The POGIL Project

"A lot of these faculty come from institutions that have no money for professional development."

Joan Roque understands what it's like to have student frustration directed your way. As a woman of color who uses POGIL, a pedagogy that upends student expectations about teaching and learning, Roque has experienced her fair share of student pushback over the years.

Students have done everything from pretending not to understand her when she speaks to transferring out of her class. "I saw how students didn’t talk to me," said Roque, who was the only Hispanic faculty member in her former college's chemistry department. "They didn't approach me. They didn't trust me. They didn’t ask me questions. You know, they preferred to just suffer in silence."

Thankfully, because she worked in a POGIL-friendly environment at her college, Roque had plenty of support from her colleagues. Now, as a chemistry faculty member at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, she wants to pay it forward by connecting other historically marginalized faculty members with resources from The POGIL Project.

By offering assistance in the form of networking, mentorship, and scholarships, The POGIL Project has a chance to provide faculty of color with the support they need to overcome some of the challenges that they might face adopting and using POGIL in the classroom. "A lot of these faculty come from institutions that have no money for professional development," Roque explained. "The little bit they have, they want to use it for presenting at a conference."

"Once I was there, I was really excited to be engaged on a deeper level. I took a lot of the things I learned through that conference into my own classroom."

She also believes that this climate, in which publishing a paper can make or break a bid for tenure, leads faculty members to choose their research careers instead of focusing on their pedagogy. Roque herself was in that position until she received a scholarship from The POGIL Project. "[That scholarship is] how I got to NCAPP and the last two POGIL national meetings,” she said. “Otherwise, I wouldn't have applied. Once I was there, I was really excited to be engaged with The Project on a deeper level. I took a lot of the things I learned through that conference into my own classroom."

Roque currently serves a key member of The Project's Supporting Inclusivity strategic team and is forging connections with other professional organizations such as the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). "We got through the first part—connecting with people," said Roque of her outreach work. "Now we have to keep them and have more people of color use POGIL. This is a nice and engaging way to keep the momentum going."

Teacher training lies at the heart of our model for change

Joan's story is extraordinary, but not unique. There are thousands of educators just like her who need financial support to attend high-quality professional training. In addition to providing scholarships to national conferences and meetings, The POGIL Project offered 57 free or low-cost workshops, webinars, and eSeries events last year. In all, we served almost 1,000 educators with exceptional professional development programming.

What Is POGIL? 

POGIL stands for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, a student-centered, group learning approach developed through research on how students learn best. With POGIL, student teams work together to construct their own understanding of content while developing skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, problem-solving, and communication, now recognized as essential for 21st-century learning.

About The POGIL Project

At The POGIL Project, we train approximately 1,000 high school and college teachers each year, create a variety of classroom materials, and foster a vibrant community of educators working to transform education with student-centered learning. Your gift, of any amount, will bring learner-centered instruction to even more educators in 2025-26.

When just one educator like Joan uses POGIL in her classroom, all of her students are more likely to retain knowledge and develop crucial process. skills. The ripple effect of teacher training creates waves of change within individual classrooms and throughout entire institutions.

Thank you for helping us make student-centered instruction the norm!

Who We Are

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. POGIL is Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, a student-centered team learning instructional approach developed through research on how students learn best...