, when I could
do something physically, that'swhen all of the learning came
(00:31):
together. For me, project basedlearning was my way of learning.
We're going to talk all aboutthat today on this episode of
The TechEd Podcast, how bringingstudents learning right into
their haptic zone, showing themhow they can engage with
learning, makes that learningstick, makes it that much more
effective. And we're having thatconversation with our guest, Dr
(00:54):
Kristen wolby. She goes byChris. She's the director of the
Center for project basedlearning at the Worcester
Polytechnic Institute. Dr woby,thank you so much for being
here. I'm delighted to be herewith you So Chris, thank you so
much for joining us. I want totalk to you about all the great
things that are happening thereat the Worcester Polytechnic
(01:15):
Institute. We'll get into towhat your organization is all
about, what your institution isall about. But I know you made a
major shift in the way that youwere delivering learning in the
institution did all the way backin the 1970s and really taking
that last step curriculum thatso many of us experienced during
our journey through education,and changing that into something
that was considerably different.
So tell us about what drove thatspecific decision, and maybe the
(01:37):
problem you were trying tosolve, or the institution
anyway, was trying to solve now,some 40 or 50 years ago. Well,
Kris Wobbe (01:45):
it was then, as it is now, a time of declining
enrollment. And so one of theconcerns was how to make the
education more relevant to ourincoming students and make it
more attractive to them. But theway that we went about it was
one of our esteemed leadersdecided to put young faculty in
charge of re envisioning thecurriculum. And I think that was
(02:06):
really an important step, andthe young faculty were less
wedded to what was happening,and looked around and thought,
not only do we need to make itmore attractive to students,
probably we need to reimagine itso it better serves them as they
leave, and that we are providingthem with more of the skills and
abilities they're going to needpost being in a classroom, and
(02:29):
therefore they developed thiscurriculum that was really built
around projects.
Matt Kirchner (02:34):
How interesting is it that in this day and age,
when we're talking aboutdeclining enrollments in higher
education for all kinds ofreasons, right? And we've got
demographic reasons that it'sjust the pure math of how many
students were being born, youknow, 1520, years ago, and are
now considering what they doafter high school and post
secondary, and that's a factorwe've got changing perceptions
about higher education, where itfits, where it doesn't fit, all
(02:57):
of these things that are facinghigher education. And what
you're saying to me is that ifwe look back into the 1970s when
institutions were facing asimilar challenge, and they
recognized they needed to dothings a little bit differently
to continue to attract studentsand make the learning meaningful
for them, here we are again,now, some 40 or 50 years later,
facing the same kind ofchallenges. Isn't that
(03:18):
interesting? Do you agree? I do.
I do agree. So if we think aboutthis whole model of project
based learning, and think aboutit in a more broad sense, what
are some of the misconceptionsyou would say that other
institutions that are maybesticking to a more traditional
classroom, sage on the stage,lecture type of learning, what
are those misconceptions thatthey would have about a
polytechnic education? There area lot
Kris Wobbe (03:39):
of barriers, I would say, to adopting project based
learning. But if we want tofocus on misconceptions, I think
probably the most common one isthat students need to know all
the things before they can do aproject. They got to cram all
this information into theirbrains first before you let them
loose, right? They don't see theproject itself as the avenue to
(04:00):
learning
Matt Kirchner (04:01):
interesting. You know, I had a mentor a long time
ago, and that individual taughtme just it was really more of a
business lesson, but it was allabout the idea that you don't
need to know everything aboutsomething in order to dive in,
as long as you have theconfidence that you're going to
figure it out along the way, andin so many ways, that is what
learning is all about. So isthat? What I'm hearing from you
is that it's this process of Idon't have all the answers when
(04:22):
I jump into the hands on versionof learning, Polytechnic version
of learning, that I can figureit out along the way. Is that a
good way of putting it sure and
Kris Wobbe (04:30):
that that's really much more effective, because
it's one thing to be told you'regoing to need to know something,
and it's another thing to beconfronted with I need to find
something out to be able to dothe thing I want to do that
absolutely, immediately moremotivating to learn the thing
isn't that
Matt Kirchner (04:45):
right, right?
You're going on thisexploration. You're not starting
with all the answers and thenjust going through and checking
the boxes. I love your way ofthinking about this. I love the
way that you get this wholemodel started so early in the
process as well. Now Iunderstand that you helped
launch the first year project.
Project based experience. Thisgoes all the way back to 2007,
so we're talking about 18 yearsago. So talk about that. I'm not
(05:06):
trying to date either one of us,but man, it's crazy just to
think that here we are in 2025you were doing this 18 years
ago. What does that program looklike, and how have you evolved
it over the course of those 18years?
Kris Wobbe (05:16):
It started with an idea that you know. So we
developed this project basedcurriculum, but a lot of the
major projects don't happenuntil the students are further
advanced in their careers. Andstudents were coming and saying,
but I want to start a projectnow. So it was partly driven by
the students, and partly by therecognition that if we wanted
students to perform well inprojects downstream in their
education, it would help to haveprojects upstream. And so the
(05:39):
great problem seminars wereconceived, and these are a two
course sequence specifically forfirst year students. And each
course in the sequence isfocused around one of the
world's big problems. And ofcourse, the world has many big
problems, so it's not hard tofind one, right? And we put
together two faculty fromdifferent disciplines, usually a
humanistic discipline and then atechnical discipline, and they
(06:02):
had 40 to 60 students. And inthe first course in the
sequence, the two faculty workwith the students to help them
understand, sort of the depth,breadth and complexity of the
problem, and to look at it froma variety of disciplinary
perspectives, their own ofcourse, but other ones that are
really important, and also tosee that who you are and where
you are really affects how youwill perceive the problem or
(06:26):
experience the problem, andmaybe see a whole different side
of it than somebody in yourcommunity with a different kind
of identity, or somebody in adifferent community, in a
different part of the world. Andwhile they are doing this, the
students are doing littleprojects in teams that help them
develop that content knowledge,but also help them develop
skills around findinginformation, communicating,
(06:49):
orally, written and visually,working with partners to solve a
problem. And at the end of thatfirst course, they're then ready
to dive into the second one,where with the same faculty,
same students. The studentsdivide themselves into small
teams of about four, and eachteam picks a small piece of that
(07:09):
big problem and localizes it. Sowe're going to solve maybe a
hunger problem for thiscommunity, or this part of this
community, and then they have tospend some time figuring out how
big a problem that is. Why is ita problem? What are the
consequences of the problem?
Then, how would people solvethis problem somewhere else? And
what are two potential solutionsthat will work here? And then,
(07:31):
what would it take to implementone of those solutions? You
know, if you do a compare andcontrast, you know, what are the
benefits and drawbacks of thetwo? Pick one and develop how
that could work. And at the endof this, the students present,
they have a report, and thenthey have, we have a giant
poster session. So all thestudents who are in one of these
present at the same time, and weinvite the entire campus and the
(07:53):
student, parents and thecommunity, and everybody comes.
And it's delightful to see thesestudents who were a week and a
half before, really anxious thatthey weren't going to be able to
do all of this now, veryproudly, standing in front of
their poster and saying, Look,we did a thing. We had an idea,
and it's evolved a lot over thethe 18 years. We developed a
(08:14):
cadre of folks who were reallydedicated to the program and did
a lot of sharing. I mean, coteaching with someone involves a
lot of sharing. But then wedeveloped this really nice
network and learned what workswell and what doesn't, and
shared that across the network.
And eventually we decided we hadenough expertise that we even
(08:36):
wrote a book about it. Did
Matt Kirchner (08:37):
you really? All right, we'll be sure and link
that book up in the show notesfor any of our listeners that
are interested in learning moreabout that. So many different
directions we can go on thatlast discussion. I mean, first
of all, it sounds like in thefirst semester, all the students
are working on the same generalproblem, right? So we pick a
problem for that first semester.
Is that right? Or is itmultiple? There
Kris Wobbe (08:55):
are multiple problems. And so the students
can decide, are they moreinterested in studying the
problem of energy or ofsustainability or of shelter or
of food or healthcare, and it'san optional project. Not all of
our students complete this one,but they do have the option, and
they get to pick what soundsmost interesting. Got it
Matt Kirchner (09:15):
Hey, have the topics or the problems evolved
over the course of that periodof time? Do they change, or is
it pretty much the same topics.
Every year we've added
Kris Wobbe (09:22):
and subtracted some, I would say probably our most
topical one is we had one thisyear for the first time on
artificial intelligence. Wow, weweren't even thinking about back
in 2007 for
Matt Kirchner (09:32):
sure. Yeah, who was talking about AI and now who
isn't talking about AI? In thisday and age? We certainly speak
a lot about it here on TheTechEd Podcast. You know, a
couple other things that justoccurred to me as you're going
through that answer. One ofthem, we had a guest really
early on in the podcast, Dr Sueesperman, who at the time was
the president of the of IvyTech, which is the technical
(09:53):
college system in the state ofIndiana, and she three degrees
in engineering, had abaccalaureate degree, a master's
and a. PhD in Engineering, andtalked about on the engineering
side, some of the challengesthat she saw in higher education
were that you would putengineers in a course and have
them work through all theircalculus and all their physics
and all their really rigorousmath courses before you kind of
(10:16):
figured out if they were goodenough to get to the fun stuff.
