By: Marshall Hartlen and Nicolette Young
–> Visit Marshall’s Blog for a copy of this post & to read more of his insights.
Context: Identifying User Requirements and Goals
In going through the design thinking process, differing contexts emerged for each user. As we empathized with and defined each other’s needs, this became part of our design challenge – ideating a solution that would encourage learners in both settings to partake in intellectual risk taking (IRT), by actively engaging in an online learning environment that promotes inclusiveness.
Nicolette’s goal is to provide learning that is relevant, modern and clear in a corporate setting. Her challenge is to ensure flexibility in the design for unknown variables specific to each client. Marshall’s goal is to empower his secondary school students, and shift his instructor role from lecturing to guiding. His challenge is to focus more on developing skills pertinent to the Information Age.
Solution
To address the identified challenge, our solution is to implement two synergistic elements – emphasising community and modelling IRT.
Creating a community of learners
A collaborative learning community will increase student engagement and independence. For Nicolette, to create links between learners with a varied knowledge base and experience level, and for Marshall, to create independent learners.
Successful learning requires the ability to acquire, evaluate and synthesise information in broad collaborative contexts (Thomas, 2010). Our community component allows for learning to be more meaningful, thereby eliciting engagement.
The trend in both educational and corporate contexts is toward a more collaborative approach, which increases confidence, engagement, and offers a diverse base of community knowledge (Laal & Ghodsi, 2011). By focussing on building learner relationships within team environments, opportunities to delve into learning from each other as well as from the course are facilitated.
Modelling Risk Taking
IRT is defined as “engaging in adaptive learning behaviours (sharing tentative ideas, asking questions, attempting to do and learn new things) that place the learner at risk of making mistakes or appearing less competent than others”(Beghetto, 2009, p 210). We recommend that educators model IRT to encourage the same in their students.
For example, the instructor can employ new strategies that encourage feedback media res. This supports Marshall’s evolving skillset as a guide of learning by pursuing new strategies. In addition, students critiquing a project of Nicolette’s creation also encourages student risk taking through modelling.
Establishing a conversational tone and a safe learning environment that supports the exchange of knowledge, ideas and experience will also encourage IRT. This is because it allows students to feel comfortable exploring, experimenting and taking risks free from judgement (Kalchman and Koedinger, 2005). Timely feedback and positive support are also part of this solution and key in cultivating IRT (Beghetto, 2009).
Potential Limitations To Solution
Learners may feel that they do not have time, motivation or incentive to participate and/or contribute to communities, specifically if it does not feel meaningful to them. To combat this, graded collaborative and community participation activities will be included that offer learners flexibility, such as choice of topic and tool.
Modelling IRT may not result in students emulating this behaviour, especially if they lack knowledge, experience or interest in the course content (Beghetto, 2009). A course wiki would be available to augment knowledge of course content, but also editable for students to add their own ideas and findings.
Although contextual differences may appear to have limited our solution, the diversity allowed us to explore multiple perspectives and ideas to identify a mutually beneficial solution.
References
Beghetto, R. (2009). Correlates of intellectual risk taking in elementary school science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46(2), 210-223. doi:10.1002/tea.20270
Kalchman, M., & Koedinger, K.R. (2005). Teaching and learning functions. In M.S. Donovan & J.D. Bransford (Eds.), How students learn: History, mathematics, and science in the classroom (pp. 351–393). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Laal, M., & Ghodsi, S. M. (2012). Benefits of collaborative learning. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 31, 486-490.
Sabbag, M. (2016, June 14). Why Organizational Structures are moving towards collaboration. Rework. Retrieved from: https://www.cornerstoneondemand.com/rework/why-organizational-structures-are-moving-towards-collaboration
Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). A virtual crash course in design thinking. Retrieved from: https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/a-virtual-crash-course-in-design-thinking
Thomas, P. Y. (2010). Learning and instructional systems design. In Towards developing a web-based blended learning environment at the University of Botswana. (Doctoral dissertation).
University of Georgia College of Education. (2017). Are your students taking risk in their learning?. Retrieved from: http://gca.coe.uga.edu/are-your-students-taking-risks-in-their-learning/
Image Sources
Featured Header Image – Photo by Ghost Presenter on StockSnap
Empathize, Define, Prototype images by Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University in An Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
November 30, 2017 at 10:40 am
Hi Nicolette and Marshall,
Great job on finding solutions that will work for both Nicolette’s corporate setting and Marshall’s secondary school courses. I think that your proposed solutions to have participants take part in an intellectual risk-taking and actively engage in their online learning environment are well thought out and will ultimately lead to success in your respective areas. Finding solutions that satisfy both Nicolette’s need to ensure flexibility in design for her clients and Marshall’s desire to develop his learners 21st-century skills could not have been easy, well done!
