One session that I really appreciated and was learning a lot from was by Dr. Bernard Bull from Concordia University in Wisconsin. His session was titled
“Designing Self-Directed Learning Projects”.
The first part of his session he talked about his research into the concept of self directed learning. He spent time visiting and researching schools who provide their students the opportunities to self direct their learning.
The first activity that we did was a poll question:
True or False“Good teachers become less important”
He had us stand on a certain side of the room depending on our level of belief of this statement. It was very interesting the responses that came back from this exercise. Some stated that the teacher is invaluable and this statement was completely false. Others, with a leaning to growth mindset and the concept of self directed learning were more on the truth side. The argument being the use of the word “become”. That teachers lay the foundation of the information and let the students find the knowledge. I felt this is where I landed on the spectrum, especially because we were talking about this specific topic.
The second question he asked us to investigate was this:
“If education was a theater production, where is the learner in the theater?”
There were many responses. Some said the students were the directors (self directed learning). Our group thought that the students were the Actors. As a production begins, the actors take direction from the directors- where to walk, how to speak, what to wear, etc. Now, once this foundation is set, it is the actor’s responsibility to but when the show goes live, everything falls onto the actors.
Self Directed Learning--Inspiring a Love to Learn
Bull talked about different schools that he observed and connected with through his research and it was really interesting what he found. Some schools would start their students on self directed learning (SDL) projects that the students were passionate about. There was no limit to what they were learning about except what they wanted to learn. As the teachers facilitated, they were able to guide the students through the process of learning about their passion. This would happen over a few projects and then as they got older, they would be challenged to do a project on something that wasn’t a passion… Bull’s example was calculus. What the schools and Bull observed is that the students who had gone through the SDL process on their passions had seen the challenge of learning. No longer was the motivation the passion, but rather the challenge to learn.
Becoming an Expert
Another observation that Bull made was the lack of continual projects. He made the comment that it takes years to become an expert in a subject, skill, passion or idea. So why don’t we encourage this in our students? Why are projects lasting at most a semester? Why not have a continual project that spans years, giving the students the opportunity to be experts.
He shared about a school that assigned each student when they entered the school in kindergarten (through an internal process) a single simple word such as “cat”. From kindergarten through 8th grade, the running project was that the student would become an expert in their word in all aspects/subjects of school. Cats in literature, in science, the math of cats, etc. By the end of their project, students were able to be named the local expert on their word.
Part 2 is going to look at Dr. Bull's 7 Laws for Self-Directed Learners as well as some resources to encourage self directed learning.
Closing:
Overall, I found this session really interesting for a few reasons. First, it was really eye opening to hear what other schools were doing in relation to self directed learning and PBL. Second, I kind of kicked myself because the concepts were relatively obvious, but it was like putting a name to a face. Bringing an understanding to the idea. I am continually drawn back to the learning possibilities of project based learning and self-directed learning. It was a great first half of the session to attend. Part 2 offers some more practical understandings of the process.