And she said, Wouldn't it begreat if we started with the fun
stuff, and it sounds like that'skind of the logic. Are you
hearing that from your students?
So they like diving right in,right in that first semester.
Does that help with recruiting?
It
Kris Wobbe (10:29):
does help a little bit with recruiting, and it
helps even more, I thinkstudents identify things that
they can see doing with theireducation. So if you're taking
calculus and physics and basicchemistry. It's hard to see,
what is that going to be goodfor, right? And so having these
courses can help them see, oh,as a chemist or a biomedical
(10:51):
engineer or an electricalengineer, I can actually work on
water problems I hadn't thoughtabout, but water is a big
problem.
Matt Kirchner (10:58):
I love the way that gives them context for that
continuing education. I alsolike the way that you're pulling
faculty from various disciplineswithin the institution. This
whole project based learningidea doesn't begin and end with
that first year. I know asstudents get into their junior
year this this whole themecontinues walking through that
experience, then their junioryear, they do what you're
(11:19):
calling an interactivequalifying project, usually
focused on integrating, again,my understanding science,
technology and society, which Ithink is an interesting word to
kind of throw in there, tell usabout that experience. And
what's the objective of thatjunior year project? I'm going
to start with
Kris Wobbe (11:35):
the objective, sure, because those faculty back in
the 70s recognized it was a timewhen technological advances were
happening quite rapidly, right?
And there was some sense thatthe science was moving faster
than our ability to wrap ourheads around what the
consequences were. And so one ofthe objectives of this project
(11:56):
is to help students understandthat there are consequences to
the work they do, that whateverwe're doing, it's going to
affect people, and thinkingabout what might be the impacts
downstream of whatever it iswe're working on. And as we've
continued this project, we'vealso recognized that it works
the other way too, that what wedecide are problems and what we
(12:19):
decide to work on and how wedecide to work on them are also
influenced by the society we arein. And so there's this two way
street and helping studentsrecognize that early in their
careers was seen as reallyimportant.
Matt Kirchner (12:34):
Absolutely, it's not just that one way learning.
It's actually a two wayexperience, and it's not just
what are we going to learnabout, what are we going to
participate but how does thatwork that we're doing then
affect other things and ourplace in the world? And really,
really important to get thatcontext as well. So give us a
little bit more of a feel ofthat whole interactive
qualifying project and how thatfeels for the student. This
Kris Wobbe (12:54):
is probably the most distinctive thing about a WPI
education. So this project isthe equivalent of three classes.
They always do it with a facultyadvisor, sometimes one,
sometimes more than one, workingwith them. They're working at
some issue or problem, at theintersection of science,
technology and society, and theyconclude with a fairly
(13:15):
substantial report, andsometimes other things. And they
can do this in one of two ways.
The way the smallest number ofour students do it is by doing
this on top of taking a coupleother classes. And so it extends
over some period of the year tothe equivalent of three classes
worth of work. But the way moreof our students, almost like 80%
(13:36):
of our students, do this, isthey do it as an immersive, one
term experience. And we have,over the 50 years, developed a
suite of 50 project centerswhere we send students and
faculty to a place, and thoseplaces are located all over the
world, where they spend sevenweeks working intensively with a
(13:58):
project sponsor. And in theseprojects in particular, they're
all brought by localorganization. It can be a
government it can be a nongovernmental organization, a non
profit, a small business. Theyhave a problem that they want
somebody to solve, and ourstudents come in. They learn
about the problem, they providesolutions and to make sure that
(14:19):
they can be most effective inseven weeks, it's pretty short
period of time for sure wherethey go, they have a prep class
where they're learning whattheir project is and doing some
background research on it, sothat they've already got a plan
by the time they arrive and andso that's a really
transformative experience forour students, and For many of
(14:40):
them, the first time they'rereally working in a professional
environment, ininterdisciplinary teams on
something that's not theirmajor,
Matt Kirchner (14:48):
any specific projects that come to mind, as
you think about it, that are weprovide a particularly good
example of what that experienceis like for the students.
Kris Wobbe (14:55):
Well, I had the privilege of being able to
advise a group of. Some 20 plusstudents who went to Melbourne,
Australia, and we had severaldifferent project teams. One was
working with a local museum whowanted to assess the value of
their collection that was not ondisplay. And so the students had
(15:16):
to learn about, how do youevaluate that sort of thing? How
do you value that? We hadanother group that was working
with a community organizationthat wanted to develop a
curriculum for late teens early20s around climate adaptation
for their organization. We hadanother that was working with a
nonprofit that wanted helpdeveloping materials to get more
(15:39):
corporate sponsorships. Yeah,
Matt Kirchner (15:41):
very cool examples. And help me understand
how the credit side of it works.
I assume they're earning collegecredits as they're doing that
work. How does that fit into theoverall course sequence?
Kris Wobbe (15:50):
Well, the beautiful thing is, they're required to do
the project, so it doesn't haveto count in any particular
discipline. It's just you haveto do this project in order to
graduate. And it's three coursesworth of credit, and they get
grades for the work they do inthese projects. And
Matt Kirchner (16:08):
just another question is totally out of
curiosity, so they're going offto some other you know, this
project for seven weeks. Howdoes that fit into a typical
semester? And how do you makethat work with the rest of the
course schedule?
Kris Wobbe (16:19):
Well, that's because we don't have typical semesters.
We made it easy. So one of theother changes we made in the 70s
to accommodate exactly this kindof thing is our semesters have
been divided into two, and ourstudents take three classes for
seven weeks, and then we take abreak, and then they come back
and take three more classes forseven weeks. So it fits neatly
(16:41):
into one of those slots. Got
Matt Kirchner (16:43):
it, so it's almost like four quarters,
almost maybe like I had in highschool. I don't want to compare
it, but at the right so it hasmore of that feel to it, very,
very interesting and a really,really creative way to do it.
Now the project based learningdoesn't end then with your
junior year, because you'reheading into your senior year,
and now you've got your wetalked about the interactive
qualifying project. Now we havethe major qualifying project.
Tell us about that next step interms of the project based
(17:06):
learning,
Kris Wobbe (17:06):
that's another graduation requirement. All of
our students have to completethis. It's another project that
is the equivalent of threecourses. So it's a quarter of
the work the seniors do, andthey all are engaged in doing
something in their major sothat's the major qualifying
project part. So this is acapstone, but a pretty in depth
Capstone, and the projects canbe sourced from faculty so they
(17:30):
get involved in faculty researchprojects or from corporations
that want students to work ondeveloping a new thingy. And
they're all done also under thesupervision of faculty member
who evaluates the work thatthey're doing and gives them a
grade in the end,
Matt Kirchner (17:45):
fascinating. And so I mean the project based
learning sequence continues allthe way through their entire
higher education journey.
Really, really valuable. What doyou hear from students, in terms
of, you know your graduates, oras they're going through these
projects, are they finding theseexperiences or differentiators
when they get to the workforceor when they're starting their
career search, or their searchfor whatever comes after their
undergrad. Yeah,
Kris Wobbe (18:07):
we really do. I mean, even the students who are
completing our great problemsseminar, that first year
project, if they go oninterviews for internships or
for that summer job, we've hadthem come back and say they said
they never take first year, youknow, rising sophomores. But
because I was able to talk aboutmy project, I was able to get
this valuable experience. Andsimilarly, our students, when
(18:30):
they are leaving WPI and goinginto the workforce, we have
employers who are delighted tocome back year after year after
year and hire our students. AndI sat next to some of them at,
you know, the luncheons that wehave for the recruiters, and had
them say, We recruit from allover but WPI students really
(18:50):
know how to get right to workfrom day one. And I think the
projects are a big part of that.
But honestly, I think seven weekterms have something to do with
that too. Absolutely,
Matt Kirchner (19:00):
that's a really interesting way of looking at
it. You know, it harkens back tome of conversations I've had
with people in industry who, youknow, a lot of times, and we've
got, you know, tons of four yearengineering degreed people
working in our businesses. We'recertainly, you know, not
disparaging that path at all,but a lot of folks have said,
hey, you know, when they gethere, they're brilliant, and we
know they're going to add a tonof value for our business, but
(19:21):
it's a year or two beforethey're really boots on the
ground. Understand the businessinside and out, comfortable in
the field, on the shop floor,those kind of things. And it
feels like through theseexperiences your students are
having, they're being preparedperfectly for those types of
challenges that they're gonnaface once they get into the
workplace. And I think that'sreally, really interesting. The
other thing that I think issuper interesting is something
(19:42):
that you mentioned just a littlewhile ago. Chris and I'm going
to go down a little bit of arabbit hole. Actually, two
things you mentioned. One wasartificial intelligence, and
like we said, you can't go a daywithout having some conversation
or reading something about AI.
The other one was the importanceof teaming a technical faculty
member from the humanities side.
