Engineering Joy: Process-Oriented Outcomes in Hybrid Learning Communities

Description

This flipped presentation asks how innovative learning emerges from within a community based on equity, where no individual member of that community is presumed to occupy a position of privilege in relation to the expected learning.

In spite of a much hoped for revolution in the structure of pedagogy (and the jargon attached to those hopes: learner-centeredness; interest-driven; 21st century project-based; shared-expertise; problem-finding; growth mindset), — our new classrooms look a lot like the rows of desks from the last century, and before.

In fact, it might seem like the tools have pre-determined that outcome.

Again, today, my students’ bright faces look out at me, each contained in their own little Zoom box, while my talking head yammers away, streaming hard-won content through conduits anchored in the bedrock of the internet. And if any of them weren’t “present,” I’ve posted a video that will deliver the content they need for the quiz that will score itself and automatically post their grades.

The equity problem this scenario illustrates has been well-documented in the past few months. Some students can’t or won’t connect. But the issue isn’t really about reliable WiFi, or modern laptops. Equity is never solely about technology. After all, we colonizers did pretty well for ourselves in rickety wooden boats, thank you.

No, let’s not blame the tools. That would be like the Homeric poets scoffing at that new-fangled writing thing the kids were all up about. “What, those little scratches?! They’ll never compare to my vast odyssey of rhyme and rhythm. Sure, writing is cool and all, maybe for shopping lists, but it’s not poetry, that’s for sure.”

The Zoom of our grandchildren will make today’s synchronous instruction look like Edison’s Victrola. Forget grandchildren: next year’s Zoom might do that.

As educators, we can’t afford to let ourselves be distracted. We’re on the verge of re-colonizing learning and re-segregating knowing.

No, the problem isn’t the tools. The problem is what we assume learning should look like, how it gets done, what the outcomes should be, and who’s in charge.

This presentation will explore Toy Hack Remix, a hybrid engineering and art activity that has emerged from my teaching and research. The activity itself involves deconstructing and then reconstructing an animatronic toy. The objective is for students to identify and analyze their learning process, and to share the story of their learning while presenting their rebuilt toy. Learning outcomes include student reflections on curiosity, community, and joy, and some crazy toys.

Beyond the toy remixing activity, my work addresses a project exploring process-oriented pedagogy. This presentation will focus on what I have learned from developing and sustaining this inquiry with my students. I believe successfully de-colonizing knowledge systems starts with learning how to reframe learning. Toy remixing isn’t the final answer to this question, but starting with a product and ending with a process might be a viable first step.

Takeaway

Participants are invited to puzzle the undoing of learning systems that rely on outcomes that can be owned and reproduced.

We need to address some difficult questions:

Who owns knowing? What dangers does not-knowing entail? How do notions of skill and expertise reify the privilege of those who know, how they know, how we know they know…and how much they get paid for knowing?

This maze of funhouse mirrors will test our resolve to tackle a more challenging question: How can educators take the lead in undoing the systematic biases of pedagogical structures that sustain inequities in learning and knowing?

There are probably no simple or easy answers to these questions. In addressing them we will challenge some cherished assumptions about learning and knowing. We might not even know we hold such assumptions. The first step has to be to recognize our complicities; a future step will involve unlearning them. In this presentation we begin a journey together.

The vehicle for this journey is the case study of the Toy Hack Remix project that I will present. Resources for enacting toy remixing in one’s own teaching will be offered for participants who want them. A more important takeaway will be the roadmap for undoing pedagogical inequities that we will sketch together.

The questions above are not posed abstractly, or theoretically. Rather, I’m interested in actionable responses. I want to know how to teach for unlearning, for process-oriented empowerment, for self-efficacy, and for equity.

As a participant in this presentation myself, the most important takeaway for me will be an expanded sense of what comes next on this journey of learning together. I would be overjoyed if other participants shared my interest in such a takeaway.

Abstract

This presentation explores Toy Hack Remix, a hybrid engineering and art activity that has emerged from my teaching and research. The activity involves deconstructing and then reconstructing an animatronic toy. The objective is for students to identify and analyze their learning process, and to share the story of their learning journey with their learning community. Outcomes include student reflections on curiosity, community, and joy, and some crazy toys.

I am concerned about unrealized hopes for a pedagogical revolution. The jargon attached to those hopes feels increasingly anachronistic to me: learner-centeredness; interest-driven; 21st century project-based; shared-expertise; problem-finding; growth mindsets.

In fact, with my students’ bright faces looking out from their little Zoom boxes, while my talking head yammers away, streaming hard-won content through conduits anchored in the bedrock of the internet, my new classroom looks a lot like the rows of desks from last century, and before.

It might be that the tools pre-determine that outcome. It might not my fault after all. But I can’t blame the tools. That would be like the Homeric poets scoffing at that new-fangled writing thing the kids were all up about. “What, those little scratches?! Those will never compare to my vast odyssey of rhyme and rhythm. Sure, writing is cool and all, maybe for shopping lists, but it’s not poetry, that’s for sure.”

We can’t let shortsightedness absolve us—the Zoom of our grandchildren will make today’s synchronous instruction look like Edison’s Victrola. The problem isn’t the tools. It’s what we assume learning should look like, what the outcomes should be, and who’s in charge.

We’re on the verge of re-colonizing learning because we’re re-segregating knowing.

How can educators and technologists help un-make the systematic biases that sustain inequities in learning and knowing? In this presentation, participants are invited to puzzle the undoing of learning systems that rely on outcomes that can be owned and reproduced.

The case study at the center of this presentation is from the Toy Hack Remix project. Resources for enacting toy remixing in one’s own teaching will be offered for participants who want them. A more important takeaway will be the roadmap for undoing pedagogical inequities that we will sketch together.

In this presentation I will share what I have learned from developing and trying to sustain a process-oriented pedagogy with my students. I believe de-colonizing knowledge systems starts with learning how to reframe learning, with teachers and students working together as co-designers of new kinds of learning ecologies. Toy remixing is not the only answer to this question, but starting with a product and ending with a process might be a decent first step.