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Search Results For "constructivis"

Five Standards of Authentic Learning

Dwayne Harapnuik — November 7, 2017 — 2 Comments

Constructivist or those who believe that we learn by making meaningful connections and we construct new knowledge when we combine or relate it to what we already know have argued that working on real-world or authentic learning opportunities is one of the most effective ways to learn. Authentic learning is a key component of the CSLE+COVA approach and when we talk about authentic learning or refer to giving learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities we are summarizing authentic learning in the following way.

Learners are given the opportunity to select and engage in real-world or authentic learning opportunities that enable them to make a genuine difference in their own learning environments. The selection and engagement in these real-world problems that are relevant to the learner furthers their ability to make meaningful connections (Donovan, Bransford, & Pellegrino, 2000) and provide them with career preparedness not available in more traditional didactic forms of education (Windham, 2007). Research confirms that authenticity is only developed through engagement with these sorts of real-world tasks and that this type of authentic learning can deepen knowledge creation and ultimately help the learner transfer this knowledge beyond the classroom (Driscoll, 2005; Nikitina, 2011). It is also important to recognize that authenticity is not an independent or isolated feature of the learning environment but it is the result of the continual interaction between the learner, the real-world activity, and the learning environment (Barab, Squire, & Dueber, 2000). This is also why we stress that in the CSLE+COVA model choice, ownership, and voice are realized through authentic learning and without this dynamic and interactive authenticity, there would be no genuine choice, ownership, and voice (Thibodeaux, Harapnuik, & Cummings, 2017).

The authentic learning aspect of the CSLE+COVA approach maps closely to Newmann, & Wehlage five standards of authentic learning:

Higher-order thinking – learners move beyond the regurgitation of facts to making meaningful connections that transform information and ideas through analysis, synthesis, design, and creation.
Depth of knowledge – learners are able to solve complex problems and systematically synthesizing large amounts of fragmented information into cohesive arguments and explanations that lead to a deeper understanding.
Connectedness to the world beyond the classroom – learners address authentic or real-world and use these personal experiences to apply their gained knowledge and experience.
Substantive conversation – learners collaborate with peers and experts to use higher order thinking to enter into a dialogue that can collectively improve the understanding of the authentic problems or projects.
Social support for student achievement – learner use collaboration rather than competition as the path to developing an environment that promotes, diversity, respect, and inclusion.

By pointing to these five standards of authentic learning we are confirming that the CSLE+COVA approach is not only a synergy of well established constructivist ideas we are also confirming our it is better to build on the positive narrative about improving learning by building on a solid foundation that we emphasize in the following video:

References

Barab, S. A., Squire, K. D., & Dueber, W. (2000). A co-evolutionary model for supporting the emergence of authenticity. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(2), 37-62.

Donovan, S. M., Bransford, J. D., & Pellegrino, J. W. (2000). How People Learn: Bridging research and practice. Washington D. C.: National Academy Press.

Newmann, F. & Wehlage, G. (1993). Five standards of authentic instruction. Educational Leadership, 50 (7), 8-12.

Nikitina, L. (2011). Creating an authentic learning environment in the foreign language classroom. International Journal of Instruction, (4)1, 33-36. Retrieved from http://www.e-iji.net/dosyalar/iji_2011_1_3.pdf

Thibodeaux, T. N., Harapnuik, D. K., Cummings, C. D., & Wooten, R. (2017). Learning all the time and everywhere: Moving beyond the hype of the mobile learning quick fix. In Keengwe, J. S. (Eds.). Handbook of research on mobile technology, constructivism, and meaningful learning. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Submitted for Publication.

Windham, C. (2007). Why today’s students value authentic learning. Educause Learning ELI Paper 9. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3017.pdf

In EDLD 5305, Learning authentic learning, COVA, CSLE, CSLE+COVA

How to Succeed in the DLL

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 28, 2017

If someone needs directions, don’t give them a globe. It’ll merely waste their time. But if someone needs to understand the way things are, don’t give them a map. They don’t need directions; they need to see the big picture (Seth Godin, 2017 para. 1).

In order to do well in the DLL, you need to see the bigger picture of how this program works. More specifically you need to see the bigger picture of how we have created a significant learning environment in which we give you choice ownership and voice through authentic learning opportunities.

The following pages and videos have been designed to help you understand why and how we use CSLE+COVA in the DLL and what that will mean to your learning experience. We recommend that you use the following pages in sequence but as you will see in the DLL program we leave that choice up to you:

Change in Focus
You will find that these two videos (Part A – 7 min & Part B – 4 Min) will help you to recognize how a simple change in focus can help you and your organization stay focused on helping your learners to realize their full potential and grow into future leaders who will help improve our world.

COVA
The short page and video (2 min) provide the overview and context for COVA and will help to reinforce how important it is to have choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities.

CSLE+COVA Framework
The short page and video (2 min) provide the overview and context for CSLE+COVA.

