Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning (POGIL): A New Paradigm in Professional Practice Education

There is growing concern across several disciplines that graduates of professional practice programs currently are not well-prepared for their practice roles. In 2005, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a substantial grant to a chemistry faculty group to research changes in curricular strategies that would begin to reverse this alarming trend. The strategy that was developed, called POGIL (process-oriented guided-inquiry learning), produced very good educational outcomes and has been shared across disciplinary lines. The presenters suggest that upper division professional practice programs can benefit from the use of this strategy as a learning tool. Nursing will be used as an exemplar/case study for the use of this strategy in a practice discipline and we invite other disciplines to try incorporating it into their classrooms.