If I got that right. Or at leastI'm close. I've been spending a
lot of time thinking about inpart because of some of the
(20:04):
reading I've done recently. Inthis age of AI, they talk about
a few different steps. I'm goingto get wonky on you, and then
we'll come back to a little morestraightforward question. So I
don't want to scare the audienceor my guest at the moment, but
as we think about artificialintelligence, and we get into
the age of what they callartificial and general
intelligence. So AGI, the theidea that machine learning and
artificial intelligence can doall the things that a human can
(20:27):
do, or at least most of them,can reason like humans, and then
get into super intelligence,where the AI is actually
smarter, further ahead, quickerthan human beings are. And what
happens to our world when thathappens, when we literally have
artificial intelligence, when weliterally have machine learning,
when we have supercomputers thatare literally smarter, quicker
and better at reasoning thanhuman beings. And the whole
(20:50):
question becomes one of ethics,in my opinion, and how do we
balance technology and then allthese ethical questions that
come along with what it means tobe a human, what it means to be
an ethical human, doing theright thing and so on. And so I
think we're going to see a pushover the course of the next five
to 10 years, as more and morepeople start to realize that
that we've got to have a focuson the humanities along with all
(21:13):
of these technical skills. AndI'm a big believer that if
you're just going to go after adegree in the humanities with
nothing else that rides alongwith that, you may find some
challenges early on when you getto the workforce, maybe not, if
you can marry the two of those,the technology side and the
humanities side together, that'swhat really creates a well
rounded four year degreedindividual. I know that that's
(21:34):
buried, and not just buried, butbuilt right into your
programming. So talk a littlebit about the importance of both
the technical and the human sideof education?
Kris Wobbe (21:42):
Yeah, I mean, you're right. The technical is super
important, mostly to helpstudents get confidence that
they can handle technical stuff.
Right? We all know thattechnology changes really fast,
so what we're teaching themright now might be outmoded and
shortly after they graduate, sohaving the confidence that they
can learn that stuff is veryimportant, but the humanities
and arts are also superimportant. I mean, our students
(22:05):
are primarily traditionalcollege age students, and that's
an super important time forfiguring out who you are, what
the world is, what's your placein the world? What do you want
your place in the world to be?
What do you want your world tobe? And the humanities and arts
really go a long way to helpwith that. But even more, we've
(22:26):
learned from doing some analysisof alumni surveys that
humanities and arts are alsohelpful for helping the students
learn the technical parts of
Unknown (22:36):
their work. Tell us about that. That's interesting.
Yeah,
Kris Wobbe (22:39):
and we think some of these are indirect, that in the
humanities and arts, they'reobviously focusing a lot on
communication, no matter whichof those they're working in,
they're finding information in adifferent set of disciplines,
and being able to findinformation across disciplines
becomes really important. Forsure, they're learning how to
think critically about theproblem, and so they can think
(23:01):
more critically about, whatproblem am I trying to solve? Is
it the problem that's being putbefore me, or is there an
underlying problem? And so allof those skills help them in
their technical disciplines aswell. And so we see folks who do
their humanities and artscurriculum early do actually
better in their technical worklater on.
Matt Kirchner (23:22):
You know, we hear students a lot of times as
they're learning, for example,complex math or integrals or
derivatives and these kind ofthings. And they're like, why do
I need to learn this? Andthere's some, some real
important reasons why that'simportant. I can tell you as a
student who's a product of aJesuit higher education where we
had went deep into thehumanities, right, even in
business school, nine credits inphilosophy, nine credits in
theology. And if you want tohear students saying, Why do we
(23:44):
have to learn this boy, you'llhear a lot in those kind of
courses. But then you comethrough that coursework and you
realize that you have thisability to think and communicate
about abstract concepts. And ifyou can communicate at that
level, and think at that level,I think you're exactly right.
You bring that back totechnology, and not for just for
the reasons of of ethics and forphilosophical reasons, but the
(24:07):
ability to communicate in waysthat you weren't otherwise able
to. And so I think that's whyit's so important that we, we
keep all of this as part ofhigher education, and credit to
you and to WPI for doing exactlythat credit to you as well, for
now, having 85% as I understandit, of faculty incorporating
projects into their courses. Soliterally, 85% of your faculty
(24:28):
members are putting some type ofproject into the coursework.
Over half of the student work isproject based, and I love that.
So talk a little bit more aboutwhat you're seeing, not just in
terms of the student outcomes,but in how faculty and students
are approaching their learningtogether?
Kris Wobbe (24:44):
Well, that's such a fun question, because I think
there is such a difference whenyou do that projects really open
the door to curiosity andcreativity in ways that
traditional classrooms don'talways do that we. Also, because
we do co teaching in our greatproblem seminar, and we do co
advising with many of our bigprojects, both the interactive
(25:07):
and the major qualifyingproject, we have a lot more
collaboration between faculty,so that teaching becomes less of
a solo enterprise and more of ashared journey, and we share
resources with each other. Andcollaboration is fun, but I
think it also helps usunderstand more about what's
important to be learned. Sothere's content learning that
(25:30):
absolutely is important. Don'twant to discredit that, but
there's also process learningand understanding how we also
need to help our students learnhow to work well together in
teams. We also need to help themlearn how to perspective take
from some other perspective, soit just provides a broadening of
(25:51):
what's important to be learned,and can also for me, and I'll
speak for myself, a lot of thedetails that academics so love
are really not so important forour students, right? We
appreciate the intricacy and thebeauty of our discipline and the
nuance, but most of our studentsjust need to know this thing
(26:13):
because they're going to go dosomething with that. That's not
study all the nuance andintricacy of our discipline,
right for sure, and I think ithelps all of us see that more
clearly, so we tend to be ableto focus more on the big picture
things.
Matt Kirchner (26:28):
It's refreshing to hear you say that. And
speaking of those facultymembers, I mean 50 years on,
obviously, the folks that aredelivering the learning today.
You may have some of them leftover from 50 years ago, but by
and large, probably not many.
And so you, you know, you've hadthis turnover in faculty. Does
the does this approach, thisPolytechnic, hands on, project
based learning approach toeducation, attract a certain
type of faculty member? Yeah,
Kris Wobbe (26:51):
I think it does. You know, I know for myself, when I
came to WP I was excited to cometo someplace where they valued
both the research and theteaching. And we, you know, some
of our most amazing faculty havethat same desire that they want
to be able to make an impact onthe student, not just on their
field, and then knowing thatyou're going to do projects, and
(27:14):
it's probably somethingdifferent than what most of our
faculty experienced in the past.
Have to be kind of risk takersand really curious about what
that's going to be. And I thinkthat's really helpful
Matt Kirchner (27:24):
in risk takers.
And I would think in some ways,being able to act on the fly. I
mean, you think about thetraditional kind of classroom
sage on the stage version oflearning, there weren't a lot of
surprises necessarily, maybe aquestion that came out of left
field, but not a lot ofsurprises for the faculty
member. They've really got to beable to be able to think on
their feet in this particularmodel as well,
Kris Wobbe (27:45):
don't they? Well, they do. And I think that is one
of the barriers to more placesadopting project based learning.
Faculty very much, have built apersona of being an expert. And
that's of course they have. Ofcourse I did. I did right? And
then when you feel like you'regoing into a classroom, you're
going into that classroom. Thatclassroom as an expert, and to
go into that classroom and knowthat somebody is going to ask
(28:07):
you a question that you don'tknow the answer to is kind of
scary until you say, but I can'tknow all the answers to all the
questions, and so we're going togo in and say, but I'm really
good at finding out answers toquestions, and I can help you
find out the answer to yourquestion. So let's find it
together. Absolutely.
Matt Kirchner (28:24):
Learn how to learn together. I love that.
Yeah. Dr, Chris will be thedirector of the Center for
project based learning inWooster at the Wooster
Polytechnic Institute. WPI isour guest on The TechEd Podcast,
and now you're directing. You'reco directing, I should say,
Chris, the Center for projectbased learning, tell us a little
bit about what that centeritself does and how you're
(28:46):
helping other institutions takethe first steps towards this
type of learning. So
Kris Wobbe (28:50):
the center is a very small, outward facing unit of
WPI whose mission is to helpfaculty at other higher ed
institutions advance projectbased learning on their own
campuses, and we recognizedabout 10 years ago that we had
accumulated decades worth ofexpertise in how to do this
(29:11):
well, and that we really believein it and feel that students are
better trained that way. And soit sort of felt like an
obligation we had to helpothers. And so we do it in a
couple of different ways. Well,multiple ways, the two major
ways, I will work with otherinstitutions to craft custom
(29:31):
workshops for their faculty. Andit might be just a department or
a program or just a bunch ofinterested faculty who want to
figure out how to do either moreproject based learning or better
project based learning, or juststart down that path. And so we
do that. And then our flagshipthing is we have an institute on
project based learning that werun every summer where we invite
(29:54):
both teams from institutions orindividuals to come, and we
host. A series of workshops andkeynotes, all on various aspects
of using project based learning,and provide all of the
participants with a coach sothat when they leave, they have
an action plan for what they'regoing to do when they go back to
(30:15):
their campus to further projectbased learning, where they where
they are, in the way they wantto with their students. And I
think it's really important thateverybody knows we understand
everybody's situation isdifferent. Students are
different, resources aredifferent, schedules are
different. We have to be able toaccommodate all of that.
