Learning beyond the Course

This piece was previously published at Educating Modern Learners in September 2014.

A lot of the most valuable learning that occurs for students is not easily visible or measurable. But this should not mean that we as teachers shouldn’t aim to develop that learning in our students. It also does not mean we cannot evaluate that learning; but it requires a shift in our perception of what and how to evaluate in that invisible learning.

I had two experiences last year that solidified my belief in the importance of emphasizing the process of learning over the product of learning. The first experience was my educational game design module. I teach the third and final module of an undergraduate core curriculum course on creativity and creative problem solving. I could have approached the entire module with a lot of scaffolding, teaching my students the details of how to design a game, how to make it educational, etc. They probably would have produced wonderful games that are really well-designed if they had followed the instructions and rubrics I gave them in advance. Instead, I chose to give them minimal scaffolding.

I played games with them (including a game about games), asked them to reflect on the educational value of their favorite games, and gave them some broad guidelines on how to make an experience educational. Then I let them work in their groups on designing a game that would educate others about a cause they personally cared about. As they worked, I provided feedback when they asked for it. Each group needed help on different aspects of the design. I did not want students to feel competitive about each other’s games, so I asked each two groups to exchange feedback with one another on how to improve their games. I showed students the video of the landfillharmonic, and asked them to imagine ways of using recycled material to create their games, rather than using fancy, expensive materials.

The end results were fascinating. But what mattered to me most were not the actual games the students created — because of course they could have been better — but my students’ reflections on their blogs at the end of the game design module. Some of them talked about how they now recognize their own potential, that they can create something from scratch, using simple resources, that they now believe in themselves, that they have gained confidence in their ability to do anything they put their mind to.

If I had concentrated on making sure they created good quality educational games, I might have seen a better product (better games), but because I emphasized the process of their learning, they gained lifelong learning attitudes that they can transfer beyond the skills of creating an educational game, and into a general approach towards life and learning.

The other experience I had last year was in my teacher education class. It’s the final course in a 6-course Educational Technology for Teachers diploma, and the four (in-service) student-teachers in it were each supposed to develop a project to implement in their schools to apply what they’d learned throughout the diploma. However, upon reflection, they realized they wouldn’t logistically be able to implement something individually at their schools; and so they decided to collaborate on creating a website for teachers all over Egypt, passing on the most important things they had learned throughout the diploma.

Again, I provided minimal scaffolding. I helped them divide the project up into phases, but gave them space to decide on platform, content and ways of working together. I allowed them to make mistakes (particularly with the platform; I asked them to evaluate and compare then make their choice). They got frustrated at times, and their end product was not the most beautiful website ever. But they learned several things which they shared with me on the last day of class: first, they learned that they could, in fact, create a website with very little help; and they learned that it was okay to make mistakes — and when there is time (unlike our courses that are time-bound) they can correct those mistakes, and experiment with new things.

The clearest result of the lasting value of this learning became evident to me a few months later, when one of those students emailed to tell me that she had been working on a project for work, and suddenly had an epiphany that she could make the project more useful to more people and avoid a lot of bureaucracy by converting it into a website for the public to benefit from. The key thing for me here is not that she thought of creating a website per se; it is that she gained enough confidence from my course to transfer the learning she did and take it to a different context, without any support from my side.

In a Twitter conversation with Pete Rorabaugh a few months after my semester was over, I was inspired by this conclusion: the more we scaffold our students, the more likely the end product of their learning will be good and beautiful and meet some standard we have in our minds. But the less we scaffold, the more autonomy we give them, the deeper the potential learning for them. When you scaffold more, provide detailed rubrics, you help students meet your requirements for the course. When you scaffold less, and focus on the students’ learning process, you help your students learn something that will be useful to them beyond your course. And that is infinitely more valuable. Recently, Adam Heidebrink-Bruno wrote “the process is important; the process is where true learning occurs.”

The pedagogical process that encourages more student autonomy may not create the best product now, but students will have learned how to keep improving on their own work for the future, without your help. And if anything, that’s the most noble goal of a teacher: to make oneself dispensable to students!

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