Thinking about Deeper Learning

I’ve been thinking about deeper learning. (If you aren’t familiar with this terminology, deeper learning is a new term for a different approach to education, recently made the focus of the Hewlett Foundation’s education group.)

To me, deeper learning is not just about content or skills like critical thinking — it’s really about creating immersive learning experiences that students enjoy. Whether it’s being consumed in a good book or being absorbed in a science fair project, we’ve all had experiences that seem to cause events around us to stop moving as we take up some quest. That is deeper learning.

Deeper learning is, in part, deep engagement in a learning process that brings internal satisfaction.

What leads to this kind of experience? It’s different for each one of us (hence the need for differentiation). For some, a certain subject area inspires passion. For others, methodologies like project based learning spur it. Some become intensely engaged in arts or to sports. Finding that thing that ignites passion in individual learners is the quest of every good teacher. Ultimately, in life, it is our quest as humans.

Too many though, never find this passion. If we can achieve helping each student find some joy in learning, it will help them to know they can be successful in other pursuits and in life in general. And that, ultimately, is the goal of deeper learning.

How Do Cultures Change? (part 2)

Jumping from macro to micro, it is fascinating to look at the striking differences between individual school districts and even schools within the larger U.S. K-12 landscape. While the vast majority of schools look very similar, there are a few that stand out as being radically different.

Two come to mind for me. One is a district that has taken a long-term team-based approach to tackling the whole standards-curriculum-assessment alignment challenge. In the process of doing so, they have developed a system in which large numbers of demographically-representative students are successful, not only on state tests but also in areas of deeper learning: critical thinking, higher order thinking skills, and collaboration. This district’s administration, teachers, and other staff universally praise the approach and its results. They support one another in many ways as they happily go about their jobs of educating students.

The other example is a school in which a learning community has taken root and prospered among the staff. Despite having all the challenges of a modern public high school, the teachers work together to bring about the best education for their students. They embrace new methodologies, vigorously debate new ideas, and seek continuous improvement for all. They work weekends, go the extra mile for each other, and spend their time praising not blaming.

What do these schools have in common? A strong culture.

In visiting these schools, one can’t help thinking about how their specialness might be transferred to other schools. Being able to foster this kind of environment could radically change our nation’s future. It is the stuff that ed reformers dream of.  But how do you bring about deep and meaningful change in culture? It requires so many elements. Strong leadership, Commitment. Competence. Long-term thinking. And probably some other special elements that are difficult to quantify.

Changing culture is a challenging problem and one that seems only marginally more manageable on a local basis than on a widespread one. Eighty thousand silos is a big number.

And yet if education is to undergo reform, culture change seems a must.

How Do Cultures Change? (part 1)

The culture of K-12 education in America is very staid. It is dominated by hierarchical structures and influenced by powerful lobbies. It is a huge, slow-moving bureaucracy generally not influenced by real student needs.

And yet the need for change is widely agreed upon, both inside and outside of the system. Our youth are not being prepared adequately for the modern world. And while there is broad consensus on this point, there is little agreement on either the direction or process for that change, and there is little substantive change actually occurring.

The culture of the open movement is very free-flowing. It is not dominated by any particular establishments or associations. Instead, it is a loose collective of individuals who value openness, creativity, innovation, transparency, and sharing. Together, many nodes in the community have collaborated on creating some magnificent works: Linux, the human genome project, Wikipedia.

And while it strikes many of us that the open movement could inspire and inform the reforms that K-12 education desperately needs, the question of how to reconcile these two very different cultures looms. The habits, preferences, and even vocabulary of these cultures are completely different. The K-12 establishment, for its part, is adverse to change and to ideas like openness, transparency, and collaborative creation. The fear of the unknown outweighs the potential benefits in the eyes of policymakers. The open movement is biased toward rapid and radical change and doesn’t easily accommodate trying to flex to the status quo. The notion of compromising to be inclusive of more conservative viewpoints is not well received. Between these two extremes, the chasm is great.

Historical precedents for significant reform movements are prevalent. Sometimes major change comes through grass roots efforts that swell to become large populist movements. A highly charismatic leader can propel a radical idea to be accepted and embraced by the masses. Other times, bloody revolutions bring about change.

It is not obvious that any of these paths are either desirable or likely as a road for the reform of the K-12 educational system. Perhaps instead, its future is to be that of a sprawling, languorous empire in its decline. One day it will collapse under its own weight. Hopefully, the rubble and ashes will someday see the emergence of something new and better.

Flexibility in online learning

I’ve been thinking a lot about different structures for adult online learning as the result of a couple projects I’m working on right now, including P2PU. My thoughts are along the lines of increasing participant options in their learning.

There is a fairly universal fall-off or drop-out rate after about 3 weeks in most online classes. One possible solution to this is to create a series of much smaller modules (say, 2-3 weeks long) and a flexible entry schedule. In its extreme, this could result in a structure of a half dozen 2-3 week long modules which could be started whenever by anyone who wanted to participate and completed on whatever schedule works for each learner. The modules could be taken individually or in sequence (or out of sequence for that matter). It’s also been suggested to me that in this format, an almost unlimited number of participants could be accommodated.

This kind of structure is being thought about over at P2PU, and I have thought about it for my “Entrepreneurial Marketing” course (with encouragement by some of the participants).

Some challenges for this model include:

  1. A compromise of the instructional design when there are pre-requisites or content is best covered in a certain sequence
  2. Lack of participant motivation to finish even a 2-3 week long module if there is no “finish” date
  3. The facilitator role

I am thinking right now in particular about #3. In most online courses, a strong facilitator role in guiding and encouraging learning is a given. At P2PU, this seems less so, perhaps both because of the peer focus and because of the fact that all the facilitators are volunteers.

In my own P2PU course, I originally worried that I might take too strong of a facilitation role because of my own experience as a more traditional teacher. However, having been through the course now and listening to other facilitators and participants discuss P2PU and various classes, I think that a strong facilitator that provides solid guidance and a strong presence throughout the course is important. They don’t necessarily have to “teach” but rather act as a coach and mentor.

With a series of modules that have a rolling cast of participants though, I think this would be almost impossible. Relationships would be very difficult to form.

And as a facilitator, you’d virtually have to monitor the progress of each participant in each module individually. (In my course, this would be something like 6 modules x 3 weeks each x 40+ participants….probably a lot more with a rolling enrollment.) I’m not sure this would be feasible with a paid teaching job; it is unthinkable as a volunteer (unless of course you have a whole lot of time on your hands and don’t need to earn a living — neither of which apply to me :).

Which then takes you to the place of stepping back as a facilitator…making it more of a “virtual book club” as P2PU suggests, with participants hopefully self-forming into groups and some taking on a facilitator role independently.

While that sounds appealing, my own experience in trying to foster this kind of self-managing learning group atmosphere has not been successful. You end up with a few highly self-motivated and well-organized people learning a lot, but frankly those people could have organized their own learning from a variety of sources; they don’t need a P2PU course.

I’d be interested to know if others have experience in how this can work.

Otherwise, I’m thinking about some kind of hybrid….perhaps modular, but with a limited cadre size, fixed start and end dates for each module, and a continuing facilitator role. Still thinking though….