Follow up to previous post - To Blog or Not To Blog?
With regards to the article that I posted a few weeks ago and asked my classmates and instructor to discuss, “To blog or not to blog” by Halic et al. (2010), the majority of your responses suggest that the real Hamletic question according to our class is “To blog,” and the answer is yes. However, blogging should not be assigned or completed as just willy-nilly blogging – instructors must work to facilitate intriguing, dialogue-inspiring interaction on the discussion boards and students must work to cultivate a sense of community commiserate with their own needs and the needs of their classmates. In this way, instructors can effectively increase the perceived learning of students in both their online and face-to-face classes. As we’ve experienced, this could be applied to our future teaching. With regards to future research in this area, we definitely could do more to inspect confounding variables in measuring just what is “sense of community” and how other controlling effects (like perception of group dynamic) could play into voluntary response structures like the Halic et al. (2010) method.
Below, I summarize the feelings and responses of my discussers. Thank you for your input! I hope you find this interesting.
a.) What do you think about blogging as a requirement for class discussions?
Overall, the class was pretty united in thinking that requiring blogs could enrich the experience in a class if structured appropriately and with sufficient guidance from the instructor in what sort of interactions should take place. Words like “lackluster” and “overloaded” were common to responses that characterized ineffective use of online discussions. From the instructor standpoint, we all want this to be an effective way to generate peer-to-peer and instructor-student interaction, but are aware that it takes a bit of “spumante” in order to make that happen. In this way, we should focus our future use of blogs and online discussions on fulfilling very carefully delineated outcomes and expectations.
b.) How might these results have been skewed by response rate? Course structure? Other variables you can think of?
There are some significant shortcomings in the methodological treatment of these data in Halic et al. (2010). The voluntary nature of the survey responses clearly introduced some sort of self-selection bias, as noted by nearly everyone in the class. Also, there was no evidence of attempting to control for other confounding factors, such as perceived involvement of other peer group members or overall generality of the discussion prompts. In my opinion, these confounding variables could have pushed their results toward higher perceived learning, especially if the respondents were only intrinsically motivated, high achieving individuals.
c.) Do you feel like you benefit from peer comments as a student?
Unanimously, our class seems to perceive learning benefits from thoughtful peer comments (this echos need for the prompts to be well-structured by the instructor) in online discussion spaces. We generally like the ability to learn more about how other students in our courses think on a given subject and how that may reflect back onto our own thinking, encouraging metacognitive moments and presenting us with new ways of interpreting situations and information. Additionally, we like it when our peers provide thoughtful or “juicy” feedback and don’t like it when they’re “canned.” Is there any way we can preload the course material to encourage “juicy” feedback? How does this relate to the ability to think critically? Food for thought!
d.) Do you feel like you benefit from seeing peer comments as an instructor (or would you?) facilitating discussions?
Responses to this question were all over the map, with no clear pedagogical theme. Some of us see the utility outright in the sense of assessment and highlighting areas to focus our lecture or in-class activities towards, and some don’t see the benefit of including this aspect of online discussion. We for the most part agree it is a reliable way to see our students’ thought processes, and sometimes inspiring in-classroom shy students to blossom in the online discussions. In this way, perhaps it is most useful - giving the underrepresented or quiet individuals a space to effectively craft a response that they might not feel comfortable delivering in the moment in a face-to-face classroom.
e.) In your experience, what was a positive online discussion that you felt truly increased your perceived learning and sense of community?
As in the above question, we like to see how our peers (or students) think. In this way, we find online discussion spaces increase our perceived learning. Additionally, the asynchronous nature of online discussions allows us some extra latitude in developing our argument or responses in text form, further increasing the quality of feedback both from ourselves and from others. We all have had positive experiences with online discussions, especially if they were administered in an engaging way. We admire our faculty for the time spent providing feedback (clap your hands for Jessica and Matt!). However, what is sense of community, and how does it differ between the online and face-to-face classrooms? Additionally, it seems that the most important finding from this research is that quality of peer feedback is important – how do we foster this thoughtful feedback in face-to-face and online discussions?
f.) How important is sense of community to your own learning in person and online?
