Passport to Learning:
Turning Today’s Learners into
Tomorrow’s Leaders

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”

– Albert Einstein

Are we squandering an opportunity to improve the way our students learn?

We MUST engage our students hearts and minds, otherwise, our traditional methods of instruction will inadvertently produce bureaucratic cogs that will function as carbon copies of one another. We are hoping our learners will be innovators in their field, but our educational system simply asks them to copy and do what we have always done.

We have an opportunity! We can make a more significant impact on our learners by giving them authentic learning opportunities to prepare them to thrive in the real world. We can equip our learners to solve complex problems and realize their greatest potential. We can give our learners these opportunities through choice, ownership, and a voice through authentic learning experiences. If we do not put forth the investment in our learners, the failure will be ours to own.

Passport to learning means giving learners choice in how they present, organize, and structure their ideas to influence others and solve real-world problems and issues. Ownership in learning gives learners a degree of control over their learning, a sense of personal significance, and agency over the innovative projects they choose to develop. Giving our learners choice helps them become intimately involved with projects through reflection, metacognition and opportunities to revise and restructure their ideas. Most importantly, authentic learning experiences gives our students real-world opportunities they crave to solve problems and key issues in their professions and in their lives.

We can build a significant learning environment, one that makes the learners’ characteristics become the “measuring stick,” (Harapnuik, para. 3) positions instructors and mentors as guides, and the infrastructure, technology tools, and digital learning opportunities work to support the learner.  We can move from covering content to uncovering deep and meaningful connections; help students see each other as resources and learn from one another; prepare learners to thrive on change, not simply adapt to it. Ultimately, these things and more can happen as a result of cultivating a significant learning environment.

If we want to prepare our learners for the future, we need to change our traditional, information transfer models of teaching and learning and embrace pedagogies that give students opportunities for social collaboration and constructivist ideals. We must equip our students to make meaningful connections that are necessary for deep learning.

In the faculty lecture, I will share the following:

• an historical context of education, revealing the rhetoric and the practices of teaching and learning in the past 100 years and why little has changed (Dewey vs. Thorndike);
• that it is possible to give our learners opportunities to experience unprecedented learning that is real and authentic (COVA, Harapnuik, Thibodeaux);
• offer strategies for digital learning to build on the idea a new culture of learning that is imperative in our schools today (Thomas & Seely-Brown);
• dispel digital learning myths and share relevant challenges we face when transforming practice (Papert, November); and,
• engage the audience in colorful and vibrant discourse about how we can embrace technology innovations as a catalyst for change starting today!

Resources

References

Thomas, D. & Seely-Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Thibodeaux, T. N., Harapnuik, D. K., & Cummings, C. D. (in press). Perceptions of the influence of learner choice, ownership in learning, and voice in learning and the learning environment. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Thibodeaux, T. N., Harapnuik, D. K., Cummings, C. D., & Wooten, R. (2017). Learning all the time and everywhere: Moving beyond the hype of the mobile learning quick fix. In Keengwe, J. S. (Eds.). Handbook of research on mobile technology, constructivism, and meaningful learning. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.