The best learning experiences for me as learner and teacher have been those that relied on a community of practice approach. For example, as a teacher the ethics course I wrote about in a previous post Capturing the Unicorn was my best reviewed and rewarding course. As a learner my most enduring learning has also come from communities of practice approaches with the caveat that as a learner I need some structure built in with deadlines and deliverables otherwise my attention goes bouncing off towards other communities.
In my design work I rely on a template that was developed by the Centre of Learning Transformation at our college to develop a course map, then build out the lessons and activities from that position. I have never considered the “model” behind the tool. I just adopted the tool my colleagues developed for our institutions when we pivoted to online learning quickly and our instructors needed a guide to move courses online. Since Covid 19 took hold I have been more involved with designing learning. I learned how to do this through a course offered by the Centre of Learning Transformation at Coast Mountain College called “WALA 3410 Distributed Learning : Navigating the Strange Lands of Pedagogy at a Distance” where instructors were gathered to learn how to create online learning in response to the pivot. In that course we were given a template to build out our course maps. It has worked well for me. I have now built multiple online courses and even a program with it as the base but with the readings in this course I need to ask myself what model is this tool grounded in? Why was it put forward as the one to use during April 2020? In this post I am going to deconstruct that mapping tool and try to understand the model that underpins its use and consider the developers point of view for creating this map template. Dr. Carrie Nolan and Dr. Nicki Rehn were the creators of this map and gave me permission to share it on my blog here. I have added links of interest about their work below this post.
Here is a link to a video I created looking at the map being used to develop a course in the very early stages.
Here is a link to the business ethics map I am currently working with.
Link to the Ethics Course Map
If we relate this tool designed for instructors at our institution as a starting point we can see it includes the elements of design and develop from the ADDIE model. The map itself lays out how to design for learning with the goals of learners meeting the outcomes and requires a listing of the content assets of the course. The ADDIE model is criticized for being time consuming and while we see parallels of ADDIE with the mapping tool I think the need for speed did not allow us to adopt it fully instead they adopted Understanding by Design model, a model by Wiggins and McTighe that emphasizes enduring learnings and looks at the goals of the learning first and then uses the content and learning activities to support those goals. This model is developed in practice through backwards design. Backwards design has three steps (Wiggins, McTighe) which I believe align with my course map template.
1. Identifying what students should know and be able to do. Represented by the question “at the end of this week what should students be able to do?”
2. Create an assessment to measure the learning. Represented by “How will they be kept accountable to the required tasks?”
3. Plan a sequence of activities, content and lessons to complete the assessment. Represented by the questions “How will participants acquire the content? and “What will the students do to make sense of, rehearse, and apply concepts, and practice skills?”
It’s interesting to me to now see where that template sits within a model and start to link up the values of backwards design for me as the designer and instructor but also within an online context. While this template saved me over the past year I am now in a position to create rather than react after three semesters of online learning. I am curious about how other models may support my approach to teaching in online and blended spaces and what tools are available to engage with them or what tools I might create to engage with them. Some of the questions I am still wrestling with are where can I let go of some control and build opportunity for community of practice learning? Where can I take some risks? How much does the learning need to be assessed by me and where can it simply be assessed by the students themselves because they are the ones who need to understand their own value in the learning? If I do move to a community of practice online does the semester system and the confines of a 45 hour course really work anymore? How can I negotiate different timing considerations with the institutional systems I teach within? I feel incredibly lucky to have the platform of the backwards design tool that allowed us to move to online learning quickly and well over the past year. I am also excited to consider different models that can perhaps help push forward some creative and innovative ways of teaching supported by technology.
Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/
Information about Dr. Carrie Nolan and Dr. Nicki Rehn and some of their work with the Centre of Learning and Technology with CMTN.
Praxis and Pedagogy Episode 37 Pints and Pedagogy – Adam Nash and Dr. Rehn talk about how the Centre of Learning Transformation engages with instructors in a Community of Practice.
Praxis and Pedagogy II The Hidden Curriculum Episode 45 Adam Nash and Dr. Rehn come back to talk about Hidden Curriculum.
November 21, 2021 at 9:00 pm
Karen, your post was clear and provided insights into your thinking and working styles. I looked through the template and was delighted to see the question “How will they be kept accountable to the required tasks?” built into it. Your explanation in the video about embedding accountability without assessments and keeping learners accountable to each other was brilliant. And your question “If I do move to a community of practice online does the semester system and the confines of a 45 hour course really work anymore?” was spot on.