A few questions came up while I read your post:
I like how you recognized that building learner relationships within team environments is key to being able build a community that can share knowledge and experience, do you have a plan on how you will foster these learner relationships?
You state that “Our community component allows for learning to be more meaningful, thereby eliciting engagement”, do you have any thoughts about what to do if certain participants are disengaged?
You state that you want to create an environment free from judgment and that encourages participants to take intellectual risks, would it make sense in your model for this be done in pairs first to ease them into it before the expectation of ‘exposing’ themselves to the larger group?
Again, excellent job and some great takeaways for me in your plan.
Steve
P.S. I love the idea of the class wiki to help supplement knowledge of course content
December 3, 2017 at 4:31 pm
Amazing way you both have found common ground for this task. I hope the design thinking process helped facilitate what, on its head, would have seemed to be quite divergent needs and audiences. The use of graphics and the actual layout of this blog post is lovely. Well done. I appreciate your statement “A collaborative learning community will increase student engagement and independence.’ However, I would argue that the degree of engagement and independence will be dependent on the thoughtful design of that community itself – but then, I am stating the obvious. Again, thanks for this clear and colourful post.
Susan
December 3, 2017 at 9:19 pm
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your vote of confidence in our solution and your patience in our reply, as we reflected on your excellent questions.
In terms of fostering relationships, a participatory feature of our community will include activities that allow learners to share their individuality in a way that may not specifically be course-related. For example, one feature could be a weekly question that is answered by the instructor/facilitator as well as students in the format of their choice (text, image, video, audio file) in a community forum. This allows learners to make connections between each other and explore them when they are teamed up.
In addition to the participatory and collaborative elements that we discussed in the limitations section of our blog to combat disengagement, our suggested approach also advocates more presence from the instructor. Being connected and persistent gives participants the means to shape the discourse and be fully engaged (Garrison, & Vaughan, 2008). By this we mean for the instructor to check in with learners consistently throughout the learning process to ensure the learners are engaged and to be brought back on track if they are not. In general, learners who are off track or disengaged are so because they may not fully understand what is being asked of them. By keeping a consistent relationship going, this can be addressed.
Your thoughts about starting learners off in pairs, was precisely our thinking. In setting them into group environments to start out the course, specifically partnerships, trust can be built and perhaps more risks can be taken together with their learning approaches.
We are happy to hear that you benefited from the results of our first journey into the design thinking process and in turn, we thank you for providing us with ideas to integrate going into the next stage.
Thank you for your PS – we believe wikis embody the synergy we intend to create between modelling IRT and a collaborative community.
– Nicolette and Marshall
December 3, 2017 at 10:34 pm
Hi Nicolette and Marshall.
I was intrigued by your work, initially because I was developing questions about how students in a secondary school would accept the community approach to learning, but came to realize that the corporate world would struggle with the same issue!
Since I am curious about these issues in my own profession, do you believe it will be necessary for a ‘primer’ course (for either secondary school or corporate learners) to help them gain a better understanding of the new rules of engagement? Students who are typically very introverted, but score well on traditional exam methods, for example, may resist the new practices even though they may be uniquely in need of adapting in this way.
As an aside, I think if Marshall is successful in integrating a more community/collaborative approach in high schools, Nicolette and I will have an easier time managing them in corporate and technical training later!
Thanks,
Todd
December 6, 2017 at 8:36 pm
Hi Todd,
Exactly! In empathizing with each other’s requirements, we found that the community element was a common challenge to create and nourish in both of our environments.
In terms of setting the ‘new rules of engagement’ within the course, instead of a primer, we plan to include collaborative activities at the beginning of the course to introduce and encourage learners to engage in community building and IRT. This would see them working in partnerships to learn and work together through a process in the course. Our intention is to foster ties to learners who may not ‘buy-in’ right away, like the ones you mentioned, in two ways. First, by providing a smaller team environment and second, by giving them someone that they can build trust with to ‘test the waters’ and hopefully experience benefits with. This way, they’ll be motivated to engage in the behavior again to derive further benefits from the course.
Great insight on how sharing similar goals within our different contexts align for the student,when secondary school learners eventually become an adult professional learner in a workplace.
Thank you for bringing your perspective and questions for us to consider and use to further develop our prototype in the next stage.
– Nicolette & Marshall