Stakeholder Workshops as a Pedagogical Method for Experiential Learning in Collaborative Planning Education

Collaborative planning emphasizes the importance of stakeholder participation in the planning process. The planning, design, and delivery of the social space for stakeholder collaboration have become core skills in the planning profession. Responding to this trend, we conducted a series of pedagogical experiments by drawing on collaborative planning theories and tested the potentials of stakeholder workshops as a new way of professional learning. The findings show that stakeholder workshops can enhance students’ theoretical understanding and practical skills of collaborative planning. Issues that affect the quality of collaborative planning education include time management, course design, student competence, and support systems.