Sense of community strongly influences our perceived learning increases as individuals. Maybe that’s why we all like the GCCUT program so much? Cultivating a strong group learning dynamic centered on a certain skill or idea (like a learning community) was spoken of very highly. Learning things together increases the comfortability with struggle and the notion that we’re all beginners in a subject. We also agree that the online sense of community has positively impacted our views of learning within a course.
The Teaching and Learning In-Box: Meta-blogging about research about blogging for OSU GRAD502
Halic, O., et al., (2010). To blog or not to blog: Student perceptions of blog effectiveness for learning in a college-level course. Internet and Higher Education, 13, 206-213. Article link here!
Coming out of my personal experiences with Matt Nyman’s winter term Course Design (GRAD561) class and the more recent spring term course on effective virtual/distance education facilitation with Jonan Donaldson (GRAD550), the idea of requiring student-student interaction on Web 2.0 platforms, especially online weblogs and discussion boards, as part of a face-to-face or distance/virtual course’s deliverables is pretty fresh on my mind. For (Jessica) context, GRAD561 began by requiring a “teaching blog” (such as this one) where each student/author would write a few posts about an interesting and hot Higher Ed topic while looking through an Understanding by Design program lens (the backwards course design concept that we all, I think, vehemently agree with), and interact a specific number of times with other students’ blogs in a discussion-type back-and-forth. Then, in Jonan’s online course, we read some material about the use of peer discussion spaces (not limited to blogs) in online education courses as a way to facilitate course participation and engagement from all students. For my part, and in echo of some of the down-low student feedback from these assignments, I saw pretty shallow interactions in both GRAD561 and GRAD550, and felt that most of the time, getting into a good discussion was difficult if not impossible due to asynchronies imbedded in the platform. In opposition to this, I felt that GRAD560’s “Think Forums” were indeed collaborative and I overall felt that my understanding of the individuals within my class (sense of community) and course material was indeed broadened through the discussions that took place. The trends in higher education across both of these types of formal classrooms are pretty apparent – everyone is using some sort of online discussion space to facilitate deeper student collaboration, interaction, and overall learning outside of the traditional class meetings. To what extent is this goal achieved in face-to-face undergraduate education, however? The article I’ve selected (Halic et al., 2010; attached below) sought to establish some of the first empirical evidence of enriched student learning and community dynamic (“perceived learning” and “sense of community”) via required student-student interaction in online discussion spaces, namely student comments/discussion between blogs, in a large, lecture-based, undergraduate on-campus course.
To begin discussion of this subject, I will:
1.) Provide some background from the attached paper regarding the state of blog use in higher education
2.) Highlight the methodology and results presented in the paper
3.) Elicit your feedback in our own discussion space, on this blog. So Meta!
1. The state of blog use in higher education (as of 2010):
The use of blogs has the potential to illuminate student learning in a way that traditional class-based discussion cannot. In Holic et al. (2010), they present an argument from a previous work (cited within the text) that outlined the three following positives to online discussions, such as blogging:
1. Instructors can visibly see and read student frustration with the course content and thus are able to design activities to remedy this confusion immediately or for future versions of the course
2. Students reveal what they feel to be expert knowledge on any given subject, potentially serving as a formative assessment of cognitive skill
3. The suite of blogs and discussions serve as an archive for identifying long-term confusions and questions that may not have been answered during the face-to-face meeting, and thus serves as a constant source of feedback on teaching efficacy.
The effectiveness of blogging in increasing student perceived learning (or, the student’s opinion that they have indeed learned something, since their final grade isn’t necessarily in parity with their learning) is not necessarily debated, as it has been shown to do just that in numerous contexts (see citations in text). However, whether student-student interaction in the form of comments and feedback actually improves student perceived learning, has had mixed results. So, while the evidence may support their use in a singular sense, how do we know that a large lecture format could be effectively transformed into a social learning environment online?