Your post revealed your learner-centric mindset and deep interest in finding a balance between providing autonomy and holding learners accountable.
Karen, can we ever be TRULY learner centric? I remember reading somewhere- maybe in one of our earlier courses, that learning in an organizational or institutional context can never be learner centric and is almost always learning centric. I am noticing this increasingly in my field of practice. There are too many stakeholder interests and investment in a program and who is learning takes a backseat to what they need to learn. It does bother me that our employees do not have much of an option to personalize their own learning, make sense and apply as needed- as consistency of learning is a critical concern especially in a customer service scenario where uniformity of service is stressed upon and expected as an outcome.
What are your thoughts around this?
Thank you for an interesting and thought provoking post.
November 21, 2021 at 9:00 pm
Karen, your post was clear and provided insights into your thinking and working styles. I looked through the template and was delighted to see the question “How will they be kept accountable to the required tasks?” built into it. Your explanation in the video about embedding accountability without assessments and keeping learners accountable to each other was brilliant. And your question “If I do move to a community of practice online does the semester system and the confines of a 45 hour course really work anymore?” was spot on.
Your post revealed your learner-centric mindset and deep interest in finding a balance between providing autonomy and holding learners accountable.
Karen, can we ever be TRULY learner centric? I remember reading somewhere- maybe in one of our earlier courses, that learning in an organizational or institutional context can never be learner centric and is almost always learning centric. I am noticing this increasingly in my field of practice. There are too many stakeholder interests and investment in a program and who is learning takes a backseat to what they need to learn. It does bother me that our employees do not have much of an option to personalize their own learning, make sense and apply as needed- as consistency of learning is a critical concern especially in a customer service scenario where uniformity of service is stressed upon and expected as an outcome.
What are your thoughts around this?
Thank you for an interesting and thought provoking post.
November 22, 2021 at 11:03 am
Hi Karen,
This is great! Through this course, I too am finding significant value in making connections between my current ID processes and the models and theories that are responsible for their beginnings.
I learned about the understanding by design model in the Curriculum Development and Instructional Design course I completed at Mount Royal University. This model, along with ADDIE proved especially useful and has helped shape my process in the design of both facilitated and online learning in my corporate training roles.
Your post has inspired me to build a similar tool to share with my team that draws from the principles of these models (and others we are exploring in this course) that may help them in their design process even if their knowledge of the underpinning theories and models is limited. I think a similar tool would also be valuable when I am selecting and adapting ID models to fit different learning contexts.
Melissa
November 22, 2021 at 11:03 am
Hi Karen,
This is great! Through this course, I too am finding significant value in making connections between my current ID processes and the models and theories that are responsible for their beginnings.
I learned about the understanding by design model in the Curriculum Development and Instructional Design course I completed at Mount Royal University. This model, along with ADDIE proved especially useful and has helped shape my process in the design of both facilitated and online learning in my corporate training roles.
Your post has inspired me to build a similar tool to share with my team that draws from the principles of these models (and others we are exploring in this course) that may help them in their design process even if their knowledge of the underpinning theories and models is limited. I think a similar tool would also be valuable when I am selecting and adapting ID models to fit different learning contexts.
Melissa
November 25, 2021 at 7:55 am
Hi, Karen,
We enjoyed this post describing some of your early teaching experiences.
What you described in the ethics course that became the base of conversation for students from your course and those just popping by does not describe a class with a lack of planning. Instead, if it had not been an accident, it is a fine example of Community of Inquiry (COI), open pedagogy, and critical pedagogy where students are allowed to contribute to the content and the means towards meeting the learning outcomes.
You may find it interesting to explore some of these pedagogies more deeply, as they are likely naturally aligned to your teaching philosophy. We are glad to see you reflecting on that happy accident that is reflective of teaching excellence.
Lisa & Leeann
November 25, 2021 at 7:55 am
Hi, Karen,
We enjoyed this post describing some of your early teaching experiences.
What you described in the ethics course that became the base of conversation for students from your course and those just popping by does not describe a class with a lack of planning. Instead, if it had not been an accident, it is a fine example of Community of Inquiry (COI), open pedagogy, and critical pedagogy where students are allowed to contribute to the content and the means towards meeting the learning outcomes.
You may find it interesting to explore some of these pedagogies more deeply, as they are likely naturally aligned to your teaching philosophy. We are glad to see you reflecting on that happy accident that is reflective of teaching excellence.
Lisa & Leeann