Matt Kirchner (30:33):
So in the summer learning that happens, who's
attracted to that is thatfaculty or is is it deans? Is it
chancellors? I mean, who are thekind of folks that are coming to
learn about how to implementproject based learning all
Kris Wobbe (30:45):
of the above?
Usually it's faculty. Often it'ssomething that is supported by
the institution, Center forTeaching and Learning, whatever
they may call that. Or there's adean or a provost that's all
about we need to change ourtraditional classroom teaching
to something that is seen asmore valuable and has a group of
faculty that are eager toparticipate in that too. And
(31:07):
librarians. Sometimes we getlibrarians and they're amazing.
Love librarians, yeah,
Matt Kirchner (31:13):
absolutely, some of the most inquisitive and
fascinating and and well studiedpeople on the planet. I can't
argue with that for a moment. Itotally agree with you. So as
they're coming and they'relearning about project based
learning, I can just tell you,as someone who spends a lot of
time around higher educationand, quite frankly, a lot of
time liking to see thetraditional model upended a
little bit, because I thinkthere's a lot of things that
(31:35):
we're doing well, but a lot ofthings that we can do better in
higher education. One of thethings I hear most frequently,
from whether it's faculty, aprogram director or provost, for
that matter, when we talk aboutmaking some changes to the
typical learning that'shappening at a typical
institution is there's notenough room in the course.
There's not a room in thesyllabus. We, you know, we've
got, we've got these standardswe have to meet the HLC is
(31:56):
coming next month. I mean, youknow, all of these reasons why
we can't innovate. What's themessage to those folks who are
saying, Look, our models arepretty well set. There isn't
enough room in what we're doingnow to make changes. How would
you recommend they go aboutthinking about making those
changes?
Kris Wobbe (32:10):
It is one of the questions I get most often. My
class is full. We are so busy wecan't possibly add anything to
it. And then I have a couple ofquestions I ask as well. Okay,
how much of what's in yourcourse needs to be there. How
long has it been since you tooka step back and looked at what
it is that you're teaching andsaid, I don't know. Am I
(32:31):
teaching this? Because it's beentaught this way for the past.
Fill in the blank number ofyears, good years, sometimes,
yeah. And is all of this stillas relevant as it was? Is the
emphasis still in the rightplace? So some of it is, maybe
it's time to do a little housecleaning in our courses. And
that's not true for all of them,but I certainly know in my
biochemistry classes, that wasone of the things I had to do.
(32:52):
And I did it, and I I was sohappy afterwards. Yeah, right.
But then the other thing toconsider is, how can a project
help you accomplish all of thelearning objectives you have?
What could you replace in yourcourse with a project so that
you're not cutting anything out,you're just swapping delivering
Matt Kirchner (33:14):
it a different way? Yeah, I love that. I love
that way of thinking. And it'sprobably an easier sell. Is
probably the wrong word, butit's probably an easier sell to
someone who's a little bitworried about that disruption.
Is, look, your students aregoing to walk out of your class
at the end of the semester orthe end of the quarter, whatever
we call it, with the sameknowledge. We have the same
learning outcomes. We're justdelivering them in a little
different way. And, oh, by theway, because every learner is
(33:36):
going to learn a little bitdifferent way, we may even have
more learning taking place. Infact, I would argue that we will
have more learning taking placebecause of the interactive
nature of the learning itself.
So I think it's a great messagefor anybody working in higher
education who's trying to figureout, how do we disrupt the model
a little bit without totallyupending the apple cart in terms
of what we're doing and whatwe're delivering and what we're
(33:57):
teaching, but just doing it in aslightly different, or in some
cases, a radically differentway, but with the with the same,
if not better, results. So Iknow one of the questions our
audience is going to have,Chris, as they're hearing this
is, you know, this is great fora polytechnic institution.
You've got the name Polytechnicright in the name of the
institution. Clearly, this is,you know, your reason for
(34:18):
existing. If I'm a typicalliberal arts institution, you
know, more traditional model is,does this model work there, or
is it really just for thoseinstitutions that have already
decided hands on learning andpolytechnic project based
learning is right for us?
Kris Wobbe (34:35):
Well, we have worked with all kinds of institutions,
and I'm pretty sure I can sayall we've worked with the Air
Force Academy, we've worked withthe New England Conservatory of
Music, we've worked with fouryear liberal arts institutions.
We've worked with regionalpublics and flagship publics in
(34:55):
a whole range of disciplines.
It's easily adaptable, and we'veworked with community. Colleges.
So I can give you some examplesof some of the things that our
partners have done. So Collegeof the Canyons, it's in Southern
California, and they've gotfaculty who are heavily engaged
in getting civic engagement. Andone of the projects came out of
(35:16):
a class on making movies, andthey did digital stories of
survivals of the Holocaust. Thestudents drew sort of cartoons,
and they put it to music overthe voice of somebody talking
about their experience. Anotherclass did a children's book
about birds. That was the classproject, so it can work in all
(35:37):
kinds of disciplines in allkinds of institutions. It just
takes faculty and studentswilling to engage in it.
Matt Kirchner (35:47):
So we think, I mean, you think about hands on
or Polytechnic learning. I thinkfor a lot of folks, immediately,
what would come to mind would besomething like an engineering
program or maybe a healthcareprogram, where you kind of
immediately go to the hands onnature of the learning. And what
we're hearing, and you'reclearly demonstrating, is this
project based learning model isgoing to work almost regardless
of what the discipline is thatwe're learning in. There's an
(36:09):
opportunity for us to integrateproject based learning in a
really interactive, meaningfulway, not just for the students,
but for the community as well.
Again, as we think about thechanging world of education, our
place and education andeducation's place in society.
Every one of our guests has someexperience, some paradigm, some
perception of education thatwould surprise a lot of people.
(36:29):
And it doesn't matter whetherthere's somebody that's working
in education right now, like youare somebody that went through
their education experience andhung on to some surprising thing
that they came up with that theyjust thought would be
interesting to the rest of theworld. Is there something about
your education, journey, oreducation in general, a belief
that you have that wouldsurprise other people?
Unknown (36:50):
Well, maybe several, but okay, we got time go ahead.
Kris Wobbe (36:56):
The one that I'm thinking the most about now is I
don't really believe that theway we structure our education
around disciplines, right? Yougot an English class, you got a
science class, you got a mathclass. I don't think that best
serves our students or theirlearning and focusing things
more around questions orproblems or situations where you
(37:21):
could learn the same stuff, butin service of something that you
can really engage in, and wherethe students see the connections
between I need to know this mathto be able to answer the science
question, and then I have towrite it up with good English
and some nice visuals so thateverybody will know what I know,
right? And so I would blow updepartments and re rejigger
(37:46):
things
Matt Kirchner (37:47):
I love that blow up departments and rejigger
things I love. I love thinkingabout how we could totally
reimagine higher education inthat regard. And I think that
was a terrific and perfectanswer to that question. One
last question, I would love foryou to go back to that age of
15, that time when you are asophomore in high school as an
example. And if you could goback and give that young Chris
(38:10):
just a little bit of advice,what would that advice be?
Kris Wobbe (38:13):
I mean, the first thing I thought was, well, what
would 15 year old Chris bewilling to hear? Yeah,
Matt Kirchner (38:18):
right, exactly.
It doesn't matter what youthink, if it's not received,
right?
Kris Wobbe (38:22):
Yeah. And so in the end, I decided that, you know, I
was a very driven, highachieving high school student.
And I think I would say, youknow, maybe it's okay to have
more fun. Have more fun,absolutely.
Matt Kirchner (38:39):
And that's good advice for a 15 year old, or for
a 55 year old, or for an 85 yearold, and in general, is to have
more fun. And I think that'sabsolutely perfect advice. We've
certainly had a tremendousamount of fun today with our
guest, Dr, Chris will be thedirector of the Center for
project based learning atWorcester Polytechnic Institute.
Absolutely fascinatingconversation. Chris, I love the
(39:01):
way that you are blowing up themodel in terms of higher
education, and have been now theinstitution for over 50 years.
Absolutely great thingshappening there. Can't thank you
enough for taking some time forus here on The TechEd Podcast.
Kris Wobbe (39:13):
That was delightful to be with you, Matt, thank you
so much. And a delightfulepisode
Matt Kirchner (39:17):
with our guest, Dr. Chris woolby, thanks so much
to our audience for joining usthis week, we had some
interesting references andresources that we talked about
over the course of thediscussion. Today, we will make
sure and put those in the shownotes for our audience. As
always and every week, we havethe best show notes in the
business and the best socialmedia presence in all of
(39:38):
technical education as well.
You'll find The TechEd Podcastall over Facebook and Tiktok.
You'll find us on LinkedIn. Youwill find us on Instagram,
wherever you go for your socialmedia, you will find The TechEd
Podcast, and we hope to find youhere again next week, when we
will be with you with anothergreat episode. Thanks so much
for being with us. You. The.