2. Summary of the Methodology of Holic et al. (2010)
Twice-weekly instructor-led full undergraduate nutrition class meetings (n=163 students) were followed by once-per-week graduate TA-led discussion sections comprised of a subset of the students from the full class (7 ≤ n ≤ 14). These smaller discussion section groups then formed an online blogging community that would discuss course-relevant nutrition studies weekly. Students were required to author one post and at least one comment per week for the duration of the course. Graduate TAs were the blog facilitators that read posts, answered questions, and provided some feedback. In order to measure student increases in perceived learning and sense of community, the authors developed a 15-question survey instrument (about 7 questions per topic) and asked for volunteers from their class to participate prior to the end of the course. ~43% of the students responded to the survey (n=70). Using principal component analysis and a slough of other statistical tests (ANOVA, t-test, multiple linear regression), the authors sought to determine which factors seemed to determine a student’s perceived increase in learning and the interaction between sense of community and perceived learning.
The main findings of the research were:
1. 55% of the participants reported that blogs enhanced their overall learning.
2. 66% of students expressed positive attitudes regarding the potential of blogging to enhance their learning.
3. 76% of the respondents claimed that blog discussions stimulated thinking about course-related concepts outside of class.
4. The jury is still out about how feedback on blog posts was involved with perceived learning (26-36% for each “helpful” “somewhat helpful” and “not helpful” response).
5. The above results were not dependent on student age, race, or other reported demographics.
6. Strong self-reported sense of community and online expertise with blogs significantly predicted increased perceived student learning.
3. Feedback on the study and your own preferences
Responding to the article and issues raised in this initial post, please reply by responding to each of the questions below:
a.) What do you think about blogging as a requirement for class discussions?
b.) How might these results have been skewed by response rate? Course structure? Other variables you can think of?
c.) Do you feel like you benefit from peer comments as a student?
d.) Do you feel like you benefit from seeing peer comments as an instructor (or would you?) facilitating discussions?
e.) In your experience, what was a positive online discussion that you felt truly increased your perceived learning and sense of community?
f.) How important is sense of community to your own learning in person and online?
See comments from classmates/instructor below.
REPLY FROM JESSICA:
I liked the article you selected. Very meta.
In response to some of your questions, I like (obviously) the requirement for blogging associated with other class activities. As the only form of student interaction though, I think it has the potential to fall flat. And, like the authors mention in the article, I think it is important, like with any assignment, to provide appropriate support and expectations for students. Without that, it can feel like drudgery to students and the instructor.
In terms of design and response rate, I did not see that the authors accounted for the frequency and quality of students’ contributions to the in-class blog assignment. I see a question about previous blog experience (#13) and if the student visited the nutrition blog more than required (#8), but I am just wondering if there were students who had a clear aversion to blogs and never even did the assignment, or did so minimally. How would those responses have affected the results?
As an instructor, I think students’ blog or discussion board comments have been very helpful. I use the conversations as starting points for in-class discussion, but also as a type of formative assessment.
The community aspect remains an interesting one to me. It seems likely that people more often engage honestly and thoughtfully when then have established a sense of community. So how do instructors foster community during face-to-face sessions? And, what if the course is entirely online? Does community mean students need to “know” one another? I ask because people engage in all sorts of meaningful conversations online possibly without really knowing one another. What is at the heart of this phenomenon called “community?”
Ultimately, I left thinking more about the perceived quality of peer interactions. This is not necessarily new. We see similar things happen in class when students are asked to work in groups, conduct peer review of one another’s work, etc. So I think we must examine the issue of peer interaction and how to foster real debate and encourage constructive feedback. Perhaps connections here with Rebecca’s article on critical thinking?