Why CSLE+COVA
Since people don’t buy into what you do but buy why you do the CSLE+COVA Why, How and What page and the short 4 Keys to CSLE+COVA (5 min) provide the foundational starting point about how to use technology to enhance learning.

What to expect from the DLL
Constructivist hold that people learn by making meaningful connections between what they already know and what is new. Therefore, it is our hope that the What to Expect video (6 min) which compares and contrasts the CSLE+COVA to the traditional information transfer model will help you to understand how to deal with the differences you will experience in the DLL program

What you get from the DLL
Since the DLL program uses authentic learning opportunities that are core to the constructivist CSLE+COVA approach this page points to all the authentic, plans, strategies and related resources that you will create in the program.

DLL Program Map
The DLL Program Map page and related video (8 min) will give you a detailed explanation, and a visual representation of how the DLL program works and how each of the courses works together to help you build, implement and measure an innovation plan that will help you succeed as a digital leader.

CSLE
Once you have gone through the above pages and videos going back to the CSLE page will help to reinforce how important it is to look at creating significant learning environments.

Research
We encourage everyone to always look at the research and supporting ideas and theories behind what you read. The CSLE+COVA and the DLL program are based on well established constructivist theories and research so we encourage you to explore these foundational ideas further.

References
Godin, S. (2017, January 8). Maps and globes [Blog]. Retrieved from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/01/maps-and-globes.html

CSLE+COVA vs Traditional

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 23, 2017

The roots of the CSLE can be traced back to the ’90s in the work and research on Inquisitivism. While the fundamental ideas for the CSLE began to take shape in the early 2000s, the formal name Creating Significant Learning Environments (CSLE) was first used in a series of workshops in 2009 in the context of adding and expanding the notion of the learning environment in Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences. Fink’s approach and book focused on his experiences as a classroom teacher in the late 1990’s and then as the Director of a Center for Teaching and Learning. Adding significant experiences to the traditional classroom through Fink’s Taxonomy and 3 column table approach was an effective way to introduce backward design and constructivist learning principles to the classroom experience. While Fink did allow for some aspects of a broader perspective in his situational factors assessment of the classroom we found it was necessary to expand the situational factors to the more encompassing environmental factors because of the shift to online learning that began in the mid-1990s. With the explosive growth of the internet and the subsequent growth of online learning and then the addition of mobile and blended learning the importance of creating a significant learning environment that takes into account all the factors of the learning environment beyond the confines of the classroom is even more important today.

We believe that it is important to more than talk the constructivist talk and actually walk the constructivist walk. This notion of walking that talk has been a priority in the earliest learning environments and online courses that were created back in the mid-1990s. As a result, creating learning environments in which the learners are given choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities has been a consistent focus since that first online course was created in 1995. Since this first online course, elements of what we now refer to as the CSLE+COVA approach has found its way into all the face2face, online, mobile, and blended courses a well as workshops and related professional development activities that we have been involved in over the past two decades. The Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University is simply the most recent instance where we have moved beyond the constructivist rhetoric by a creating significant learning environment in which we give learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities.

To better understand the CSLE+COVA vs Traditional table comparisons in the video please take a few moments to review the full tables and explanations found at:

CSLE vs Traditional
COVA vs Traditional
CSLE+COVA Mindset vs Traditional

Links to all the components of the CSLE+COVA framework:

Change in Focus
Why CSLE+COVA
CSLE
COVA
CSLE+COVA vs Traditional
Digital Learning & Leading
Research

Revised Oct 23, 2017

What to Expect from the DLL

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 23, 2017

Before you examine what you get from the DLL program it is important to understand that the DLL is designed with and uses constructivist principles that make it different from traditional programs. We believe that it is important to more than talk the constructivist talk and actually walk the constructivist walk? The Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University is not only based on constructivist principles we model these principles. In the DLL program, we have moved beyond the rhetoric by a creating significant learning environment in which we give learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities.

To better understand the CSLE+COVA vs Traditional table comparisons in the video please take a few moments to review the full tables and explanations found at:

CSLE vs Traditional
COVA vs Traditional
CSLE+COVA Mindset vs Traditional

Why You Need to Rethink Your Role as an Educator

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 3, 2017 — 10 Comments

Over the past 25 years that I have been involved in education, I have seen so many claims that this or that technology will begin to replace teachers in “X” number of years. Years ago, my initial response to these types of articles was humor and occasional annoyance because I know from first-hand experience that there is much more to learning than just delivery of content. Unfortunately, authors of most of these types of articles are wrongly assuming that learning just involves the delivery of content and then the regurgitation of that content by the student. This commonly held and very naive understanding of how we learn goes back for centuries. If you look at the notion of the Nuremberg Funnel from the 17th century that is depicted in this image/stamp you will see that this idea of pouring information or content into the brains/heads of our students is a very old idea.

The 19th-century commercial artist Jean-Marc Côté created a series of picture cards as inserts that were intended to depict how life in France would look in a century’s time. The education card depicts the notion of pouring information directly into the student’s minds.

