Collaborative Explorations (CEs) provide opportunities for participants to re-engage with themselves as avid learners and inquirers. What makes this re-engagement possible is a combination of:

• the tools and processes used for inquiry, dialogue, reflection, and collaboration;
• the connections we make among the diverse participants who bring diverse interests, skills, knowledge, experience, and aspirations to the CE; and
• our contributions to the topic laid out in the scenario on which the CE is based.

CEs are an extension of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and related approaches to education in which students address a scenario or case in ways that allow them to shape their own directions of inquiry and develop their skills as investigators and prospective teachers (in the broadest sense of the word).

For more details of CEs underway and planned by the Critical and Creative Thinking graduate program and the Science in a Changing World (SICW) graduate track at UMass Boston, visit http://cct.wikispaces.com/CEp.