The POGIL Project

The mission of The POGIL Project is to improve teaching and learning by fostering an inclusive, transformative community of reflective educators who design, implement, assess, and study learner-centered environments. We strive to ensure that The POGIL Project will advance and adapt to the changing society around us while continuing to serve educators and students around the world.

Our five-year strategic plan focuses on five major areas: training more teachers, developing additional STEM classroom materials, increasing the diversity of our community and the students it serves, collecting additional data for a comprehensive assessment of student learning and development in a variety of POGIL learning environments, and continuing to develop our people and financial resources to accomplish our work.

From the POGIL community:
"As I've progressed in my career and have found it more important to be thinking about institutional change, I find that The POGIL Project gives me a place to think about those ideas and learn more about the broader question of how teaching can be changed both at a single institution and cross-institutionally." --Susan E. Shadle, Ph.D., Boise State University

In addition to The POGIL Project's ongoing and growing professional development opportunities and instructional materials development programs, we've recently refreshed our five-year strategic plan to focus on several priorities, including:

1. Additional outreach, financial aid, and community support for educators underrepresented in STEM or serving students underrepresented in STEM.

2. Although extensive research exists on the effectiveness of POGIL at the college level and of active learning at all levels, we would like to conduct additional research on POGIL's effectiveness at the high school level. Particularly on the development of skills for the workforce and college readiness/success.

3. Translation of POGIL materials into Spanish, particularly at the high school level.

4. Development of a robust interactive online platform for POGIL activities. This would be for students to use online, taking advantage of technologies available for interactive graphics and access to additional resources. This type of platform could also provide teachers with rich feedback on student progress and understanding. Still in the idea phase, we're excited about the possibilities, known and as yet to be known!

For additional details on our strategic plan goals and strategies, visit www.pogil.org.

The POGIL Project has a dedicated and growing community of teachers, professors, scholars, and donors in school districts and universities across the nation who are actively involved in implementing, disseminating, improving, and developing new POGIL content, and furthering the goals outlined in our strategic plan. The professional team in The POGIL Project's National Office helps plan, execute, and support the logistics of workshops and other professional development initiatives. The POGIL Project also has a strong Board of Directors and Steering Committee to provide oversight, guidance and leadership.

The POGIL community continues to make significant progress on our 5-year strategic plan goals. We continue to expand our reach--in 2019, we traveled throughout the U.S. to provide more than 48 professional development opportunities to support 1250+ educators and engage thousands of students in their own learning. We've also expanded our selection of POGIL materials to add middle school physical science and a new book on the POGIL pedagogy to help educators at all levels and from a variety of institutional environments: POGIL -
An Introduction to Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning for Those Who Wish to Empower Learners, edited by Shawn R. Simonson, available through Stylus Publishing.

In addition to expanding teacher training to more locations globally, use of the POGIL method and materials has grown as well. High school and college teachers who have used the POGIL method and materials in the past three years represent 49 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 29 countries.

Nationally, The POGIL Project has been recognized twice by the American Chemical Society for outstanding contributions to chemical education. The POGIL Project Director Rick Moog, and fellow professors Jim Spencer and Frank Creegan, were named recipients, on behalf of The POGIL Project, of the 2015 James Flack Norris Award in Chemical Education. In 2016, Rick Moog was selected for the George C. Pimental Award in Chemical Education. These accolades recognize the foundational work that came before POGIL, the talented people involved with The POGIL Project, and the revolutionary changes to STEM education and student outcomes that have occurred as a result of our collective efforts.

We're very excited about our progress and are looking forward to reaching even more educators and students in the coming year, providing training in more places around the world, continuing to expand and diversify our POGIL community, and making significant progress towards our goals for supporting teachers and students in effective student-centered education.

From our POGIL community:
"The POGIL community is my first line of teaching support. Thank you to my POGIL friends and colleagues." Megan Hoffman, Berea College

"I love The POGIL Project. Best community I have. I always feel welcome, recognized, and valued with POGIL people." --Elizabeth Jensen, Aquinas College

"I enjoyed the webinars and found them very helpful to adjust POGIL teaching to online environment." Charity Lovitt, University of Washington Bothell

"Thank you for continuing to support educators." --Janet Marie Lee, Gilroy High School

"I have had great experiences with POGIL resources and webinars. The fact that the POGIL webinars that I attended had been held on Zoom helped prepare me for remote teaching this past spring." --Mary Kaspriskie, Livingston High School

"POGIL is fabulous!! Love the information and sharing within the community." --BethAnne Vanill, Brockport High School