How can I increase networks of learners and cooperative learning in my online classroom?
“Fire hose” is an excellent metaphor for the ideas I’ve been hit with this week. Sorting through the multitude of ideas that I have swirling around right now seems impossible. What skills and understandings do online teachers need in order to adapt to globalization and the implications of technology on education? How can all teachers engage students in meaningful learning that will enable them to have success in a future that we can’t yet envision? How can we encourage the kind of learning that research shows to be the most important while also meeting the constraints of curriculum and graduation requirements? Ultimately, I need to take the advice of the Constructivists, and make this learning meaningful for me, in my context. I have several goals for my students. One is to have them take more control of the direction of their learning, within the context of the new, more flexible BC Ed Plan. Another is to increase the amount of time they spend learning with each other, even though my online classes are asynchronous. So how do I make education “sticky,” as Mark Nichols calls it? One step I think I can take right now is to move towards more inquiry or challenge-based learning in my courses. Mark Nichols discussed this in his “Challenge Based Learning” seminar at the 2016 Global Ed Conference. He states that learning challenges allow students to slow down and think deeply and critically. This fits with many of the benefits of online learning. Full participation is allowed because you don’t have just the most talkative or outgoing students blurting answers first, and the extra time may allow all learners, introverted or otherwise, to formulate thoughtful answers. Inquiry-based learning would also fit with my goal for more student choice, as long as I let go and authentically let them choose topics and areas of study on their own. Speaking of control, in “12 Tech Trends Higher Education Cannot Afford to Ignore” Lev Gonick states, “We are not in control, and let’s celebrate it! The question is: how can we stay relevant?” He was speaking in terms of the proliferation of mobile devices and social media engagement across campuses, but I think this closely relates to what I’m doing as an online teacher. In his keynote speech for the 2016 Global Education Conference, Lord Jim Knight argues that the new purpose of education in a changing global economy is to create students who can compete with robots. Our students need to develop social skills, resilience, and conceptual knowledge of basic curriculum, because jobs in the future (and increasingly today) will require strength in these areas, otherwise they will be automated. I would argue that part of our job as online teachers is to compete with robots too. What is it that we do that makes us different than an automated, self-marking test or artificial intelligence? This is where my desire to create more of a learning network and opportunities for cooperative learning comes in. One of my strengths as an educator is in making relationships. I am genuinely interested in my students, their lives, their passions, and I genuinely want them to do well. Whether they meet the curriculum outcomes isn’t as important to me as whether they are learning, they are engaged, and their experience is positive. In an era of “Khanification” as Will Richardson calls it, where our value as teachers lies in what cannot be outsourced in video or internet content, these relationships become instrumental. We also need to teach the students how to find their own resources, as Shelley Wright discusses in “The Flip: End of a Love Affair”. I want my students to look to me as a part of their learning network, a coach to help them sort through the learning resources, rather than as the source of those resources, particularly as these are skills that employers will no doubt be looking for once my students finish secondary or post-secondary. Finally, I think that we need to change how we are measuring learning. Knight talks about The End of Average by Todd Rose, in which the author makes a case that an average person does not exist, and we need to stop designing things, such as school achievement indicators, around the notion of “average.” Yong Zhao also touches on this concept of measurement, and calls it the "deficit-driven education paradigm." I want my students to look at the curriculum outcomes, perform a gap analysis, retool their learning to cover those areas, reflect on their achievement, and project where they want to take their learning next. I do not want my students who have made progress to feel that they have failed because they aren’t at an “average” level for that learning outcome yet. In my class I want to focus on the personal learning continuum, which feels ironic coming out of a mandatory report card writing session. I know that I want to increase meaningful learning and student engagement in my classes, and I have a swarm of ideas of where to go next, but I can’t do that without a network, just as I wouldn’t have my students work in isolation. I would now like to invite you to make suggestions. How are you increasing “stickiness” in your classes? Have you successfully implemented Inquiry-Based learning online? How do you bridge the asynchronous timeline/cooperative learning gap?
1 Comment
|
Leslie McCurrachEnthusiastic Learner. Avid Gardener. DL Teacher. Archives
March 2018
Categories |