Category Archives: Assignment Ideas

The Journey to Expert Performance: Authentic eLearning Assignments

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How can we best support learners in their ability to apply knowledge and skills to complex situations? Moving away from abstract, decontextualized learning that leads to inert knowledge is difficult to transfer to problem-solving situations. A key element that can move learners to a higher level of expertise is a cognitively authentic task. Collaboratively working on complex, authentic tasks can be a key to students’ successful transfer of knowledge and skills to real world contexts.

Cognitive Apprenticeship

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Collins, Brown and Newman (1989) suggested an extension of the traditional apprenticeship model of learning through what they termed the “Cognitive Apprenticeship”. They claimed that traditional apprenticeships have three elements cognitively important for a model of learning:

  1. Leaners have access to models of expertise-in-use against which to refine their understanding of complex skills.
  2. Apprentices often have several masters and have access to a variety of models of expertise leading to an understanding that there may be different ways to carry out a task, and that no one individual embodies all knowledge and expertise.
  3. Learners have the opportunity to observe other learners with varying degrees of skill (p.456)

Authentic e-Learning

authentic task visual

More recently, Herrington, Reeves, and Oliver (2010) have developed a framework based on the idea of cognitive apprenticeship. The elements of the framework can be used as a set of criteria for designing learning experiences:

  1. Provide authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life
  2. Provide authentic tasks
  3. Provide access to expert performances and the modeling of processes
  4. Provide multiple roles and perspectives
  5. Support collaborative construction of knowledge
  6. Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed
  7. Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit
  8. Provide coaching and scaffolding by the teacher at critical times
  9. Provide for authentic assessment of learning within the tasks

Authentic learning is very well suited to online learning, but while students may be familiar with technologies of participatory culture, they need guidance in working on collaborative online teams and coaching at critical times during problem-solving.

If you are interested in creating an authentic online or blended task for your online, hybrid or face-to-face teaching, please feel free to contact elis@lesley.edu. Our design staff has expertise in the creation of collaborative online learning and have presented at national conferences on the topic.

Ignite: An Innovative Approach to Presentations

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ignitelogoThis summer, I was lucky enough to attend ASCD’s Leader to Leader (L2L) event on behalf of the Massachusetts affiliate of ASCD.  The purpose of the conference is to bring together affiliate leaders and members, building capacity and fostering collaboration.  During this event, ASCD staff and affiliate leaders shared Ignite sessions, which are, by definition, five-minute presentations that are comprised of 20 slides, each displayed for exactly 15 seconds. The slides move forward automatically, despite the presenter’s readiness, which creates a very quick, engaging, and dynamic atmosphere.  The slides often display visuals, as opposed to traditional text-based presentations.  The Ignite structure forces presenters to be succinct and clear, in addition to necessitating movement, energy, and preparedness. If you are interested in learning more, check out the history of Ignite events via Wikipedia or some additional information about what Ignite talks entail.

I also wanted to share with you the Ignite session presented by Massachusetts ASCD affiliate leader and alum of Lesley University’s Educational Technology Master’s program, Suzy Brooks. Suzy is a third grade teacher, in addition to serving as an EdTechTeacher consulting instructor.  Suzy created and shared an inspiring blog post about the experience of creating and sharing an Ignite session, describing each stage of the difficult and quite rewarding process.  Ignite talks can be an exciting vehicle to kick-off and set the tone for a class, meeting, or conference.

Engaging Learners in the Real World: Field Observations

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McDonalds

Students often spend much of their time in classes talking about the content of their courses rather than applying that content. Moving students more quickly towards applying content in authentic ways can enhance and strengthen students’ understanding of concepts and ideas – something that can be difficult through abstract discourse.

If you would like your students to learn through application, field observations can be a very effective way to bring the real world into the classroom.  In his fully online course Introduction to Sociology, Netra Darai uses several “Participant Observations” in which students go out into their local communities to study a particular topic, and report and discuss their experiences with their classmates via a blog.  In a unit on social class, his students speak to staff members of organizations supporting the homeless. In a unit on gender and age, they interview an elderly person they know.

In her hybrid course, Cross Cultural Psychology, which meets face-to-face once per week, Katie Howe uses similar field observations. For example, in a unit on McDonaldization, her students visit popular chain stores, restaurants or local sporting events to examine how such establishments follow principles of McDonaldization (efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control).  Students then present a brief report on their observations in class.

If you would like assistance with crafting such assignments for your course, feel free to contact the instructional designers on the eLearning team or contact us at elis@lesley.edu.

Note: The image above is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

STEM + Art = STEAM

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steam

What is STEAM?
Over the last several years there has been a renewed push towards STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education with the goal of increasing student performance in these areas. In 2009, the Obama Administration launched the Educate to Innovate initiative “to move American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade” and ensure a strong workforce with 21st century skills. As these initiatives grow, several advocates have started to believe that there’s a key piece missing: art and design.

Why STEAM?
The integration of art and design with science and technology promotes new ways of thinking. Right-brain thinking developed through the arts leads to innovation and creative problem solving. Arts education allows you to see the world differently and according to Stephen Lane, CEO and Co-Founder, Ximedica, design-based thinking enables STEM to succeed. John Maeda, President of RISD, has launched http://stemtosteam.org/ because “Design creates the innovative products and solutions that will propel our economy forward, and artists ask the deep questions about humanity that reveal which way forward actually is.” Artists observe and question the world around them and so do scientists.

Women are especially underrepresented in fast-growing, high-wage STEM fields. They make up only 25 percent of the workforce and study STEM subjects in college at a lower rate than men. The White House wants to increase the number of women and minority women in STEM fields. The integration of art is a way to make STEM subjects more engaging to a wider audience that may have traditionally avoided these areas such as girls and students who don’t learn linearly. Jennifer Burg uses music-making to teach computer science to her Wake Forest University students. Music is the vehicle, but programming and understanding technology is the goal.

How is It Being Done?
The key is integration rather than art, science, and math taught separately. Check out a few of the examples below for inspiration.

[Logo image via StageNotes.net]