CREATING sIGNIFICANT lEARNING eNVIRONMENTS

One of the fundamental ideas the DLL program has exposed me to is that I can’t force learning to happen. To be effective, my role has to be one of a facilitator, a mentor, a curator, a coach. Instead of trying to inculcate and impart knowledge via direct instruction, my aim should be to create a significant learning environment where students are encouraged and equipped to take control of their own learning. Here, I will discuss how this shift applies to the objectives laid out in my implementation plan, and the potential challenges that may arise as a result.

In their book “A New Culture of Learning”, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown set out to address pervasive problems with traditional education models. They began by asking a simple question: Why is it that learning is so fun and easy everywhere but the classroom? Their answers to that question shaped their belief that a new culture of learning is needed which emphasizes passion, imagination, and constraint.

One of the first objectives of my implementation plan was to identify a program or curriculum to use as a starting point for developing our outline for our upcoming 6th grade coding course. I believe this step is a key application point for the ideas put forth in “A New Culture of Learning”. We chose Project Lead The Way’s App creator course as the main component of our coding curriculum for the upcoming year. Does the curriculum we’ve selected advance the ball with respect to creating significant learning environments? After attending an intense, week long training, I believe it does.

Throughout the week, I experienced the course (at an accelerated rate) first-hand. I believe the instructors were successful in creating a significant learning environment. The course consists of units where students are presented with problems to be solved via the modification or creation of android apps (utilizing MIT’s app inventor 2 software). From day one, students are collaborating during pair programming, taking turns in opposite roles as the “driver” or “navigator”.

While the units do present rough specifications for the apps the students are creating, they allow space for creativity and innovation. There is no one “right” solution to the problem. Finding new and innovative ways to do things in this course is essentially a requirement. I saw this first hand in my class as each participant finished their apps: They didn’t look the same, they didn’t function exactly the same, and you could see that in many cases on the back end, the logic was even different. The class was a mixture of complete novices and advanced programmers, and yet everyone was engaged throughout the class. You couldn’t pull us away from our laptops because we were determined to finish OUR apps. There were many cheers of joy at different times throughout the room as someone finally figured out that one thing they couldn’t figure out.

If I can replicate something close to this in my class, then I will have succeeded in creating a significant learning environment. The course engages students’ passion by giving them choice, ownership, voice, and authentic learning experiences. It requires students to use their imaginations to solve the problems each app was meant to address. They also must overcome the inherent obstacles (constraints) presented by programming apps with requirements that aren’t so precisely defined as to make the solutions obvious.

One big take-away I’ll need to consider is that I should be very flexible in the time I allow for students to complete their apps, and allow them to revise as many times as is needed. Another take-away was how impactful it was when I was able to learn from my peers about how to do something, it helped me to feel (even as an experienced coder) more ownership than when the instructor showed me. Also, due to the nature of coding, sometimes there just isn’t an obvious answer that an instructor can impart. Peers struggling through the logic are a powerful resource for learning.

I had originally planned to have students post their apps on their ePortfolios but it wasn’t a primary objective in my implementation plan. I now believe that objective is extremely important for celebrating innovation and allowing students to proudly present the fruits of their labor. I will need to work out how to get some sort of android emulator onto students’ sites but that objective will be pushed to the top of the implementation plan so that it gets done.

Organizational Challenges

The main challenge I think I’ll face as I work to create this kind of significant learning environment is time. Students are going to need a lot of time and space to be successful, and I will need to change my grading policy to reflect that. Another challenge I may face is the need from administration for data. The need is not as significant in my course, because it is an elective and it isn’t tied to any specific state standards, but they will want data anyway. I will likely address this by taking the app requirements and making them into a simple numerical rubric. I don’t want this course to be about the grades. I want it to be about the learning experience, and my policies should reflect that.

My mindset should be that every student will succeed. That is my expectation. If I allow students to revise and take the time they need to finish why shouldn’t they? This is a fundamental shift in how I have been thinking about student grades, and I think it would represent a fundamental shift should it be adopted by organization as well. I have been (and I sense others have as well) very focused on letter grades as the fundamental driver of student effort. If students work hard they earn a good grade. That, I believe is a mistake. My job, our job, is to make sure that students learn. Why shouldn’t learning be the primary driver of student effort? Why shouldn’t learning by the primary driver of our gradebook policies? I don’t think it has been and that needs to change.

I think that kind of freedom is honestly going to be easy to achieve with respect to my class. It’s not tested. It’s not a “core” curriculum (although one could easily make the prediction that soon it will be). Even though administration likes project and problem based learning, I’m not sure they’re ready for teachers in tested subjects to shift to more qualitative measures of student achievement. I think doing so would lead to a more holistic view of education, but the “system” as it is currently set up discourages it. I think we need more awareness, district-wide, of current and emerging industries. They aren’t looking for kids who can score well on the SAT or ACT, they are looking for skills. I think that has to be stressed at every point of our preparation, no matter where or what we teach.

References:

Thomas, D. (2012, Sept. 12) A new culture of learning. retrieved from: https://youtu.be/lM80GXlyX0U