As we are forced into remote learning and our school days currently look and feel very different, the more I realize that the most impactful learning in a remote setting are the same 10 characteristics of learner-centered experiences face to face. Our methods and tools might change but the characteristics remain more important than ever in learning.

I shared this in the original post, “10 Characteristics of Learner-Centered Experiences“

Education Reimagined defines the paradigm shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered as shifting how we see learners and their critical role in their own learning now, and throughout their lives. The critical shift is that “Learners are seen and known as wondrous, curious individuals with vast capabilities and limitless potential. This paradigm recognizes that learning is a lifelong pursuit and that our natural excitement and eagerness to discover and learn should be fostered throughout our lives, particularly in our earliest years.” When we focus on learners, connect to their interests, needs, and goals, we can create experiences that ignite curiosity, develop passion, and unleash genius.  As I work with diverse educators and talk with students, there are common characteristics that always surface when people share powerful learning experiences. They often share experiences that are: personal, allow learners to exert agency, have goals and accountability, they are inquiry-based, collaborative, authentic, allow for productive struggle, provide and use models, ensure time for critique and revision as well as reflection.

Goals + Accountability

The accountability systems as we know them in education are disrupted for unforeseeable future and without the standardized tests, seat time requirements or end of course exams in many places the goals (and barriers) that many have known to be a fixture in our system are not in place. Remember when you said, if only we didn’t have standardized tests, I would love to ….. Well, let’s lean into that.

For too long we held people accountable for standardized tests, grades, and other data that is easy to capture yet often fail to set goals and hold others accountable for developing the skills that we say we actually care about like creative thinking, complex thinking and problem solving, communication, and innovation. Now is the time to set goals with learners that actually matter to them and help to move them from their point A to their point B, not just keep up with the class or the pacing guide.

Some ideas for goal setting and accountability:

Check-in with your students (if you can do a zoom call or phone call this is ideal) and ask what their goals are. If they know, great. If they don’t which is more likely since many haven’t been asked this question before you can start with what you know about the students. Both of my kids’ teachers set weekly check-ins to build the connection and relationship and also to monitor progress on goals. Helping students set goals, track progress, and feel the sense of accomplishment is a lifelong skill and would be amazing if students learned how to do this and continue to set and work towards their goals. 

Personal 

In school, students are compelled to follow the schedule and move through the lesson at the pace that we set. Although they may not love it it is easier to keep everyone on track and move through the lesson. Yet, as learners are at home, they have different, contexts, schedules, and resources available. Now, more than ever, learning must be personal. The more we can offer choice and flexibility not just in terms of pace but also in the path that learners choose will provide more purpose. Often we think that personalized learning means that the teacher has to create a unique plan for each learner. In reality, this is unsustainable and unrealistic for each teacher to create a plan for each student whether you have 20 or 200 students. Instead, it becomes personal when learners are taking ownership and can make choices about what they want to learn, or how they solve a problem that matters to them and others.

Here are some ideas for making learning personal:

Ask students what they are interested in learning or what they have been doing when they aren’t doing schoolwork? What problems are they interested in solving? Is there a need in their family or community that they could research and work on? Is there a skill, talent or hobby they have always wanted to explore. Have them learn and document the process.

Personal projects are important but we also need to focus on personal development of foundational skills so we are better able to engage in meaningful projects. I am not a proponent of sitting in front of a computer and only working on adaptive software but if it’s targeted to learners needs, spending time working on foundational skills that are relevant to each learners is important and possible without a lot of extra work from the teachers with program like Khan Academy and others. This can also be as simple as giving choice in time and pace of the learning.

Agency

Agency comes from the power to act and requires learners to have the ability to make decisions and take ownership of their own behaviors in the process.  We have to decide what the goals are (compliance or empowered learning) and if we really want learners to be taking ownership and motivated to do their work, we have to create the conditions and teach them the skills that allow for them to do this. We can’t control the learners and simultaneously expect them to be motivated without opportunities to exert agency in the learning process.

Here are some ideas for increasing learner-agency:

As mentioned above teaching students how to set goals and tracking progress is an important skill and can be empowering for learners. Allowing choice in how what they learn, how they learn and how they show what they know is also critical and students need various levels of help in this process. One example that I have enjoyed seeing is instead of a list of problem to complete, pose a complex problem and allow students to share how they solved it. Let students choose a book or articles that they want to read? Have students choose how to respond: Journal, flipgrid, draw, create a multimedia graphic. You don’t have to leave everything open-ended but consider how students can increasingly have a choice in the topic, the resources they choose to learn, and how they show what they know.  

Inquiry-based

Inevitably, when learners are posing questions and seeking answers, they are more invested than if they are being told what to think or do. My friend just shared how her 5 year old is taking daily walks and they always see lizards so she has become very curious about lizards and as a family, they have started to research them and learn more, they are reading books about lizards and she called her grandparents and is sharing what she knows about lizards. When challenges are presented or learners can find their own to solve, they are often more intrinsically motivated to seek answers to questions that they are genuinely interested in figuring out. We have to remember that learning happens inside learners, not just in school.

Here are some ideas for inquiry:

Exposure is key to more questions. Show videos to spark curiosity,  read books- I love picture books to spark conversation no matter what age, go on a nature walk or around the neighborhood to explore your community (6 ft apart of course), ask people what problems they are solving or any of the current events might spark some questions to research and investigate. Sometimes it just requires being still and listening rather than telling.

