6.1 Authentic Learning
Prompt: Add a reflection to your blog that addresses your perceptions of where
and how authentic learning can be valuable in your teaching context.
I have used some quite 'wacky' as one colleague called it, teaching approaches in my tertiary teaching career. I used a case study approach and we used fish diagrams for problem solving. I experienced many of the things that are documented in the problem-based learning document from Uni of Adelaide - although this is authentic learning and not problem based learning. The students experienced grief because they were used to a surface learning approach and they actually ganged up on me and wrote very poor student satisfaction surveys. There were a couple in the class, probably 3 or maybe 4 who appreciated what I did, but on the whole, the majority of my students were into flip-top head based learning as I called it at the time and I had to go explain my poor student satisfaction survey results, which my mentor understood, but which the faculty system could not deal with. Also with secondary education there are systems and curriculum and faculty who will oppose these changes. I actually had one instructional design lady sit at her desk and tell me quite honestly that if the students wanted to do the assignments without reading any of the course material, that was their right and I was not to penalize students for writing the assessment according to whatever they googled on the Internet and not engaging with the course materials.
Learning: As set out in the problem-based learning document - it is really important to introduce the students slowly and to teach them about the process. Don't go cold turkey and change the whole course in one go like I did.
Also, students complained that every other course in the Diploma did focus on surface learning and was designed a certain way.
Learning: Try to network with other teachers and introduce authentic learning in other classes in specific projects so it is a coordinated approach.
When I used my case-based approach, I became more of a facilitator and less of a teacher. I was not the main source of knowledge. Because I had mature aged postgraduate classes with students with very rich experiences, I love this and I often learned alot from working through the case-based problems with the students. However, the surface learning students were not happy that I was not the 'professor' and font of all knowledge and they were very unhappy with this.
Learning: Be prepared for some confronting reactions as students and teachers come to terms with teachers as facilitators of learning rather than authorities of correct and incorrect.
I am quite interested in the
Lego robotics challenge which is held at QUT each year. This program has a problem based approach with a theme each year and a specific competition table where students compete by making robots that can complete a number of set tasks. If we were to take this robotics challenge into an authentic learning example, we would address the challenge in the real world. 2017 happens to have a save the endangered animal focus. If we made this a real life problem, we would look at a problem faced by the local wildlife rescue that could be addressed using robotics and we would involve a number of stakeholders. Problems that are relevant in the local region would be creating an auto drafter for cattle or sheep or creating a drone that could fly above stockman and display the location of the head of the mob of cattle in thick scrub.
Lack of real appeal is a reason why secondary school students and adults claim that school is not engaging. However, real world problems are complex and messy and they require deep learning. It is not possible to surface learn in order to work with real world problems.
Putting my black hat on: When I looked at the authentic learning website, there are photos of children in costume at a period trade fair and of students completing roman period inspired glass art. My son was asked last term to create a model roller coaster as a group. I helped him with any materials that he asked for. They were told about the activity one week and then they could assemble the materials and then the next week the students were to build their roller coaster which took a marble. One of the groups had a parent who constructed the roller coaster out of wood and clear tubing and that group came to school and assembled their roller coaster and that group was judged as having the best solution. The attitude of some parents is that the children go to school to learn facts and get a good score to get to University and the parents create projects to help the students to gain a good score. The children believe that creating artifacts like the roller coaster are not real learning or they are activities that they don't have time for. The only way to deal with this is to create a culture were the children understand how applying real world problems and so training the students about what we are trying to achieve is also important.
If I started applying authentic learning, there would be kick-back. No doubt about it. I know that this approach would only work in a school where the principle was on board with it because the parents will complain bitterly to the principle and higher if they feel that maybe their student is not going to get a ranking. In some of the authentic learning grading is suggested as a satisfactory or not satisfactory. In one instance I know of one of my colleagues gave students an ink stamp rather than a grade and it would be fair to say that the students absolutely grieved for their grade rankings (going through all the ranges of emotion related to grade rankings). The faculty administration were also highly unimpressed because so much of what we do at the tertiary level is based on student satisfaction and ranking.
The time taken in authentic learning is also alot longer unless you can spread the project across a number of disciplines, such as the art group designs the images and marketing is involved regarding the campaign. For this to work, a couple of teams of teachers need to be on the same page regarding how the content is taught. I know that in large units, even getting the team of tutors to run through the tutorials with the same pedagogy was quite difficult. Students float between the tutorial groups depending on which tutorial style they like or who goes through what will be on the test the week before in the tutorial.
