It ain’t easy being independent
Destiny’s Child
Independent learner
I’m as independent a learner and thinker as a human can get. Humans can be easy to manipulate and often seek confirmation bias, but that’s another story. However, I’m not sure I’m great at creating independent learners, yet.
We do what is done to us
When I started 5305, I excitedly blogged about my first idea for my Innovation Plan. In short, my plan focused on supporting what I saw as an area of nonconsumption – teaching and supporting administrative assistants with technology use. Then I met with Dr. H and my bubble burst. In my post Winds of Change, I explain how our meeting didn’t go as planned. He suggested a much broader idea for my Innovation Plan that involves going paperless as an office and district to model best practices for blended learning from the top down. After sitting with my cognitive dissonance, I not only accepted but embraced this plan to make meaningful change.
In this meeting, I talked to Dr. H about helping an admin assistant. The admin assistant had asked for support in creating a Google site for her boss. Instead of supporting her, I created and designed the site for her and just showed her how to edit what I had designed. When I proudly detailed that experience to Dr. H, he asked me why I did the learning for her. Deflated, I said, “I’m not sure.” Dr. H kindly replied, “We usually do what was done to us” (Harapnuik, 2021).
Rube Goldberg Machines
My mind immediately went back to middle school. You see, in the eighth grade, we were challenged with designing a Rube Goldberg machine. The moment I got the assignment, I drew a picture of my Self-Diffusing Night Light. When you light the candle it burned a string, and eventually, a cup would fall on the candle to snuff it out. Next, I excitedly showed my wonderful, mechanical father. When I arrived home from school the next day, my dad showed me the machine he built based on my design. He did most of it without me! I was happy to be done but disappointed that I didn’t get to build my design.
During my conversation with Dr. H, I realized that I had done the exact same thing to this admin assistant! I deprived her of the opportunity to learn and I kept her dependent on me for her learning.
The conversation with Dr. H has really affected me and I vowed to become better at creating independent learners, much like I want to be an independent learner.
Start with Why
As I think about moving forward and creating independent learners I consider the purpose of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal. To me, creating and sharing a BHAG is all about the Why and reaching the affective domain.
Like I said in my post What a Strange Machine Man Is! (2021), “You need to connect to someone’s affective domains first: Their values, motivations, attitudes, stereotypes, and feelings. It’s like the saying “Maslow before Bloom’s” – you need to meet people’s physical and emotional needs before you can reach their cognition.” Also, the BHAG sets the context for the course. By setting an overarching goal, you answer the question, “Are you preparing them for a test or are you preparing them for life?” correctly (Harapnuik, 2021).
Once you have your BHAG, you can align planning, delivery, and assessment. In this case, the intended curriculum goals represent what you plan to teach and the activities show how you plan to teach it, and the assessment shows what students achieved (Harapnuik, 2021). Finally, all of this should be viewed through the lens of specific situational and environmental factors.
Aligning outcomes, activities, and assessments
The beauty of the graphic is that it demonstrates how interdependent the outcomes, activities, and assessments are on one another (Fink, 2003). The model also helps us to see when we have integration and when we don’t (Fink, 2003). If we engage in the practice of creating solid alignment, there is a high likelihood that students will have a significant learning environment (Fink, 2003). As I consider how I’m aligning my outcomes, activities, and assessments, I recognize that I must avoid the four most common pitfalls mentioned in Aligning Outcomes, Activities, and Assessments (Harapnuik, 2021):
- Systemic problems: Teachers are responsible for information transfer; our system is based on standardized testing.
- Personal: “We do what was done to us.”
- Looking for a quick fix to a complex problem.
- Partial Perspective: We only assume the cognitive domain and not the affective domain (values/attitudes) or psychomotor domain (physical)
By applying this cohesive planning process, I hope to create a significant learning environment. In doing so, I will cultivate independent learners and thinkers.
References
Fink, L. D. (2003). A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning. Jossey-Bass.
Harapnuik, D. (2021, February 24). Aligning Outcomes, Activities & Assessments: Learners Mindset Fundamentals. You Tube – Learners Mindset. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmbuD00Vfg
Stateler, K. (2021, December 4). What a Strange Machine Man Is! Cookies N Cache. https://karinstateler.com/?p=272