Matt, welcome into this week's episode of The
(00:10):
Tech Ed podcast. My name is MattKirkner. I am your host. How
many times have we said here onThe TechEd Podcast that I was a
and continue to be a hands onkinesthetic learner. I was never
a classroom learner. I was neververy good at learning by
reading, but when I could get myhands on something, when I could
do something physically, that'swhen all of the learning came
(00:31):
together. For me, project basedlearning was my way of learning.
We're going to talk all aboutthat today on this episode of
The TechEd Podcast, how bringingstudents learning right into
their haptic zone, showing themhow they can engage with
learning, makes that learningstick, makes it that much more
effective. And we're having thatconversation with our guest, Dr
(00:54):
Kristen wolby. She goes byChris. She's the director of the
Center for project basedlearning at the Worcester
Polytechnic Institute. Dr woby,thank you so much for being
here. I'm delighted to be herewith you So Chris, thank you so
much for joining us. I want totalk to you about all the great
things that are happening thereat the Worcester Polytechnic
(01:15):
Institute. We'll get into towhat your organization is all
about, what your institution isall about. But I know you made a
major shift in the way that youwere delivering learning in the
institution did all the way backin the 1970s and really taking
that last step curriculum thatso many of us experienced during
our journey through education,and changing that into something
that was considerably different.
So tell us about what drove thatspecific decision, and maybe the
(01:37):
problem you were trying tosolve, or the institution
anyway, was trying to solve now,some 40 or 50 years ago. Well,
Kris Wobbe (01:45):
it was then, as it is now, a time of declining
enrollment. And so one of theconcerns was how to make the
education more relevant to ourincoming students and make it
more attractive to them. But theway that we went about it was
one of our esteemed leadersdecided to put young faculty in
charge of re envisioning thecurriculum. And I think that was
(02:06):
really an important step, andthe young faculty were less
wedded to what was happening,and looked around and thought,
not only do we need to make itmore attractive to students,
probably we need to reimagine itso it better serves them as they
leave, and that we are providingthem with more of the skills and
abilities they're going to needpost being in a classroom, and
(02:29):
therefore they developed thiscurriculum that was really built
around projects.
Matt Kirchner (02:34):
How interesting is it that in this day and age,
when we're talking aboutdeclining enrollments in higher
education for all kinds ofreasons, right? And we've got
demographic reasons that it'sjust the pure math of how many
students were being born, youknow, 1520, years ago, and are
now considering what they doafter high school and post
secondary, and that's a factorwe've got changing perceptions
about higher education, where itfits, where it doesn't fit, all
(02:57):
of these things that are facinghigher education. And what
you're saying to me is that ifwe look back into the 1970s when
institutions were facing asimilar challenge, and they
recognized they needed to dothings a little bit differently
to continue to attract studentsand make the learning meaningful
for them, here we are again,now, some 40 or 50 years later,
facing the same kind ofchallenges. Isn't that
(03:18):
interesting? Do you agree? I do.
I do agree. So if we think aboutthis whole model of project
based learning, and think aboutit in a more broad sense, what
are some of the misconceptionsyou would say that other
institutions that are maybesticking to a more traditional
classroom, sage on the stage,lecture type of learning, what
are those misconceptions thatthey would have about a
polytechnic education? There area lot
Kris Wobbe (03:39):
of barriers, I would say, to adopting project based
learning. But if we want tofocus on misconceptions, I think
probably the most common one isthat students need to know all
the things before they can do aproject. They got to cram all
this information into theirbrains first before you let them
loose, right? They don't see theproject itself as the avenue to
(04:00):
learning
Matt Kirchner (04:01):
interesting. You know, I had a mentor a long time
ago, and that individual taughtme just it was really more of a
business lesson, but it was allabout the idea that you don't
need to know everything aboutsomething in order to dive in,
as long as you have theconfidence that you're going to
figure it out along the way, andin so many ways, that is what
learning is all about. So isthat? What I'm hearing from you
is that it's this process of Idon't have all the answers when
(04:22):
I jump into the hands on versionof learning, Polytechnic version
of learning, that I can figureit out along the way. Is that a
good way of putting it sure and
Kris Wobbe (04:30):
that that's really much more effective, because
it's one thing to be told you'regoing to need to know something,
and it's another thing to beconfronted with I need to find
something out to be able to dothe thing I want to do that
absolutely, immediately moremotivating to learn the thing
isn't that
Matt Kirchner (04:45):
right, right?
You're going on thisexploration. You're not starting
with all the answers and thenjust going through and checking
the boxes. I love your way ofthinking about this. I love the
way that you get this wholemodel started so early in the
process as well. Now Iunderstand that you helped
launch the first year project.
Project based experience. Thisgoes all the way back to 2007,
so we're talking about 18 yearsago. So talk about that. I'm not
(05:06):
trying to date either one of us,but man, it's crazy just to
think that here we are in 2025you were doing this 18 years
ago. What does that program looklike, and how have you evolved
it over the course of those 18years?
Kris Wobbe (05:16):
It started with an idea that you know. So we
developed this project basedcurriculum, but a lot of the
major projects don't happenuntil the students are further
advanced in their careers. Andstudents were coming and saying,
but I want to start a projectnow. So it was partly driven by
the students, and partly by therecognition that if we wanted
students to perform well inprojects downstream in their
education, it would help to haveprojects upstream. And so the
(05:39):
great problem seminars wereconceived, and these are a two
course sequence specifically forfirst year students. And each
course in the sequence isfocused around one of the
world's big problems. And ofcourse, the world has many big
problems, so it's not hard tofind one, right? And we put
together two faculty fromdifferent disciplines, usually a
humanistic discipline and then atechnical discipline, and they
(06:02):
had 40 to 60 students. And inthe first course in the
sequence, the two faculty workwith the students to help them
understand, sort of the depth,breadth and complexity of the
problem, and to look at it froma variety of disciplinary
perspectives, their own ofcourse, but other ones that are
really important, and also tosee that who you are and where
you are really affects how youwill perceive the problem or
(06:26):
experience the problem, andmaybe see a whole different side
of it than somebody in yourcommunity with a different kind
of identity, or somebody in adifferent community, in a
different part of the world. Andwhile they are doing this, the
students are doing littleprojects in teams that help them
develop that content knowledge,but also help them develop
skills around findinginformation, communicating,
(06:49):
orally, written and visually,working with partners to solve a
problem. And at the end of thatfirst course, they're then ready
to dive into the second one,where with the same faculty,
same students. The studentsdivide themselves into small
teams of about four, and eachteam picks a small piece of that
(07:09):
big problem and localizes it. Sowe're going to solve maybe a
hunger problem for thiscommunity, or this part of this
community, and then they have tospend some time figuring out how
big a problem that is. Why is ita problem? What are the
consequences of the problem?
Then, how would people solvethis problem somewhere else? And
what are two potential solutionsthat will work here? And then,
(07:31):
what would it take to implementone of those solutions? You
know, if you do a compare andcontrast, you know, what are the
benefits and drawbacks of thetwo? Pick one and develop how
that could work. And at the endof this, the students present,
they have a report, and thenthey have, we have a giant
poster session. So all thestudents who are in one of these
present at the same time, and weinvite the entire campus and the
(07:53):
student, parents and thecommunity, and everybody comes.
And it's delightful to see thesestudents who were a week and a
half before, really anxious thatthey weren't going to be able to
do all of this now, veryproudly, standing in front of
their poster and saying, Look,we did a thing. We had an idea,
and it's evolved a lot over thethe 18 years. We developed a
(08:14):
cadre of folks who were reallydedicated to the program and did
a lot of sharing. I mean, coteaching with someone involves a
lot of sharing. But then wedeveloped this really nice
network and learned what workswell and what doesn't, and
shared that across the network.
And eventually we decided we hadenough expertise that we even
(08:36):
wrote a book about it. Did
Matt Kirchner (08:37):
you really? All right, we'll be sure and link
that book up in the show notesfor any of our listeners that
are interested in learning moreabout that. So many different
directions we can go on thatlast discussion. I mean, first
of all, it sounds like in thefirst semester, all the students
are working on the same generalproblem, right? So we pick a
problem for that first semester.
Is that right? Or is itmultiple? There
Kris Wobbe (08:55):
are multiple problems. And so the students
can decide, are they moreinterested in studying the
problem of energy or ofsustainability or of shelter or
of food or healthcare, and it'san optional project. Not all of
our students complete this one,but they do have the option, and
they get to pick what soundsmost interesting. Got it
Matt Kirchner (09:15):
Hey, have the topics or the problems evolved
over the course of that periodof time? Do they change, or is
it pretty much the same topics.
Every year we've added
Kris Wobbe (09:22):
and subtracted some, I would say probably our most
topical one is we had one thisyear for the first time on
artificial intelligence. Wow, weweren't even thinking about back
in 2007 for
Matt Kirchner (09:32):
sure. Yeah, who was talking about AI and now who
isn't talking about AI? In thisday and age? We certainly speak
a lot about it here on TheTechEd Podcast. You know, a
couple other things that justoccurred to me as you're going
through that answer. One ofthem, we had a guest really
early on in the podcast, Dr Sueesperman, who at the time was
the president of the of IvyTech, which is the technical
(09:53):
college system in the state ofIndiana, and she three degrees
in engineering, had abaccalaureate degree, a master's
and a. PhD in Engineering, andtalked about on the engineering
side, some of the challengesthat she saw in higher education
were that you would putengineers in a course and have
them work through all theircalculus and all their physics
and all their really rigorousmath courses before you kind of
(10:16):
figured out if they were goodenough to get to the fun stuff.