While some may see this as an early prediction of the audiobook the notion of pouring information into the learner’s minds is the focus of the image and is at the heart of the problem with these types of depictions/predictions. Before I focus on what I believe is the primary issue I need to acknowledge that there is a very long history of unrealistic claims of how technology would reform education. The following three contemporary authors have documented how schools have failed to effectively use technology to enhance learning. Larry Cuban’s Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920, addresses how the potential of film, radio, TV, and computers has been wasted in the classroom. Todd Oppenheimer’s The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology expands on Cuban’s work and further reveals that the creative power of computers has been squandered due to their use as standardized testing tools. Both these authors acknowledge the potential and power of technology but show how we have failed to leverage that power for learning.

In the timeline History of Teaching Machines Audrey Watters points to the list of teaching machines that have been invented, patented, and promoted as time-saving solutions to the problems of education. We see major figures like Thorndyke, Skinner, and even Neo from the movie Matrix promising a future of instant learning. In her discussion of the dystopian future portrayed in the Matrix Watters questions how we value the process of learning when we so often want to supplant it with something that is, fast, cheap and instant. She argues that this desire for instant learning will continue to resurface time and time again and in the more recent stages of her timeline she points to Kahn Academy and MOOCs as the most recent iterations of the teaching machine.

This brings me back to the heart of the matter. Are we using technology as a tool to help make meaningful connections and to address the challenges of tomorrow or are we just using technology to deliver content and confirm that the student can regurgitate that content? There was a time not so long ago when getting access to information was the greatest challenge. We only have to look back a few years to a time when the Internet didn’t exist and we had to go to the library or other repositories of information to get at the content. I am not that old but I can recall a time in the 1960s when a set of encyclopedias was one of the most important purchases a rural family could make; I grew up searching those books for all kinds of answers. In the last 15-20 years the explosive growth of the Internet and more recently the ease with which we can find information with Google, YouTube, or other search tools and then can share that information on blogs, social media, and in so many other ways has changed the way we need to view our challenges regarding information. The greatest challenge of the industrial age was accessing information and now that we have moved into the digital information age our greatest challenge or problem is assessing information. This means we need to reassess our primary role or job as teachers.

If I imagine my primary job as a teacher is to serve information, am I helping solve the current informational problem or do I make it worse?

And given the vast complexity of the informational network, if I insist on my centrality and authority, does that establish or harm my credibility as a teacher?

If assessing information – and the wisdom & experience that this requires – is the central challenge of the current informational age, then are teachers more or less necessary?

Depending on how you answer this question should determine if your role as a teacher can easily be replaced by a computer or an inspirational robot. If you believe that your primary job is to deliver information to your students then these predictions will come true sooner than you expect. Technology is at the point where the delivery of information and the assessment of the reception of that information through some form of standardized test is already happening and can easily be automated. If you are a teacher that practices content delivery as the primary way to prepare your students for standardized tests then you can easily be replaced by a computer, robot, or other technology.

If you are a teacher who believes it is your responsibility to inspire your learners and to help them assess information and make meaningful connections by creating significant learning environments (CSLE) in which you give your learner choice ownership and voice through authentic (COVA) learning opportunities it will be impossible to replace you with technology. Furthermore, if you hold to the CSLE+COVA approach then you are not afraid of technology and can put technology in its proper place by using it to enhance the learning environment.

Before you breathe that sigh of relief that your teaching job is secure because you believe in the student-centered rhetoric of Dewey and other constructivists you may want to have a look at your practice. Are you talking the talk of Dewey but walking the walk of Thorndyke? Along with the long history of misapplying technology in education, we also have a long history of using the constructivist or progressive rhetoric of Dewey but practicing the behaviorist methods of Thorndyke’s standardized testing (Labaree, 2006).

If you really don’t want to be replaced by an inspirational robot then you need to not only talk the talk of Dewey but walk the walk. Does your practice match your rhetoric? If it doesn’t what are you doing about it?

References

Bodkin, H. (2017, September 11). “Inspirational” robots to begin replacing teachers within 10 years. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/09/11/inspirational-robots-begin-replacing-teachers-within-10-years/

Hill, D. J. (2012, October 15). 19th-century French artists predicted the world of The future in this series of postcards. Retrieved October 3, 2017, from https://singularityhub.com/2012/10/15/19th-century-french-artists-predicted-the-world-of-the-future-in-this-series-of-postcards/

Labaree, D. F. (2005). Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance. Paedagogica Historica, 41(1–2), 275–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/0030923042000335583

Nuremberg Funnel. (2017, January 6). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nuremberg_Funnel&oldid=758530021

Watters, A. (2016, March 2) The allure of ‘Matrix-Style Learning.’ Retrieved from http://hackeducation.com/2016/03/02/matrix

Watters, A. (2016) History of teaching Machines. Retrieved from http://teachingmachin.es/timeline.html

In EDLD 5305, EDLD 5313, Learning