Creating a Significant Learning Environment Takes Planning

New Culture of
Learning Book

One of the biggest things that I have learned over the past 5 weeks would be that being intentional and thinking through each stage of the planning is important in creating a significant learning environment for your learners.  There are so many different things that you need to think about when planning in order to create a culture of learning instead of just "sharing information".  Anyone can design a course or session that is dispersing information because that is just as easy as curating information and sharing it.  It takes much more thought and design to put together an experience that allows for growth and learning based on learner needs.


Learning Philosophy
When we first started this course, I was not looking forward to putting in the work of creating my learning philosophy.  I thought I already knew what my philosophy was and that I was going to have a hard time putting it into words or connecting it to what we were learning about, but what I quickly realized was that taking the time to really think about what I believed what SO powerful for me.  I probably could have regurgitated what I have learned through my school district and through books I have read about what others say about learning, but I have not ever taken the time to define what I personally think about learning.  As I read through all of the articles and posts I was able to connect to pieces of all of the different learning theories.  I started with one theory that I thought for sure I would connect to all of it and be able to begin my project, but as I was exposed to more and more theories, I quickly learned that my beliefs were not wrapped up in just one theory.  I was happy to hear that we didn't have to link to just one theory and that we were able to create our own.  I was definitely able to become passionate about my theory quickly because I was being given the chance to define what learning means to me.  I liked being able to take the time to put into words all of the things I have been thinking for years. My learning philosophy helped me shape the first course that I am in the process of designing for parents.  It has begun to shape my innovation plan in ways that I didn't even know were possible before this learning journey.

Design
My innovation plan started off very vague and lacked detail on exactly what I wanted to do.  I was so focused on how I would deliver the content, that I wasn't looking at how the significance of what I was going to help parents learn affected the plan and my ability to create a significant learning environment. My plan is different from many of my classmates because I am focusing on parents instead of learners and don't have the same audience time as an educator would have with their learners.  The engagement is different because I am battling work expectations, family schedules and time dedicated to learning.  My topics have to be motivating for the parents in a different way than in a classroom. Being able to sit down and talk with Dr. H about my struggles helped me break through my concern about how to move forward.  In fact, the topics that I originally brainstormed as a starting point are fine, but they are not what I really wanted to talk to parents about.  I didn't realize that my passion was actually different than the topics that I chose.  Once I was able to see the course through my passion it opened up the flood gates to ideas on how where to go with this course and in conversations that I have been having in my school district, my new plan has SO many more connections.  As I began to plan out my first course, being able to look at my ideas from an outcomes-based model first gave me the opportunity to gain insight on the bigger picture and also connect my ideas to my learning philosophy.  The creation of my BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) was the first step and after that, everything seemed to just fall into place.  One resource that I made my planning more effective would be the Self Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning by Dr. Fink (the Director of the Instructional Development Program at the University of Oklahoma).

This diagram found on Page 9 of the document was where everything seemed to come together for me. Once I was able to look at my course from this perspective and found a way to align an outcome to each of these topics, it just fell together. When you have an outcome from each situational factor, it creates a way to interact that includes more than just the content.  This taxonomy of significant learning connects so well to my topic which is Future Ready/21st Century Skills.  If you look at this diagram, you will see different parts of 21st Century skills (applying, integrating, human connection, learning how to learn, etc). WOW! It was like a lightbulb went off in my mind.  I KNOW that I will use this document with my Digital Learning Coaches as we begin to design learning for our educators for the next school year.  It may end up taking us longer to design those learning experiences on the front end, but the deeper learning that will take place will end up being exponentially better.

UbD Book

I enjoyed creating the UbD Design of my course because I felt more comfortable in the UbD design template. At first I thought I felt more comfortable with the template because we use one in our district and I have been through UbD training and have had experience designing it.....but after spending some time reflecting on this process,  I don't think that I would have been nearly as comfortable with my design if I hadn't gone through the outcomes based design first and had not had the opportunity to read the document by Dr. Fink referenced above.  I think that when designing, a designer should go through both exercises in order to design their learning environment.  Looking at the big picture and looking at the learning wholistically helps design the details so that they connect and there is an opportunity for the learner to easily connect the ideas too.  I still have a ways to go on designing the learning environment for parents because I have never done it before.   I have designed for students and educators and have been fairly successful (although going through this process makes me think that I had been failing them, and could have been designed better in the past) but now I feel like I will be even more successful in helping people connect to the learning and take it even farther than before.

Designing for parents and community is a new process, and I have so much more to learn about. I know that a significant learning environment will be the only way that I can ensure that parents stick around and want to learn more!

Growth Mindset
I am so thankful that we came back to the topic of the growth mindset because at the beginning of this program we spent time learning about the importance of growth and failing forward. After spending time diving deeper into the philosophy of growth mindset I knew that I needed to tackle this topic with parents and knew it would be important for them to be exposed to the idea.  One of the values in our district is redefining success and portions of this topic are framed around how grades shouldn't define our kids and their successes.  We can speak to learners about this topic all day long, but usually, their ideas and understandings come from more than one place.  One of those places that this attitude comes from is at home. In order to support their children through their learning journey, they need to be on the same page as the district and have time to process the topic and figure out what it means to them and how they can help their children.  After coming back to the topic this week, I know that I want to expose the parents to this content, but I don't want it to stop there! I am planning on embedding this thinking into other portions of the course too by providing thought-provoking discussion questions not only about their children but about themselves too. You can read more about my growth mindset planning on my digital portfolio.