About this institute

At various points in our lives, we each find ourselves immersed in experiences that move us in deeply powerful ways, inspiring intellectual change, personal transformation, and social action. Join us in exploring the use of project-based language learning (PBLL) as a framework for crafting compelling environments and experiences for language learners. During the 2025 NFLRC Summer Institute held at Yale University, participants will learn how to orchestrate rich, experiential language learning opportunities that draw on a diverse array of disciplines and how to develop a plan to research the effectiveness of their project design and teaching.  

This event is co-sponsored and co-organized by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and the Center for Language Study at Yale University.

2025 Learning Outcomes

Participants will be able to:

1. design projects that develop the learners’ language and engage them in exploring global issues, social justice, sociocultural contexts, and content from other academic disciplines;

2. make informed selections of scaffolding strategies for making language, content, and culture accessible; for facilitating the development of 21st century success skills; and for supporting language output;

3. evaluate technological tools for communicating with authentic audiences, facilitating group interaction, and supporting students’ creation of public products;

4. develop assessment plans to evaluate learner performance; 

5. build opportunities for reflection into a project plan;

6. develop a plan for documenting students’ learning through action research methods;

7. design data collection tools relevant to research questions; and

8. understand ethical concerns in teacher research and prepare to conduct an ethical action research study. 

2025 Summer Institute Purpose

The goal of this project is to empower participants to develop, implement, and research high quality models of experiential, project-based language learning (PBLL) in K-16 contexts in a variety of languages. As part of this project, participants will generate a body of Action Research (AR) on PBLL which exhibits consistency in the way PBLL is defined, designed, and implemented. In other words, participants will have a unique opportunity not only to advance our understanding of PBLL, but also to identify areas in need of further inquiry and exploration. 

Action Research (AR) is a perfect fit to embark on a systematic exploration of PBLL because in addition to the new knowledge it generates through findings, it will provide participants a critical lens through which they can empirically examine specific pedagogical interventions and teaching practices within their own unique PBLL contexts. Through AR, language teachers are able to a) improve their practice in relation to the design and implementation of PBLL, b) improve and align their understanding of effective teaching practices with high quality PBLL guidelines, and c) improve the design of learning environments and materials that are conducive to high-quality PBLL.  

At the end of this program, successful participants will have produced a much needed product for the profession: a published chapter in a book that examines PBLL design and implementation from a practitioner’s perspective. The book will be published and made available as an open resource to the profession.