Collaborative Learning: A Cornerstone for Agronomic Education.

Collaborative Learning empower the learner to engage the complexity of our knowledge systems and utilizes the reality of the issues that define the world’s food and agricultural systems to provide the context and content for the concepts and skills needed by all learners for a lifetime of learning in a rapidly changing scientific, technical and social/political world.  The urgent global issues of population, food systems, soil, water, land uses and associated environmental impacts require the next generation of leaders to adapt quickly to new challenges.

This presentation will focus on the substance of the National Academy of Sciences October 3-5, 2006, Leadership Summit to Effect Change in Teaching and Learning and the recently released report by the Academy entitled “Transforming Undergraduate Education in Agriculture: Sustainable Education for a Changing World.”  We will examine the findings and implications of the recommendations for collaborative learning as vehicle for educational change.