And she said, Wouldn't it begreat if we started with the fun
stuff, and it sounds like that'skind of the logic. Are you
hearing that from your students?
So they like diving right in,right in that first semester.
Does that help with recruiting?
It
Kris Wobbe (10:29):
does help a little bit with recruiting, and it
helps even more, I thinkstudents identify things that
they can see doing with theireducation. So if you're taking
calculus and physics and basicchemistry. It's hard to see,
what is that going to be goodfor, right? And so having these
courses can help them see, oh,as a chemist or a biomedical
(10:51):
engineer or an electricalengineer, I can actually work on
water problems I hadn't thoughtabout, but water is a big
problem.
Matt Kirchner (10:58):
I love the way that gives them context for that
continuing education. I alsolike the way that you're pulling
faculty from various disciplineswithin the institution. This
whole project based learningidea doesn't begin and end with
that first year. I know asstudents get into their junior
year this this whole themecontinues walking through that
experience, then their junioryear, they do what you're
(11:19):
calling an interactivequalifying project, usually
focused on integrating, again,my understanding science,
technology and society, which Ithink is an interesting word to
kind of throw in there, tell usabout that experience. And
what's the objective of thatjunior year project? I'm going
to start with
Kris Wobbe (11:35):
the objective, sure, because those faculty back in
the 70s recognized it was a timewhen technological advances were
happening quite rapidly, right?
And there was some sense thatthe science was moving faster
than our ability to wrap ourheads around what the
consequences were. And so one ofthe objectives of this project
(11:56):
is to help students understandthat there are consequences to
the work they do, that whateverwe're doing, it's going to
affect people, and thinkingabout what might be the impacts
downstream of whatever it iswe're working on. And as we've
continued this project, we'vealso recognized that it works
the other way too, that what wedecide are problems and what we
(12:19):
decide to work on and how wedecide to work on them are also
influenced by the society we arein. And so there's this two way
street and helping studentsrecognize that early in their
careers was seen as reallyimportant.
Matt Kirchner (12:34):
Absolutely, it's not just that one way learning.
It's actually a two wayexperience, and it's not just
what are we going to learnabout, what are we going to
participate but how does thatwork that we're doing then
affect other things and ourplace in the world? And really,
really important to get thatcontext as well. So give us a
little bit more of a feel ofthat whole interactive
qualifying project and how thatfeels for the student. This
Kris Wobbe (12:54):
is probably the most distinctive thing about a WPI
education. So this project isthe equivalent of three classes.
They always do it with a facultyadvisor, sometimes one,
sometimes more than one, workingwith them. They're working at
some issue or problem, at theintersection of science,
technology and society, and theyconclude with a fairly
(13:15):
substantial report, andsometimes other things. And they
can do this in one of two ways.
The way the smallest number ofour students do it is by doing
this on top of taking a coupleother classes. And so it extends
over some period of the year tothe equivalent of three classes
worth of work. But the way moreof our students, almost like 80%
(13:36):
of our students, do this, isthey do it as an immersive, one
term experience. And we have,over the 50 years, developed a
suite of 50 project centerswhere we send students and
faculty to a place, and thoseplaces are located all over the
world, where they spend sevenweeks working intensively with a
(13:58):
project sponsor. And in theseprojects in particular, they're
all brought by localorganization. It can be a
government it can be a nongovernmental organization, a non
profit, a small business. Theyhave a problem that they want
somebody to solve, and ourstudents come in. They learn
about the problem, they providesolutions and to make sure that
(14:19):
they can be most effective inseven weeks, it's pretty short
period of time for sure wherethey go, they have a prep class
where they're learning whattheir project is and doing some
background research on it, sothat they've already got a plan
by the time they arrive and andso that's a really
transformative experience forour students, and For many of
(14:40):
them, the first time they'rereally working in a professional
environment, ininterdisciplinary teams on
something that's not theirmajor,
Matt Kirchner (14:48):
any specific projects that come to mind, as
you think about it, that are weprovide a particularly good
example of what that experienceis like for the students.
Kris Wobbe (14:55):
Well, I had the privilege of being able to
advise a group of. Some 20 plusstudents who went to Melbourne,
Australia, and we had severaldifferent project teams. One was
working with a local museum whowanted to assess the value of
their collection that was not ondisplay. And so the students had
(15:16):
to learn about, how do youevaluate that sort of thing? How
do you value that? We hadanother group that was working
with a community organizationthat wanted to develop a
curriculum for late teens early20s around climate adaptation
for their organization. We hadanother that was working with a
nonprofit that wanted helpdeveloping materials to get more
(15:39):
corporate sponsorships. Yeah,
Matt Kirchner (15:41):
very cool examples. And help me understand
how the credit side of it works.
I assume they're earning collegecredits as they're doing that
work. How does that fit into theoverall course sequence?
Kris Wobbe (15:50):
Well, the beautiful thing is, they're required to do
the project, so it doesn't haveto count in any particular
discipline. It's just you haveto do this project in order to
graduate. And it's three coursesworth of credit, and they get
grades for the work they do inthese projects. And
Matt Kirchner (16:08):
just another question is totally out of
curiosity, so they're going offto some other you know, this
project for seven weeks. Howdoes that fit into a typical
semester? And how do you makethat work with the rest of the
course schedule?
Kris Wobbe (16:19):
Well, that's because we don't have typical semesters.
We made it easy. So one of theother changes we made in the 70s
to accommodate exactly this kindof thing is our semesters have
been divided into two, and ourstudents take three classes for
seven weeks, and then we take abreak, and then they come back
and take three more classes forseven weeks. So it fits neatly
(16:41):
into one of those slots. Got
Matt Kirchner (16:43):
it, so it's almost like four quarters,
almost maybe like I had in highschool. I don't want to compare
it, but at the right so it hasmore of that feel to it, very,
very interesting and a really,really creative way to do it.
Now the project based learningdoesn't end then with your
junior year, because you'reheading into your senior year,
and now you've got your wetalked about the interactive
qualifying project. Now we havethe major qualifying project.
Tell us about that next step interms of the project based
(17:06):
learning,
Kris Wobbe (17:06):
that's another graduation requirement. All of
our students have to completethis. It's another project that
is the equivalent of threecourses. So it's a quarter of
the work the seniors do, andthey all are engaged in doing
something in their major sothat's the major qualifying
project part. So this is acapstone, but a pretty in depth
Capstone, and the projects canbe sourced from faculty so they
(17:30):
get involved in faculty researchprojects or from corporations
that want students to work ondeveloping a new thingy. And
they're all done also under thesupervision of faculty member
who evaluates the work thatthey're doing and gives them a
grade in the end,
Matt Kirchner (17:45):
fascinating. And so I mean the project based
learning sequence continues allthe way through their entire
higher education journey.
Really, really valuable. What doyou hear from students, in terms
of, you know your graduates, oras they're going through these
projects, are they finding theseexperiences or differentiators
when they get to the workforceor when they're starting their
career search, or their searchfor whatever comes after their
undergrad. Yeah,
Kris Wobbe (18:07):
we really do. I mean, even the students who are
completing our great problemsseminar, that first year
project, if they go oninterviews for internships or
for that summer job, we've hadthem come back and say they said
they never take first year, youknow, rising sophomores. But
because I was able to talk aboutmy project, I was able to get
this valuable experience. Andsimilarly, our students, when
(18:30):
they are leaving WPI and goinginto the workforce, we have
employers who are delighted tocome back year after year after
year and hire our students. AndI sat next to some of them at,
you know, the luncheons that wehave for the recruiters, and had
them say, We recruit from allover but WPI students really
(18:50):
know how to get right to workfrom day one. And I think the
projects are a big part of that.
But honestly, I think seven weekterms have something to do with
that too. Absolutely,
Matt Kirchner (19:00):
that's a really interesting way of looking at
it. You know, it harkens back tome of conversations I've had
with people in industry who, youknow, a lot of times, and we've
got, you know, tons of four yearengineering degreed people
working in our businesses. We'recertainly, you know, not
disparaging that path at all,but a lot of folks have said,
hey, you know, when they gethere, they're brilliant, and we
know they're going to add a tonof value for our business, but
(19:21):
it's a year or two beforethey're really boots on the
ground. Understand the businessinside and out, comfortable in
the field, on the shop floor,those kind of things. And it
feels like through theseexperiences your students are
having, they're being preparedperfectly for those types of
challenges that they're gonnaface once they get into the
workplace. And I think that'sreally, really interesting. The
other thing that I think issuper interesting is something
(19:42):
that you mentioned just a littlewhile ago. Chris and I'm going
to go down a little bit of arabbit hole. Actually, two
things you mentioned. One wasartificial intelligence, and
like we said, you can't go a daywithout having some conversation
or reading something about AI.
The other one was the importanceof teaming a technical faculty
member from the humanities side.
