Problem Statement:
Bobbi and Krista are discovering methods for students to better engage with curriculum while developing real-life skills and enhancing cultural perspective. Important to both learning groups is an increased cognizance of what is beyond their educational confines: considering the needs of 21st-century learners in an international high school; and supporting 20-30-year-old (mostly) Caucasian males, respectively. While there is an obvious contrast between groups’ participant diversity (or lack thereof), they are comparable in that both groups lack perspective outside their immediate context.
For us, one of the defining factors is trust and perspective. To encourage participation, we created an environment that is both comfortable and safe, while allowing for vulnerability (Wegerif, 1998). Although both groups have different needs, they require skills to engage online through collaboration, communication, and knowledge-building. Krista’s learning group is needing the support of the community to build awareness for operational work; Bobbi’s students are growing their international-mindedness. Both groups require the cognitive skills of a 21st-century learner/thinker to support their future endeavors.
Building Empathy:
Through the design process, we discovered current, common needs. Krista was seeking methods to build camaraderie online and encourage engagement, while Bobbi is seeking meaningful engagement through understanding. Because of concern for learner complacency (those who do the minimum needed to pass versus those who construct knowledge), it is essential to create learning experiences that are both authentic and experiential in nature (Crichton & Carter, 2017). In wanting to build online skills in research, collaboration, and communication, it was highlighted that both groups of students had to build a greater understanding of themselves and the world – a difficult concept to teach.
Our Solution:
Papert’s theory of constructivism offers that “[constructing] knowledge and understanding are through the building of something that is shareable outside of the student’s head” (Crichton & Carter, 2017, p.16). To aid in developing new perspectives and engagement, we created an activity that is low-risk and inclusive. In this activity, students represent self-selected United Nation countries in a simulated UN conference. The activity plays out live via Blackboard Collaborate or Skype and is centered around their countries’ positions on the urban refugee crisis.
Prior to this culminating activity, students will connect with other UN countries. Sharing details of the countries represented (such as policies, cultural perspectives, and/or resources), students will determine if other countries geographically and politically support their position. By connecting synchronously online, students will evaluate each countries’ perspective. To model participation, the instructor will also represent a country, engaging in the same process. Final positions are compared with initial positions and posted to a forum.
This activity offers students the opportunity to engage in discussions concerning a global crisis that continues to have an impact on the world. As Burkhardt et al. (2003) confirm: interpersonal, management and problem-solving skills are fundamental to this economy, and students must demonstrate flexibility in an ever-changing environment that necessitates critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication/collaboration skills to adapt to any given situation.
Analysis:
The limitations of the logistics of this activity include: (1) that it is a new activity and some glitches may occur, and (2) keeping track of participant engagement might be difficult.
The limitations of the learner experience include: (1) the topic of the refugee crisis might not be of interest to all participants, thus limiting intrinsic motivation; (2) lack of background knowledge of the present day refugee context could hinder engagement; and (3) technology skill levels of the participants might detract from interaction and engagement.
References
Burkhardt, G., Monsour, M., Valdez, G., Gunn, G., Dawson, M., Lemke, C., Coughlin, E., Thadani, V., & Martin, C. (2003). Literacy in the digital age. NCREL. Retrieved from http://pict.sdsu.edu/engauge21st.pdf
Crichton, S. & Carter, D. (2017). Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit. Open School/ITA.
Wegerif, R. (1998). The social dimension of asynchronous learning networks. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 2(1), 34–49. doi: https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/sites/default/files/v2n1_wegerif_1.pdf.
Hi Bobbi and Krista,
One of the challenges with online synchronous activities is that they require everyone to be online at the same time, regardless of their time zones. Do you think this might be a challenge for these specific learners?
Here are some questions:
“we created an environment that is both comfortable and safe, while allowing for vulnerability”.
What about this environment makes it comfortable and safe?
“we created an activity that is low-risk and inclusive”
What about this activity makes it low-risk and inclusive?
“students will determine if other countries geographically and politically support their position”
Can you elaborate on this? How will students determine this?
“As Burkhardt et al. (2003) confirm: interpersonal, management and problem-solving skills are fundamental to this economy…”
Does this mean that students will be engaging in “interpersonal, management and problem-solving skills” during the simulation?
Hi Jason,
Thank you for taking the time to read our solution and provide us with some feedback to think about moving forward to Part B.
b
Jason – good point. I have to say that I am a HUGE fan of online, asynchronous environments. If you have a moment, check out IDEO.org … they have created a fascinating space for groups to collaborate, create and share.
Susan
Cool thank you for this. Great site and love the Kickstarter travel pack.
b
Hi Bobby and Krista
I appreciate and understand the requirement and need for building inclusiveness through comradery and meaningful engagement coming from a military environment myself. Using Papert’s theory of constructivism in finding and commuting knowledge that can be used to promote learning outside the students normal or current comfort zone, is a very interesting concept. However, in my situation, current controversial topics such as the United Nations, and the refugee issue, have a huge political aspect to it, with many possible heated responses that can easily get out of hand, just look at Facebook. Having served the CDN Military for 20 years and served in the UN, due to the many corrupt, unethical, un-moral incidents witnessed within the UN mission would trigger my PTSD response (Fight or flight). Knowing my reactions, once triggered by the topic would more than likely cause me to walk away from the conversation and possibly even quit the program, so not to comment especially in an open blog based forum. I do however see a great value in a roundtable approach with real-world problems and discussions, depending on how or what the topics are, I would prefer them as they relate to school or work. These type of discussions, can easily take the learning out of the classroom setting and apply real-world aspects to it.
As an online component could foresee a difficulty in connectivity via time zones and locations as a synchronous activity. As stated in the analysis learner experiences and prior knowledge evaluated should direct the solution and will affect motivation, engagement, and intellectual risk-taking. The general idea and the research behind it are sound and could work in specified groups and situations, depending on if solutions can bring change and understanding to the crisis thus completing the circle and extending a value to the learning experience.
Thanks, Klaus
Thanks for this engaging post. I love the notion of trust and perspective as the defining factors of some of your work. I would tend to agree that trust is best fostered in supportive learning environments while perspective is typically fostered through prior experience, knowledge, authentic engagement. It would appear your solution is a good balance of those factors – allowing students to create / construct meaning for the wealth of information that is available – creating ways in which students to make their thinking visible (Eisner). At some point, check out IDEO.ORG. That organization has created a fascinating environment that allows groups to work through problem finding activities in amazingly creative and engaging ways.
Susan
Bobbi and Krista,
A unique and very real-world style activity. More ideas like this must trickle down through grade and high school systems. While it does present a solid foundation for allowing the students to reach out and engage with one another, the activity may have to be simplified to attract participation from all learners.
To start, I am unclear why “20-30-year-old (mostly) Caucasian males” are an isolated group and why the require support? Is the environment a high school, college or university? Where is the location? More background may be needed to understanding the issue at hand.
The activity as a whole seems that it would take an entire academic semester to complete. What is the recommended amount of time allotted for completion? Would this also be delivered in a general context or within a specific course?
You have addressed some preliminary concerns in you pre-analysis section. I think a more scaled-down version may be needed.
Darin