REPLY FROM BECCA (7/6):
This is an interesting topic for me to think about in that I can readily cite the value of online discussions, yet I have a hard time engaging in them. I’m definitely more of an ‘in-person’ person. I love face-to-face discussions. I’m energized by them. In an online format, everything feels more packaged – my responses most of all! That can be a benefit in allowing students time to digest questions and plan answers. Answers might be better researched and thought through. So I’m very in favor of online discussions even though I admit when I see an extended series of discussion posts, my eyes glaze over. I think I read so much for my studies that I get overloaded by yet another source of reading.
Re: the study, the results might be skewed by self-selection bias. The students who responded might be different, in significant ways, from the students who did not respond to the survey. Also since some of the blog groups were as small as seven students, the experiences of those students could be highly impacted by the characteristics of those students. If you happened to be in a small group of unmotivated peers, your experience would likely rate very low. I also think it would be interesting to see what the discussion questions were. Peer comments were found to be less valuable, but that could have been due to a generic prompt.
In terms of benefiting from peer comments as a student, I don’t think I can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ categorically. Their potential value derives from factors that may or may not be at play. If peer comments are token, then no; if they’re thoughtful and bring in substantive points, then absolutely. I remember in Matt Nyman’s class, I had raised a dilemma I have in the classroom and two students offered great ideas of how to work around it. Unfortunately I can’t remember them, but it had been such a useful forum to brainstorm ideas with other students. It doesn’t always happen but I think that can equally be said about F2F discussions. It’s a matter of the material, questions, student interest, trust, etc.
As an instructor, I think the benefit is far clearer. I started using online discussions last term and I was amazed at what I learned. Many deeply thoughtful responses were written by students who never said a peep in class. Not only did I enjoy hearing their input but the other students got to benefit as well. Of course, not all entries are like that, but I don’t think that’s the benchmark of utility. Online discussions allow a space and opportunity for fruitful engagement, not a guarantee. Again, that is very similar to F2F discussions; I’ve had plenty of those fall flat as well ;)
I can’t point to one particular discussion but broadly, my experience with online discussions has definitely increased my learning in that it’s a rare opportunity to hear what other students are thinking. Most class contributions consist of a few sentences here and there, whereas online discussions allow students to develop an idea. It also allows students to ‘get to know’ each other’s perspectives, which definitely supports community. I’ve felt like online discussions have helped personalize my peers, significantly reducing the anonymity that can sometimes characterize classrooms.
A sense of community is so important to me! I can trudge along and do my independent thing (in fact in some ways that’s what comes most naturally to me), but I much prefer when there’s a strong group dynamic in learning. That said, I can’t say that I’ve ever felt a sense of community in an online class. I’ve taken some really great online courses but I feel the blogging context is limited. It absolutely helps, but for me, it’s at most a ‘value-added’ to relationships that are more primarily formed in person. On the other hand, I know that meaningful learning communities do form online. In some of the online classes I’ve been in, there were students who had been together in prior online courses and they definitely had developed a sense of community.
REPLY FROM DREW (7/8):
a.) My thoughts are still undecided at this point. While I think that blogs can contribute to additional engagement with course concepts when done right (e.g. with structure, accountability, etc.), the reality is that assigned blogs usually seem lackluster. Many courses are requiring the incorporation of technology and discussion boards as a part of the curriculum, so the inevitability of these forums are only becoming more prevalent. I think that if instructors are going to require blogs as a part of a class discussion, they should be putting a great deal of thought into how the assignments will be administered.
b.) The results seem encouraging; however, we can assume that the students who responded are the same students who have remained engaged throughout the term. Because students voluntarily responded, it is unclear how the students who are doing the minimum in the course responded. I’m not sure how to construct a better study, but I would be interested to see a more complete response rate.
c.) I absolutely love peer feedback! The comments that I receive are equally as impactful as the comments that I receive from an instructor. Peer feedback is usually honest, constructive, and more casual than other varieties. This, of course, depends on the quality and effort of the peer feedback. Crafting multiple drafts and receiving feedback helps me to develop my ideas more fully. Additionally, peer feedback can offer additional perspectives that I had not previously considered.
