Across China, university staff, researchers, students, and farmers are joining forces to bring to the fore action and field-based learning as a way to promote rural development studies. Learning from the Field: Innovating China’s Higher Education System presents first-hand experience and lessons from an innovative, participatory curriculum development initiative in China. It includes the content of two novel courses, ‘Community Based Natural Resource Management’ and ‘Participatory Rural Development’. The first versions of these courses were delivered at the College of Humanities and Development of the China Agricultural University in Beijing in the spring of 2005 and at the Jilin Agricultural University in Changchun in the spring of 2006.