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composition, connected learning, course design, course structure, interest, peer support, relevance, student choice, syllabus
Blog post

Can Connected Learning Make A Curriculum Relevant?

syllabus (policies only)Usually when I teach a composition class, I create a syllabus that covers a range of essay genres or that explores methods of critical thinking. I structure the course so students write narratives, descriptions, arguments, and research projects. At the end of the class, I expect students to be able to use what they’ve learned in their future courses and in their professions.

The problem is that my intentions don’t always appear clear in the classroom. One of the biggest complaints I hear students make about first-year composition is that the course isn’t relevant. How often will they need to write narratives of childhood memories or research papers about current events when they become accountants, engineers, and nurses?

Sadly, I don’t often have the time to explore why learning to write some specific document will matter in the future. Vague promises that “one day you’ll be glad you know this” aren’t very convincing. Even if I had time for more specific explanations, I know that the students are all on different paths. How can I possibly guess what will apply to whom, how it will apply, or even when and why it will apply?

I’d love for the course to seem more relevant to students, but I wasn’t sure how until I attended Katie Salen’s recent webinar on Making Learning Irresistible: 6 Principles of Game-like Learning. The answer isn’t that you have to use gaming in the classroom (though you can). It’s that you have to think like a game designer when you structure your curriculum.

In the webinar, Salen explained that designing game-like learning begins when you “create a ‘need to know’ by organizing learning around solving complex problems in engaging contexts.” In the case of state standards and the common core curriculum, Salen suggested you begin by identifying the specific standard or goal and then ask yourself, "What’s a 10-week context we can drop kids into that would let them hit that standard?”

The goal isn't to teach certain information that students will apply later, but to put students in situations where they need to know certain information to solve a problem they care about or reach a goal they’ve set. Suddenly as Salen described this model, I realized I had been designing courses backwards.

You can read the rest of the details on how I’m rethinking course design on my post on the Bedford Bits site.

 

 

[Photo: syllabus (policies only) by intenteffect, on Flickr]

Comments

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl's picture
Posted by
Elyse Eidman-Aadahl
on May 15 2012
at 15:50

People, hop over to read the Bedford Bits blog too

Traci, I hope folks go over to Bedford Bits to read your thoughts about course design too. I think you're right in focusing on the CL framework issues of interest  and shared-purpose. I think you capture this emphasis in these paragraphs:

To create the kind of interest-powered, peer-supported, and academically oriented connected learning I strive for, I need to start by creating a relevant context where students “need to know” the information that the course is meant to teach. The way I envision a connected learning composition course, I wouldn’t worry about designing a syllabus that marches through different kinds of essays or methods of critical thinking. Instead, I’d focus on a project that asked students to work toward a shared goal.

We might focus on an environmental issue, like fighting pollution, and work to make the situation better. We might work on a project to design games. We might collaborate on a service learning project for a local community group, like supporting local literacy efforts at the library. As the class works on the project, we’d talk about different kinds of writing and all the other details that compose a composition course. The focus of the course, however, would be on the overarching project, not on how to write a description or ways to avoid plagiarism.

Instead of trying to prepare students with knowledge they may someday need to know, I’d ask them to get out in the world and write real things for real audiences. In the process of completing that writing, they’ll learn the specific skills as they are needed, in the context where they are needed.

This notion of shared purpose relates to course and curriculum design, as your point out, but also seems to be, me thinks, deeply related to the nature of student response and peer support/interaction. I think that classic peer response work establishes a shared purpose of helping each other with the individual goals of improving one's paper, perhaps framed by the assignment and the tools of classroom rubrics. But the kind of interaction that might be related to the shared purposes you discuss is likley to be qualitatively different.

If you do work with these ideas in your teaching, I hope you'll continue to share your experiences.

Jon Barilone's picture
Posted by
Jon Barilone
on May 10 2012
at 14:36

"Backwards design method"

Perfect phrase to describe the concept. As Katie mentioned in the webinar, a game designer will first look at constraints and then analyze how to design/build around those constraints. For an example of what this could look like in practice, I recommend checking out Quest2Learn's sample curriculum.