Collaboration

Collaboration is definitely harder when we are physically isolated in our homes but it is so important. As we are well into a month of social distancing and many schools will not open for the rest of the year, many of our students are experiencing isolation and lack of connection, especially with peers. One of my students this week shared that the people and the collaboration are often the best part of the classes and moving online has removed the hallways conversations and the connections built outside of the classroom experiences. Collaboration and connection are vital to our academic success as well as our social-emotional well being. They can occur more naturally in our face to face environments which is why we have to be more intentional about creating the conditions for this to happen when we are remote. Here are some ideas to connect learners remotely.

Here are some ideas for collaboration:

Breakout rooms in Zoom are great for collaboration and connection. Book clubs are a great way to give structure to the collaboration or even peer editing and check-ins can be helpful but also think about having siblings work together, call family members or friends that are experts or can help based on your goals or questions.

I shared more ideas in this post 6 ways to create a remote learning community

Authentic

My son was frustrated the other day because he said he had worked so hard on his paper and nobody was going to see it. In a world where so much is uncertain and feels like we could be living in the movie Groundhog Day over, doing things that matter can be motivating and give purpose to our days. There is no better time than to work on projects and tasks that are meaningful and authentic. Experiences, where learners get to solve a challenge that is meaningful and relevant to their context, can empower learners to take action and do something that matters to them and others.

Here are some questions to inspire authentic projects:

• What problems are you interested in working on?
• What do you want to learn more about?
• What do you know and what do you still need to learn?
• What resources i.e books, articles, videos might help you learn more?
• How does this connect to what you already know?
• What are some creative ways to solve this problem?
• Who are the experts you can learn from?
• How will you share what you are learning?

Critique + Revision

Especially now that our time together is non-existent I hear many say I just want them to turn in it and they get credit. I get it but let’s think about this another way. If our goal was to learn and improve rather than complete assignments, couldn’t we work on growth and spend time giving feedback and helping learners revise and improve their work?  This where the connection to personal and authentic work comes in. If you are working on goals that matter to you as an individual or have a bigger goal you can seek and use feedback. 

Instead of expecting the first draft to be the best, we need to realize that with time, clarity, critique, and revision, we are capable of much more than we realize. When we raise our expectations and create the conditions to achieve those expectations, people will often go above and beyond. It is important to deliberately create conditions where learners feel valued and can openly share challenges to grow and improve as a critical part of the learning process.  

Here are some ways you can focus on critique and revision:

Connect students with experts, peers, and other learners. This will allow for a different level of accountability and authentic feedback than one gets from simply handing something into a teacher for a grade. I love to use tuning protocols to give and get feedback in a structured way. 

Productive Struggle

I got a hard reminder of this over the past few weeks. 3 weeks ago we started the official distance learning program for my kids and my husband started official teaching too so we had a lot of new in the house. New passwords, programs, platforms, expectations, endless zoom calls, and check-in times and it was overwhelming. In addition to all the new expectations, my kids had to learn new habits and develop new skills to manage their own schedules and learn how to do what was expected of them.  We were still catching up on work at 6 pm and there were a lot of fo frustrations and challenges. Fast forward 3 weeks to today and my kids got up started working on their tasks and had finished their work by 10 am I was reminded that we had to go through this struggle to get to this point. It was new and we were all learning. It was messy and uncomfortable and hard but we worked through it and have better systems, expectations, and skills to work through it.

As parents and teachers, it is hard to not jump in when our children struggle but with so much on our plates, many don’t have a choice but to let learners figure it out. I think that if student can learn to navigate their own learning journeys, and develop the skills to navigate the learning pit as James Nottingham calls it, we will all be better off in the long run.  

Here are some ways that you can embrace productive struggle:

Provide a schedule or list for students and let them decide what to prioritize and when and where they will work. Work with them on how to figure out their problems not just solve them. Give them space and time to work through the challenges.

Models

Models are so powerful in the learning process but so often in school, we have this fear of copying or cheating.  There is a lot of talk about creating rather than consuming but to create something better, we need models to inspire new ideas, build off of and stimulate thinking and creativity. It’s also worth noting that if an assignment has only one right answer or final product, maybe there are some opportunities for it to be revised. 

Here are some ideas for using models:

My daughter loves watching baking shows and recreating her own version of what she has seen. Students can watch youtube tutorials, read how-to articles, check ou the latest TikTok video or their friends on flipgrid for examples and model to create their own ideas. This is an opportunity to make our learning public and learn and build off the many ideas out there to create something new and (hopefully) better.

Reflection

Reflection is often the forgotten part of the learning process, in a fast-moving world, taking time to pause and reflect can easily get cut when we lack time but it is often the most valuable part of the learning process. We have time to reflect, let’s make sure to do it!  I have been taking in so much new information as I talk to people and experience new things. I try and jot down my ideas in my journal or on post its but at least weekly I reflect publicly and blog about what I am learning personally but I have also tried to reflect on the week and capture the moments of my family week by week on Instagram. Taking in what I had learned from others, the feedback I receive and process what I am learning is critical to my growth.

Here are some ideas for reflection:

Ask students for feedback and to share what they have liked about remote learning, what they haven’t. Reflect together on what revision might be made. Students can keep a public or private journal, document their process on video, share pictures, and reflect on Instagram or TikTok  or even better is they (we) put it all together in digital portfolios. Spend time in your class meeting reflecting on learning or in 1:1 check-ins make space for students to reflect on their growth, challenges, and progress. Also, make sure you make time to reflect in these ways too, and share it with your students. 

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on the 10 characteristics for remote learning.  What am I missing?  What could be revised?