Usually a teacher's first step to prepare for class is to write a syllabus, and Professor M had copies ready on day one of "Teaching Mass Communications in College." Instead of distributing them, however, he offered class members an option. They could follow a traditional route and use his detailed outline, or they could immediately put constructivist learning theory into practice by choosing to build their own syllabus and chart their own course. With this gauntlet dropped, he left them alone to decide.The class members opted to be constructivists, and this article reports the participants' observations during, Learning to Teach Collaborativelyin College" be to approach the class as active learners? Constructivists see knowledge as actively constructed by learners, not passively acquired from instructors. For this reason, students learn more effectively when they "own" the process and work collaboratively on tasks that seem real and authentic. Journalism educators often apply some of these constructivist notions in their classes but rarely to the degree used in this graduate-level pedagogy class.This article presents a case study of a constructivist pedagogy class and argues for the use of constructivist theory in mass communication higher education.

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