Instruction

Traditional Instructional Designs

Direct teaching of library skills, research and the love of reading.

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Cutting Edge

Codesigns and coteaches engaging and well designed experiences across all content areas and demonstrates their impact.

Tips About Instruction in the Library Learning Commons

For decades, arguments between the behaviorist and constructivist camps have dominated the conversation over the design of the best ways to teach and to learn. With the advent of high stakes testing and the emergence of learning management systems, many teachers gravitate toward behaviorist approaches to prepare students for the tests. Some current efforts are relaxing the amount of testing that must be used as a way to introduce more flexibility into the national role in education.

If a behaviorist/direct teaching approach is the common instructional design being used in the school, then the library learning commons initiatives are severely curtailed. This happens because the learning management system often controls the exact content to be learned, the learning assignments to be given, the rubrics to be used, and the assessments to be administered. In this case, a LLC initiative is often viewed as interrupting instructional time or as an add-on that has no bearing on how students score on the test.

There are many recommended models for designing learning experiences in the literature and around which books, articles, webinars, professional development workshops, and even national conferences are constructed. Here are a few of them that should be a part of the repertoire of the professional staff of the LLC. The reader should recognize similarities in a number of the ideas.

Examples Include:

  • Direct Teaching. A strict list of content knowledge or skill levels that each learner is required to master and be assessed on during a learning experience. Note: The LLC professionals will not usually have a role in such strict strategies.
  • Personalized Learning. Under the major goals, objectives, and assessments, each learner will have an individualized pathway available to achieve what is expected.
  • Differentiated Learning. A variety of pathways are provided for the students to use in obtaining competency.
  • Project Based Learning. Adults or the learners themselves carry out projects that engage and often seem “real” in order to achieve major learning goals.
  • Problem Based Learning. The adult mentors introduce a problem to be solved by individuals or small groups; the resolution of which will result in the accomplishment of major learning goals.
  • Genius Hour. Students are given a wide latitude of projects they would like to do either as individuals or groups. Class meetings are help sessions where individual progress is reported and support/encouragement keep learners on track.
  • Design Thinking. Borrowing on strategies of inventive businesses, students discover real problems that they would like to solve using new and different strategies. The adults mentor both individuals and small groups throughout this creative process.
  • The Universal Design of Instruction (UDL). Employing strategies that help in representation (deep understanding of ideas, knowledge and skills), providing various ways to demonstrate what the student knows and is able to do, and, helping in student engagement along the way.
  • Understanding by Design (UBD). A strategy of planning a learning experience where they plan objectives, then plan assessments, and finally design learning activities to accomplish their goals.
  • Blended Learning. A mixture of technology and face to face to fact activities that are meshed to meet learning goals.
  • Flip Teaching. The teacher’s lecture and homework are flipped so that the video lecture is done at home leaving homework/practice for classroom time when the teacher can help small groups and individuals.
  • Self-directed Learning. Students have a major voice in what is to be learned and how that learning will happen.
  • Competency Based Learning. Each student will be required to perform various tasks/tests that demonstrate both what is known and what can be done. This technique is often used during job interviews. A problem is given or project required rather than relying just on previous education or degrees.
  • Think Models/The Big Think. Created by Loertscher, Koechlin, and Zwaan, the eighteen strategies designed to go far beyond simple choose a topic, do some research, create a product, and make a presentation. Each strategy builds deep understanding across the efforts of individuals and small groups followed by a major reflective activity known as The Big Think.
Think Models for LIIIITES Book.pdf

One major caution about any of the major instructional design models is that there is the underlying theoretical construct of the idea, but when applied in the field, a number of various flavors of that model emerge. For example, Lary Cuban (1) looked at the translation of “Personalized Learning” in theory or so schools and found a wide variety of interpretations. Each flavor and its emphasis will affect how much impact the professional staff of the LLC can have on that type of instructional design. Being “at the table” as a particular model that, when applied in a school or district, will provide an opportunity to exert leadership on the LLC role and how evidence of impact will be determined.

The Power of Coteaching

With almost all models mentioned above, if students are going to be free to go out into the world of information, use a variety of technologies, and have some opportunity of choice, the most powerful role any of the professional staff of the LLC can expect is to coteach a learning experience alongside a classroom teacher. It is the power of "two heads are better than one." True coteaching ask both asks the adult partners to plan, assess, and teach a learning experience together.

In two research studies done by Loertscher (2014) and (2018), micro documentation of individual cotaught learning experiences were compared with learning experiences taught alone in the classroom by the teacher. The findings in both studies indicated that when classroom teachers teach alone in the classroom, about half of their students meet or exceed their expectations. When joined by a member of the professional LLC staff as a partner, that success rate jumps to 70-100%; a remarkable impact. In both studies, classroom teachers raved about the power of drawing upon the expertise of the LLC professional. The advantages are many:

  • Two adults helping so that every student gets more help and attention.
  • Shared expertise in complementary ares strengthens the instructional design.
  • Just in time teaching of research, inquiry, and design thinking skills strengthens what the student knows and is able to do; and, these skills spill over into future experiences.
  • The students learn that there is more than one teacher teaching, helping, and assessing what is going on.
  • The power of technology to make a difference happens with two adult mentors.
  • The students are more engaged because more active learning instructional designs are used.

While coteaching is a tough challenge for both the faculty member and the LLC professional-staff member, the result is so powerful that the added effort on both partners far outweighs the extra bit of time involved. The proof of this claim comes when you as the reader builds a series of cotaught teacher experiences across the school year with will members of the faculty. And, just ask the students whether they remember such experiences and what they learned as a result. The increase in content knowledge and the requisite increased learning skills will speak for themselves. And, if documented over time will speak for the indispensability of the professional LLC staff and for the hiring of teachers who are flexible enough to embrace coteaching as a regular diet across the school year.

No matter what type of instructional design is done or proposed in a school, the professional staff of the LLC are advised to construct a Knowledge Building Center (KBC) where both adult mentors and the students can work together on a learning experience whether in the LLC, the classroom, or at home. A template guide for building such a learning environment is at: https://sites.google.com/s/1lepBYO0p2bMVzKq5XzMsutLihXIQIL18/p/1O84EsjtL9dE9SCOAIQNo2ZuYzmlWblVG/edit

Two tutorials of appropriate instructional designs for coteach are:

Coteaching Research 1.pdf

Two other sites help construct this type of collaborative space:

When robust collaborative online learning environments are not available, such as in the Google Classroom or Schoology, or Canvas, a simple url to such a KBC can be inserted for students to link to from any device.

Finally, while the idea of instructional design presumes that adults are in charge of what and how learning will happen, the students themselves need to be able to teach each other and become mentors to others around them. Oral presentations are just one aspect of each student learning how to teach, share, mentor, and help a fellow student or group of students along the path of learning. During a learning experience, the adults might constantly encourage students to collaborate and help each other. Particularly, the stages of creating, building, and designing will benefit from more than one mind. A steady diet of competition is antithetical to problem solving and design thinking.

Resources