If I got that right. Or at leastI'm close. I've been spending a
lot of time thinking about inpart because of some of the
(20:04):
reading I've done recently. Inthis age of AI, they talk about
a few different steps. I'm goingto get wonky on you, and then
we'll come back to a little morestraightforward question. So I
don't want to scare the audienceor my guest at the moment, but
as we think about artificialintelligence, and we get into
the age of what they callartificial and general
intelligence. So AGI, the theidea that machine learning and
artificial intelligence can doall the things that a human can
(20:27):
do, or at least most of them,can reason like humans, and then
get into super intelligence,where the AI is actually
smarter, further ahead, quickerthan human beings are. And what
happens to our world when thathappens, when we literally have
artificial intelligence, when weliterally have machine learning,
when we have supercomputers thatare literally smarter, quicker
and better at reasoning thanhuman beings. And the whole
(20:50):
question becomes one of ethics,in my opinion, and how do we
balance technology and then allthese ethical questions that
come along with what it means tobe a human, what it means to be
an ethical human, doing theright thing and so on. And so I
think we're going to see a pushover the course of the next five
to 10 years, as more and morepeople start to realize that
that we've got to have a focuson the humanities along with all
(21:13):
of these technical skills. AndI'm a big believer that if
you're just going to go after adegree in the humanities with
nothing else that rides alongwith that, you may find some
challenges early on when you getto the workforce, maybe not, if
you can marry the two of those,the technology side and the
humanities side together, that'swhat really creates a well
rounded four year degreedindividual. I know that that's
(21:34):
buried, and not just buried, butbuilt right into your
programming. So talk a littlebit about the importance of both
the technical and the human sideof education?
Kris Wobbe (21:42):
Yeah, I mean, you're right. The technical is super
important, mostly to helpstudents get confidence that
they can handle technical stuff.
Right? We all know thattechnology changes really fast,
so what we're teaching themright now might be outmoded and
shortly after they graduate, sohaving the confidence that they
can learn that stuff is veryimportant, but the humanities
and arts are also superimportant. I mean, our students
(22:05):
are primarily traditionalcollege age students, and that's
an super important time forfiguring out who you are, what
the world is, what's your placein the world? What do you want
your place in the world to be?
What do you want your world tobe? And the humanities and arts
really go a long way to helpwith that. But even more, we've
(22:26):
learned from doing some analysisof alumni surveys that
humanities and arts are alsohelpful for helping the students
learn the technical parts of
Unknown (22:36):
their work. Tell us about that. That's interesting.
Yeah,
Kris Wobbe (22:39):
and we think some of these are indirect, that in the
humanities and arts, they'reobviously focusing a lot on
communication, no matter whichof those they're working in,
they're finding information in adifferent set of disciplines,
and being able to findinformation across disciplines
becomes really important. Forsure, they're learning how to
think critically about theproblem, and so they can think
(23:01):
more critically about, whatproblem am I trying to solve? Is
it the problem that's being putbefore me, or is there an
underlying problem? And so allof those skills help them in
their technical disciplines aswell. And so we see folks who do
their humanities and artscurriculum early do actually
better in their technical worklater on.
Matt Kirchner (23:22):
You know, we hear students a lot of times as
they're learning, for example,complex math or integrals or
derivatives and these kind ofthings. And they're like, why do
I need to learn this? Andthere's some, some real
important reasons why that'simportant. I can tell you as a
student who's a product of aJesuit higher education where we
had went deep into thehumanities, right, even in
business school, nine credits inphilosophy, nine credits in
theology. And if you want tohear students saying, Why do we
(23:44):
have to learn this boy, you'llhear a lot in those kind of
courses. But then you comethrough that coursework and you
realize that you have thisability to think and communicate
about abstract concepts. And ifyou can communicate at that
level, and think at that level,I think you're exactly right.
You bring that back totechnology, and not for just for
the reasons of of ethics and forphilosophical reasons, but the
(24:07):
ability to communicate in waysthat you weren't otherwise able
to. And so I think that's whyit's so important that we, we
keep all of this as part ofhigher education, and credit to
you and to WPI for doing exactlythat credit to you as well, for
now, having 85% as I understandit, of faculty incorporating
projects into their courses. Soliterally, 85% of your faculty
(24:28):
members are putting some type ofproject into the coursework.
Over half of the student work isproject based, and I love that.
So talk a little bit more aboutwhat you're seeing, not just in
terms of the student outcomes,but in how faculty and students
are approaching their learningtogether?
Kris Wobbe (24:44):
Well, that's such a fun question, because I think
there is such a difference whenyou do that projects really open
the door to curiosity andcreativity in ways that
traditional classrooms don'talways do that we. Also, because
we do co teaching in our greatproblem seminar, and we do co
advising with many of our bigprojects, both the interactive
(25:07):
and the major qualifyingproject, we have a lot more
collaboration between faculty,so that teaching becomes less of
a solo enterprise and more of ashared journey, and we share
resources with each other. Andcollaboration is fun, but I
think it also helps usunderstand more about what's
important to be learned. Sothere's content learning that
(25:30):
absolutely is important. Don'twant to discredit that, but
there's also process learningand understanding how we also
need to help our students learnhow to work well together in
teams. We also need to help themlearn how to perspective take
from some other perspective, soit just provides a broadening of
(25:51):
what's important to be learned,and can also for me, and I'll
speak for myself, a lot of thedetails that academics so love
are really not so important forour students, right? We
appreciate the intricacy and thebeauty of our discipline and the
nuance, but most of our studentsjust need to know this thing
(26:13):
because they're going to go dosomething with that. That's not
study all the nuance andintricacy of our discipline,
right for sure, and I think ithelps all of us see that more
clearly, so we tend to be ableto focus more on the big picture
things.
Matt Kirchner (26:28):
It's refreshing to hear you say that. And
speaking of those facultymembers, I mean 50 years on,
obviously, the folks that aredelivering the learning today.
You may have some of them leftover from 50 years ago, but by
and large, probably not many.
And so you, you know, you've hadthis turnover in faculty. Does
the does this approach, thisPolytechnic, hands on, project
based learning approach toeducation, attract a certain
type of faculty member? Yeah,
Kris Wobbe (26:51):
I think it does. You know, I know for myself, when I
came to WP I was excited to cometo someplace where they valued
both the research and theteaching. And we, you know, some
of our most amazing faculty havethat same desire that they want
to be able to make an impact onthe student, not just on their
field, and then knowing thatyou're going to do projects, and
(27:14):
it's probably somethingdifferent than what most of our
faculty experienced in the past.
Have to be kind of risk takersand really curious about what
that's going to be. And I thinkthat's really helpful
Matt Kirchner (27:24):
in risk takers.
And I would think in some ways,being able to act on the fly. I
mean, you think about thetraditional kind of classroom
sage on the stage version oflearning, there weren't a lot of
surprises necessarily, maybe aquestion that came out of left
field, but not a lot ofsurprises for the faculty
member. They've really got to beable to be able to think on
their feet in this particularmodel as well,
Kris Wobbe (27:45):
don't they? Well, they do. And I think that is one
of the barriers to more placesadopting project based learning.
Faculty very much, have built apersona of being an expert. And
that's of course they have. Ofcourse I did. I did right? And
then when you feel like you'regoing into a classroom, you're
going into that classroom. Thatclassroom as an expert, and to
go into that classroom and knowthat somebody is going to ask
(28:07):
you a question that you don'tknow the answer to is kind of
scary until you say, but I can'tknow all the answers to all the
questions, and so we're going togo in and say, but I'm really
good at finding out answers toquestions, and I can help you
find out the answer to yourquestion. So let's find it
together. Absolutely.
Matt Kirchner (28:24):
Learn how to learn together. I love that.
Yeah. Dr, Chris will be thedirector of the Center for
project based learning inWooster at the Wooster
Polytechnic Institute. WPI isour guest on The TechEd Podcast,
and now you're directing. You'reco directing, I should say,
Chris, the Center for projectbased learning, tell us a little
bit about what that centeritself does and how you're
(28:46):
helping other institutions takethe first steps towards this
type of learning. So
Kris Wobbe (28:50):
the center is a very small, outward facing unit of
WPI whose mission is to helpfaculty at other higher ed
institutions advance projectbased learning on their own
campuses, and we recognizedabout 10 years ago that we had
accumulated decades worth ofexpertise in how to do this
(29:11):
well, and that we really believein it and feel that students are
better trained that way. And soit sort of felt like an
obligation we had to helpothers. And so we do it in a
couple of different ways. Well,multiple ways, the two major
ways, I will work with otherinstitutions to craft custom
(29:31):
workshops for their faculty. Andit might be just a department or
a program or just a bunch ofinterested faculty who want to
figure out how to do either moreproject based learning or better
project based learning, or juststart down that path. And so we
do that. And then our flagshipthing is we have an institute on
project based learning that werun every summer where we invite
(29:54):
both teams from institutions orindividuals to come, and we
host. A series of workshops andkeynotes, all on various aspects
of using project based learning,and provide all of the
participants with a coach sothat when they leave, they have
an action plan for what they'regoing to do when they go back to
(30:15):
their campus to further projectbased learning, where they where
they are, in the way they wantto with their students. And I
think it's really important thateverybody knows we understand
everybody's situation isdifferent. Students are
different, resources aredifferent, schedules are
different. We have to be able toaccommodate all of that.
