My proposal for enriching the classroom learning experience with modern pedagogy and technologies. This is sort of an extension of the theme that Seth Godin has covered in his posts Education at the crossroads and Textbook rant.
Click to download the PDF
Here is a copy of the text:
What is the shape of things to come? Delivering a 21st Century Learning Experience
Hello. I’m glad we’re here.
A recent report by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future noted that within the next decade, more than half of the nation’s teachers—currently of the Baby Boomer generation—will be eligible for retirement.
Consider that there are more than 1,000 educational podcasts, nearly 200 U.S. universities providing recorded lectures on iTunes U (and several more K – 12 and international institutions), 1,800 courses available on MIT OpenCourseWare, and over 10,000 learning resources on wikiversity.com. All freely available and growing.
Conversely, tuition and fees to attend an in-state or private university continue to outpace the (CPI) rate of inflation.
To summarize: the amount of freely available educational materials is considerable; cost of traditional education is increasing beyond what is controlled for by inflation; and the next ten years offer an incredible leadership opportunity as a majority of current faculty members are succeeded by those inherently comfortable with teaching in the information age.
The traditional pedagogical model remains strongly rooted in activities and structures that add value when information is scarce and disseminating knowledge is inefficient.
My question is: Is there a better time for leadership than now? To provide that leadership, a model as compelling and easy-to-follow as the existing one is essential. This proposal focuses on three areas in need of innovation necessary to developing one.
Design and delivery of instructional materials: covered in the objective, Optimize instructional delivery for students’ visual literacy.
Course Structure and delivery: covered in the objective, Identify methods for customizing the learning experience.
Role and responsibility of course instructor: covered in the objective, Increase student-teacher and student-student collaboration.
With this proposal, I hope to outline a clear plan for an important first step, filled with experiments guided by the need to assess what is the shape of things to come.
Project Outline
What will happen?
During the Spring 2009 semester I designed and delivered a course about new media and social technologies (ADV 400-Q) to a live group of 17 undergraduate advertising majors at UIUC and also as an online class through Syracuse University to 28 information technology undergraduates. I was inspired to advance the way learning is facilitated after the priceless experience of simultaneously delivering an identical curriculum in such different environments. In preparing this proposal, I consulted with students and two professors: Michael Wesch, the Carnegie Foundation’s 2008 Professor of the Year; and, William (Bill) Hammack, noted UIUC Engineering professor who has written frequently about the imperatives cited in this proposal.
This proposal looks beyond technology for its own sake; instead, it focuses on contemporary teaching practices and modern communication techniques. The resulting innovation is a simple model that can be adapted in whole, or in part, by educators of today and tomorrow. Proposal objectives will be pursued while delivering the same course (ADV 400-Q) under this model to enhance the learning experience for students.
Objective 1: Optimize instructional delivery for students’ visual literacy
Enhancing existing course documentation and instructional material with professional quality video will more efficiently relate concepts and communicate expectations to students. The goal is not to replace all written documentation and live lectures with videos, but to exploit the respective strengths of written and visual media. A template for enhanced syllabi, assignments, and micro-lectures will illustrate how to incorporate short YouTube-like clips into common materials.
Rationale and Strategic Alignment
Increasingly, teachers are incorporating online video into presentations and instructional materials. While the use of YouTube videos brings compelling content into the classroom, there are unrealized opportunities to enhance the course with short video clips. Students’ heightened visual literacy is a critical, yet un-emphasized factor in instructional design.
This objective serves the academic excellence strategic goal, specifically the initiative to position the academy to meet 21st century opportunities. Two of the three YouTube founders being UIUC alumni, it is fitting that we develop a new model to exploit the power of online video.
Objective 2: Identify methods for customizing the learning experience
By using “mass customization” to extend the traditional model of course delivery, the academic excellence strategic goal from Objective 1 is reinforced. To encourage educators to incorporate customization, a set of examples and guides for implementation will be necessary. The goal: to make facilitating a course that allows students to adjust various factors—such as the technical difficulty level of assignments and grading weight—as simple as the one-size-fits-all approach.
Rationale and Example
Incredible economic activity is taking place in the area of mass customization. Using a personal example, I once signed up for a credit card simply because I could upload one of my own photos for the front. Similar to that kind of customization is the personalization offered by powerful “recommendation engines” like Amazon.com and Netflix, which are thriving by meeting individual tastes. Customization in the classroom is nothing new, but a successful model has not been developed in a way where widespread adoption took place, likely because of stringent academic standards to maintain. However, the information age is a time to test an instructional model offering some customization. I believe it will lead to higher performance to standards such as grades, instructional reviews, and external recognition of student work.
For example, this model could include basic and advanced assignment levels with different incentive structures assigned to each, or a system allowing students to adjust the grading weight of certain assignments and assessments. There are many practices in place today by innovative teachers, so the objective of this proposal is to integrate them into a contemporary model with guidelines for implementation.
Objective 3: Increase student-teacher and student-student collaboration
This objective responds to one student’s frustration: “I collaborated with my teachers and classmates more when I was in high school.” Formally increasing the instance of student-teacher and student-student collaboration will require emphasis of the teacher’s role as “project manager,” along with a clear model for leading a class as such. Similar to the other objectives, this would take place by integrating existing and new practices—popular with engineering educators—into a cohesive model with guidelines and clear instruction on effective practices for collaboration.
Rationale and Strategic Alignment
As higher education adjusts to the age of information abundance and fluid knowledge creation, the added value with respect to the classroom experience is through collaboration and counsel over one of information transfer. Controlling for various teaching styles and class formats, the results of this objective can be followed in small or large class settings because all students are organized into teams. To complement this class structure, grading will be redistributed more equally among the work effort/process and the resulting product. As this objective equally applies to online education, it meets the strategic goal of increasing access to the Illinois experience, by increasing and excelling in distance learning.
Then what?
The guiding vision of this proposal is to provide a model that is so compelling and practical, it will fuel a grass roots movement among faculty to recast their courses in a similar fashion. They will look for the indivisible units of their instructional materials and develop their own library of micro-lectures; they will improve communication of expectations through embedded video; they will look for ways to collaborate more closely with students by emphasizing their role as manager and architect of the learning experience, rather than “reader of slides.”
For this project, specific platforms are being used to facilitate timely technical execution; however, the fundamentals of the model will be technology agnostic and can grow as the enterprise advances.
Should the results of this proposal prove successful, there are opportunities with the Department of Education to apply for general education research grants. Seeking a new educational model to provide post-secondary (and possibly secondary education) leadership would adhere to the following excerpt from the grant’s online description:
The central purpose of the Institute’s research grant programs is to provide parents, educators, students, researchers, policymakers, and the general public with reliable and valid information about education practices that support learning and improve academic achievement and access to education opportunities for all students.
Additional opportunities with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching are also a viable path given the aim of this proposal. From their Undergraduate Education webpage:
Through the Foundation’s work in undergraduate education, we investigate the conditions under which teaching occurs, what it looks like and how to expand upon it in order to improve and advance classroom teaching and student learning at colleges and universities.
This proposal’s focus on innovating the core classroom learning experience is a perfect fit to offer award committees a solution to the larger problems they are tackling.
I believe that with successful execution of this project, we can provide both leadership and fresh ideas that extramural funding agencies find to be compelling, and the shape of things to come.
[Budget and Schedule sections omitted, but can be found in the full PDF]
