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.