Matt Kirchner (30:33):
So in the summer learning that happens, who's
attracted to that is thatfaculty or is is it deans? Is it
chancellors? I mean, who are thekind of folks that are coming to
learn about how to implementproject based learning all
Kris Wobbe (30:45):
of the above?
Usually it's faculty. Often it'ssomething that is supported by
the institution, Center forTeaching and Learning, whatever
they may call that. Or there's adean or a provost that's all
about we need to change ourtraditional classroom teaching
to something that is seen asmore valuable and has a group of
faculty that are eager toparticipate in that too. And
(31:07):
librarians. Sometimes we getlibrarians and they're amazing.
Love librarians, yeah,
Matt Kirchner (31:13):
absolutely, some of the most inquisitive and
fascinating and and well studiedpeople on the planet. I can't
argue with that for a moment. Itotally agree with you. So as
they're coming and they'relearning about project based
learning, I can just tell you,as someone who spends a lot of
time around higher educationand, quite frankly, a lot of
time liking to see thetraditional model upended a
little bit, because I thinkthere's a lot of things that
(31:35):
we're doing well, but a lot ofthings that we can do better in
higher education. One of thethings I hear most frequently,
from whether it's faculty, aprogram director or provost, for
that matter, when we talk aboutmaking some changes to the
typical learning that'shappening at a typical
institution is there's notenough room in the course.
There's not a room in thesyllabus. We, you know, we've
got, we've got these standardswe have to meet the HLC is
(31:56):
coming next month. I mean, youknow, all of these reasons why
we can't innovate. What's themessage to those folks who are
saying, Look, our models arepretty well set. There isn't
enough room in what we're doingnow to make changes. How would
you recommend they go aboutthinking about making those
changes?
Kris Wobbe (32:10):
It is one of the questions I get most often. My
class is full. We are so busy wecan't possibly add anything to
it. And then I have a couple ofquestions I ask as well. Okay,
how much of what's in yourcourse needs to be there. How
long has it been since you tooka step back and looked at what
it is that you're teaching andsaid, I don't know. Am I
(32:31):
teaching this? Because it's beentaught this way for the past.
Fill in the blank number ofyears, good years, sometimes,
yeah. And is all of this stillas relevant as it was? Is the
emphasis still in the rightplace? So some of it is, maybe
it's time to do a little housecleaning in our courses. And
that's not true for all of them,but I certainly know in my
biochemistry classes, that wasone of the things I had to do.
(32:52):
And I did it, and I I was sohappy afterwards. Yeah, right.
But then the other thing toconsider is, how can a project
help you accomplish all of thelearning objectives you have?
What could you replace in yourcourse with a project so that
you're not cutting anything out,you're just swapping delivering
Matt Kirchner (33:14):
it a different way? Yeah, I love that. I love
that way of thinking. And it'sprobably an easier sell. Is
probably the wrong word, butit's probably an easier sell to
someone who's a little bitworried about that disruption.
Is, look, your students aregoing to walk out of your class
at the end of the semester orthe end of the quarter, whatever
we call it, with the sameknowledge. We have the same
learning outcomes. We're justdelivering them in a little
different way. And, oh, by theway, because every learner is
(33:36):
going to learn a little bitdifferent way, we may even have
more learning taking place. Infact, I would argue that we will
have more learning taking placebecause of the interactive
nature of the learning itself.
So I think it's a great messagefor anybody working in higher
education who's trying to figureout, how do we disrupt the model
a little bit without totallyupending the apple cart in terms
of what we're doing and whatwe're delivering and what we're
(33:57):
teaching, but just doing it in aslightly different, or in some
cases, a radically differentway, but with the with the same,
if not better, results. So Iknow one of the questions our
audience is going to have,Chris, as they're hearing this
is, you know, this is great fora polytechnic institution.
You've got the name Polytechnicright in the name of the
institution. Clearly, this is,you know, your reason for
(34:18):
existing. If I'm a typicalliberal arts institution, you
know, more traditional model is,does this model work there, or
is it really just for thoseinstitutions that have already
decided hands on learning andpolytechnic project based
learning is right for us?
Kris Wobbe (34:35):
Well, we have worked with all kinds of institutions,
and I'm pretty sure I can sayall we've worked with the Air
Force Academy, we've worked withthe New England Conservatory of
Music, we've worked with fouryear liberal arts institutions.
We've worked with regionalpublics and flagship publics in
(34:55):
a whole range of disciplines.
It's easily adaptable, and we'veworked with community. Colleges.
So I can give you some examplesof some of the things that our
partners have done. So Collegeof the Canyons, it's in Southern
California, and they've gotfaculty who are heavily engaged
in getting civic engagement. Andone of the projects came out of
(35:16):
a class on making movies, andthey did digital stories of
survivals of the Holocaust. Thestudents drew sort of cartoons,
and they put it to music overthe voice of somebody talking
about their experience. Anotherclass did a children's book
about birds. That was the classproject, so it can work in all
(35:37):
kinds of disciplines in allkinds of institutions. It just
takes faculty and studentswilling to engage in it.
Matt Kirchner (35:47):
So we think, I mean, you think about hands on
or Polytechnic learning. I thinkfor a lot of folks, immediately,
what would come to mind would besomething like an engineering
program or maybe a healthcareprogram, where you kind of
immediately go to the hands onnature of the learning. And what
we're hearing, and you'reclearly demonstrating, is this
project based learning model isgoing to work almost regardless
of what the discipline is thatwe're learning in. There's an
(36:09):
opportunity for us to integrateproject based learning in a
really interactive, meaningfulway, not just for the students,
but for the community as well.
Again, as we think about thechanging world of education, our
place and education andeducation's place in society.
Every one of our guests has someexperience, some paradigm, some
perception of education thatwould surprise a lot of people.
(36:29):
And it doesn't matter whetherthere's somebody that's working
in education right now, like youare somebody that went through
their education experience andhung on to some surprising thing
that they came up with that theyjust thought would be
interesting to the rest of theworld. Is there something about
your education, journey, oreducation in general, a belief
that you have that wouldsurprise other people?
Unknown (36:50):
Well, maybe several, but okay, we got time go ahead.
Kris Wobbe (36:56):
The one that I'm thinking the most about now is I
don't really believe that theway we structure our education
around disciplines, right? Yougot an English class, you got a
science class, you got a mathclass. I don't think that best
serves our students or theirlearning and focusing things
more around questions orproblems or situations where you
(37:21):
could learn the same stuff, butin service of something that you
can really engage in, and wherethe students see the connections
between I need to know this mathto be able to answer the science
question, and then I have towrite it up with good English
and some nice visuals so thateverybody will know what I know,
right? And so I would blow updepartments and re rejigger
(37:46):
things
Matt Kirchner (37:47):
I love that blow up departments and rejigger
things I love. I love thinkingabout how we could totally
reimagine higher education inthat regard. And I think that
was a terrific and perfectanswer to that question. One
last question, I would love foryou to go back to that age of
15, that time when you are asophomore in high school as an
example. And if you could goback and give that young Chris
(38:10):
just a little bit of advice,what would that advice be?
Kris Wobbe (38:13):
I mean, the first thing I thought was, well, what
would 15 year old Chris bewilling to hear? Yeah,
Matt Kirchner (38:18):
right, exactly.
It doesn't matter what youthink, if it's not received,
right?
Kris Wobbe (38:22):
Yeah. And so in the end, I decided that, you know, I
was a very driven, highachieving high school student.
And I think I would say, youknow, maybe it's okay to have
more fun. Have more fun,absolutely.
Matt Kirchner (38:39):
And that's good advice for a 15 year old, or for
a 55 year old, or for an 85 yearold, and in general, is to have
more fun. And I think that'sabsolutely perfect advice. We've
certainly had a tremendousamount of fun today with our
guest, Dr, Chris will be thedirector of the Center for
project based learning atWorcester Polytechnic Institute.
Absolutely fascinatingconversation. Chris, I love the
(39:01):
way that you are blowing up themodel in terms of higher
education, and have been now theinstitution for over 50 years.
Absolutely great thingshappening there. Can't thank you
enough for taking some time forus here on The TechEd Podcast.
Kris Wobbe (39:13):
That was delightful to be with you, Matt, thank you
so much. And a delightfulepisode
Matt Kirchner (39:17):
with our guest, Dr. Chris woolby, thanks so much
to our audience for joining usthis week, we had some
interesting references andresources that we talked about
over the course of thediscussion. Today, we will make
sure and put those in the shownotes for our audience. As
always and every week, we havethe best show notes in the
business and the best socialmedia presence in all of
(39:38):
technical education as well.
You'll find The TechEd Podcastall over Facebook and Tiktok.
You'll find us on LinkedIn. Youwill find us on Instagram,
wherever you go for your socialmedia, you will find The TechEd
Podcast, and we hope to find youhere again next week, when we
will be with you with anothergreat episode. Thanks so much
for being with us. You. The.
Popular Podcasts
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.