d.) I think it’s good to see that students are providing quality peer feedback, but I don’t believe that it benefits me as an instructor much. I’m thinking that my role as a facilitator is to ensure that students are receiving equitable feedback from other students.
e.) I agree that our “Think Forums” in GRAD560 were the best experience with online discussions that I’ve had. We critically and thoughtfully responded to one another. I think credit should be given to Jessica for facilitating the discussions and providing clear instructions as well as a strong structure.
f.) I am from a school of social constructivism, so a sense of community is extremely critical. I believe that we build and create shared meaning through our interactions with others. The most valuable learning moments in my life have been in learning communities of one variety or another. Whether it is a cohort model or even a study group, a sense of community helps folks to teach one another and learn together.
REPLY FROM CHRISTINA (7/7):
I like having discussions online if they are structured the "right" way and I'm not sure what I mean by that yet. I've participated in online discussions more as a graduate student than I ever did as an undergrad, and I have had it be valuable. I think requiring it for a class is a good idea because I want to do it for the courses I instruct! Really though, I think getting students involved outside of class through a blog or whatever can be really powerful, like the article suggests. At the same time, I think there can be over blogging requirements depending on the size of the class. For GRAD 561, I really loved writing and receiving feedback from people but it was just so overwhelming. If you didn't get to the discussion post early enough, it was discouraging trying to decide what two posts you were going to pick to write on. If I had all of the time in the world, being required to do three posts for 20 students would be fine. I can't imagine how Matt read all of the posts and provided feedback. I was appreciate of the feedback from him and everyone, but it was just so much.
I think the response rate was good (I mean 43% is pretty darn good) but with a sample that small, you'd want to do response bias testing to make sure it wasn't too skewed. I agree with Rebecca about the self-selection bias. Also, what about the effect size?
I believe I benefited from responses from peers, particularly on my posts. I'm narcissistic in that I want to know what people are saying about my ideas, but I really grow from reading different perspectives. I also enjoy reading juicy posts when there's a hot topic. I think so much flavor comes out and you can really get to know people's online personalities (whether or not that is reflective of their in-class personalities...but I'll be honest and say I occasionally judge). I think as an instructor I would benefit greatly from reading online comments of my students. It would be a way for me to see a glimpse of their thinking and thought process, and whether or not a chain of responses really makes a different. I see online discussions as a good feedback mechanism for me so I know what topics to focus on or if I need to address something troublesome.
Sense of community is huge for me in all aspects. It has taken me a long time to be able to say what I think in academic settings, and part of that is because it takes me a long time to trust the people I'm with. Part of it also is that when I'm in an academic setting, it seems as if it's a shouting match of intellectuals and I'd rather take a back seat than try to shout. Cognitively it takes me a while to process and communicate information to a personal standard, so I prefer online sometimes to in-class because it gives me the space to ponder, deconstruct, construct, and communicate. I love personal interactions, but I like to talk about deep things pretty quick because I don't have the patience to deal with niceties (I'm working on it). I feel like a hybrid of class and online is good for me because I get to know peoples' personalities and voices in person, but am able to engage on a similar time table online. In that sense, I see online as being a great tool for students to express themselves and it can be really cool when it works. If the trust and respect is there in the community, it makes it easier to make mistakes and be open.
Flash Mob Education - a new frontier for science communication?
The video above (courtesy Improv Everywhere) shows the unique ability of flash mobs to completely dumbfound while simultaneously captivating passersby (see approx. 0:50s-onward). There are hundreds of videos out there by this group showing this same phenomenon: people from the public are undeniably drawn to these sorts of surprising, immersive, and spontaneous theatrical experiences. Public interest is especially apparent when there are clear, individual characters to focus their attention on in a smaller, more confined space (see Spontaneous Musicals). What if these flash mobs, while providing entertainment, also tried to provide a learning experience for the audience?
Last week, I made the case for employing the Understanding by Design framework (learn more here) in the development of informal science education activities at learning centers and museums. This week, I turn my attention to something new, near, and dear to my heart - the interface between theatrical and improv-based science education: Flash Mob Education Experiences.
