When Complexity Enters the Picture

Project-based learning involves learning from real life experience through informal & incidental and self-directed learning. We share a framework for learning from experience in today’s complex, ambiguous professional and work contexts that draws on a concept of “design unbound” (Pendleton-Jullian & Seely Brown, 2018). We share principles and examples of how to incorporate “tools” for learning and teaching that build capabilities in “practical imagination,” abductive reasoning, world building, and what-if thinking.

Dr. Karen E. Watkins is Professor of Learning, Leadership and Organizational Development in the College of Education at The University of Georgia. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin. Karen’s scholarly interests include organizational learning assessment, informal and incidental learning, action learning, action research, and action science. Watkins & Marsick developed and validated the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (1997) used in over 100 published studies. Watkins is the author or co-author of numerous articles and chapters, and 9 books. With Victoria Marsick, she recently completed work on a forthcoming book entitled

Rethinking Workplace Learning and Development. Named Scholar of the Year by the Academy of Human Resource Development in 1999; she was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in 2003 and the

Academy of Human Resource Development Scholar Hall of Fame in 2014. She consults with many organizations including work with OECD on schools as learning organizations and with the World Health Organization on evaluating learning and development among immunization staff. She was one of the founding presidents of the Academy of Human Resource Development and is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Geneva Learning Foundation in Switzerland.