Last fall, I was part of the Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences (COSIA) cohort at Oregon State University (find out more here). As part of our course requirements, I worked with two fellow graduate students to develop a series of informal science activities to be presented at our “Family Science Night,” a gathering for families and the public at Furman Hall at Oregon State university.
#informalscience #COSIA2014 #improvscience tonight at @oregonstateuniv Furman Hall! pic.twitter.com/rUfupEDlXa
— Jeremy Scott Hoffman (@jer_science)
December 3, 2014
A photo posted by Jeremy Hoffman (@jer_science) on Dec 2, 2014 at 11:26pm PST
Our activities incorporated aspects of tsunami and earthquake hazard preparedness and safety education. Oregon abuts the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which produces M9 earthquakes every 400-600 years or so (last one AD 1700, source). This hazard, surprisingly, is not well known by the public and underestimated by local and state governments. Accordingly, we designed a series of activities that included a tsunami wave tank (complete with LEGOs to build "tsunami-safe" buildings), a "go-bag" game (what do you bring with you in an emergency?), and something we were pretty nervous about implementing: a unique flash mob education experience.
This flash mob required the participation of the other graduate students in the class (approximately 14) and the instructor. The attendees to the science night had no idea we were going to stage the event, but we did set the general mood of interest by placing signs like the one below in the stairwell and around the classroom, much like these folks may have seen in Oregon's coastal cities. Some attendees commented on them (kids saying, "look, Mommy!") while walking around the building and while walking around the classroom where the activities were being demonstrated.
At the same moment (6 pm), everyone "in the know" snapped to action and improvised an earthquake's unexpectedness and effects by shaking and falling to the ground. While this was dramatic, no children overreacted or were overtly frightened. We then encouraged everyone to climb under the tables where we repeated the safety mantra "Drop, Cover, and Hold On!" and got the group chanting it. My collaborator Doug then threw empty shoeboxes at people's feet and exposed body parts to simulate the threat of falling items during the shaking and to encourage active participation. When the "shaking" subsided, we then transitioned into acting out being near the beach (this could have been done slightly more explicitly; it depended primarily on my script).
I, playing the uninformed beachgoer, decided to "look at the new tide pools" more closely. This is of course the precursor symptom of a tsunami - the water retreats. At this point, two of the other graduate students, hiding behind a large blue sheet suggesting a tsunami wave, swallowed me up. This prompted Doug and my other collaborator Megan to encourage the tsunami hazard safety mantra "Get to High Ground and Stay There!" Once the "tsunami" retreated for good, I returned to the classroom with wet hair and mussed up clothing - the kids loved that - saying I should have listened to my friends and stayed at the high ground.
Our metric to gauge just how successful we were in teaching these principals of hazard preparedness was whether or not the families could remember the mantras we taught them as they left the science night. Every single family (kids more than the adults) could remember the two safety mantras! Now, whether or not this is a long-lasting educational experience, we don't know for sure, and since we only performed a summative assessment, we don't know whether it was our experience alone that shaped their ability to remember these safety mantras. However, we do know that the kids and adults were enthusiastic about the experience, and the kids made meaning of the fact that I returned with wet hair - had I REALLY gotten swept up in that tsunami? We created a meaningful experience for these attendees. They were part of the action, and part of the flash mob. This immersion, I think, is the key to flash mob education.
I feel that the public's clear engagement with flash mobs (demonstrated by Improv Everywhere) and the seemingly important learning gains we saw as part of our Tsunami/Earthquake Flash Mob Education Experience suggests that this form of education is underdeveloped and in dire need of more exploration. I hope to explore this avenue of education more in the very near future!
On informal science education and the Understanding by Design framework
The Understanding by Design (UbD) framework (website), from my bird’s eye view (as I have yet to explore UbD’s intriguing wisdoms in my own teaching, I must remain sufficiently neutral or at least slackly skeptical about its effectiveness), seems as though it would be instructive and well-suited for broader application than within the traditionally formal learning environments and curricula that it appears to have been engineered to impact. Jay McTighe and Elliot Self, writing in the Pennsylvania Educational Leadership periodical (Vol. 24, Issue 1, 2011), reviewed a literature base relevant to UbD-reminiscent teaching techniques (what they deem “teaching for meaning and understanding” is echoed in UbD’s desire to “deepen student understanding” [see the UbD pamphlet here]) across several disciplines and levels of education. Their analysis shows clear evidence that careful, goal-oriented instruction and curriculum planning has lead to a measurable increase in student understanding – estimated primarily through a student's “original” or “authentic” application of a lesson’s knowledge. Additionally, teaching with a focus on developing deeper student understanding has been shown to diminish the scholastic achievement gap between high- and normally low-performing student groups (see the paper by Newmann et al. referenced in McTighe and Self's review).
These results, when compared against what is deemed (perhaps unfairly) more “traditional” styles of teaching (or a primarily fact-oriented “firehose of knowledge” curriculum), clearly suggest the utility of these goal-oriented practices in formal learning environments. But, what if the learning environment is informal, low-stakes, or the instruction almost entirely free choice? Here I mean “low-stakes” in the sense that the students won’t receive a grade or a degree at the end of the lesson or program, and for this purpose informal education means any learning that takes place in a museum or science center like the (fantastic) Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). What I hope to argue below is not whether or not UbD should continue to be implemented in the US education system (I think it should) – but to instead suggest a supplementary need to realize and assess UbD techniques within an informal education center(s).
I am an enthusiastic advocate (and frequent patron) of informal learning environments, especially science centers – I mean, they’re fun (who doesn’t like to make their own tornado in a wind tunnel or move blocks with a pulley system or sit in a theater while the camera flies you around space?), they’re accessible, and they are developed to engage highly variable educational and economic backgrounds, ages, and interest levels of their patrons. This latter facet in particular is what sets informal science/education apart from formal environments - the focus on appealing to diverse groups - and it is not an easy task to accomplish. Visitors to informal science centers famously “vote with their feet,” in that a relatively “successful” (in a purely attendance-based metric, I could say instead “popular”) informal science activity will be continually swamped with visitors. In my experience (to be blogged about later), just because an informal activity is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it has been successful in transferring the knowledge it was meant to convey. This is where I believe the UbD framework could be useful in the development of informal science activities.
First and foremost, setting clear and attainable learning outcomes or desired results (UbD Stage 1) is tantamount to having an educationally successful informal activity – sure, a visitor could make a tornado by turning a knob, but do they grasp the fundamental idea of the low-pressure atmospheric systems and wind shear that give rise to them? Having an essential question (e.g., “how does extreme weather happen?”) to motivate one single activity or a series of activities would create sufficient linearity and sequencing. This in turn can affect the development of the learning plan of the activities (Stage 3). It is in this respect where the backwards design principles of UbD could be easily introduced to start simplifying or honing the aims of an informal activity. However, one of UbD’s seven tenets inherent to its framework (I won’t list them all here, check the pamphlet here) directly refers to the specific role of the teacher (e.g., as a “coach,” see tenet #5). Unfortunately in informal science centers, the teacher may be a static poster or video production, not a live human. However, if the right assessment techniques are developed (Stage Two: Evidence), and the activity made malleable enough to evolve on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis, UbD would be extremely useful.
I realize part of the problem at informal science centers is a marked lack of funding. Who has the (wo)manpower to adequately gauge evidence of understanding on a day-in, day-out basis, let alone to make on-the-fly adjustments to the activity? However, if a science center (or network of science centers!) were to frame a grant proposal (to say NSF, who loves funding the improvement of STEM education) in the way of using UbD to develop a coherent sequence of informal activities, perhaps then the outcomes could be accurately assessed, the activities could be sufficiently adapted to fit the needs of the patrons, and maybe, just maybe, a new “informal UbD” framework could emerge. Maybe that’ll be my first educational grant proposal?
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