FAQ

When making a paradigm shift like that involved in constructing a learner-active, technology-infused classroom, many questions and concerns may arise. The following questions and answers have been prepared based on those concerns most frequently voiced during the "shifting" process.

What is a learner-active, technology-infused classroom?

It's a place where students are actively engaged in every aspect of their learning, including goal-setting, scheduling time, use of resources, communicating/collaborating with others, and evaluation. It's not a movement; it's not a fad; it's a philosophy based on research on learning, feedback from those in the work world, and good sense. No university, company, or person can claim this idea as their own. It is a universal goal in education today.

Does this mean that the teacher doesn't teach anymore?

No, but it does cause us to define the word "teach." Teaching should not mean standing in the front of the room presenting information to students (if this is all teaching is, then the Internet can take over the job). That's just one way to teach. Designing well-crafted problems that will lead students to build skills is teaching. Sitting with a group of students discussing their work is teaching. Providing instruction to an individual or a small group is teaching. Asking questions at a variety of levels (from comprehension to metacognition) is teaching. Teachers spend a lot of time facilitating learning through planning, coaching, and direct instruction.

Do students spend all their time working in groups?

No. Each student is part of a "home group" (typically 3 - 5 students) which stays the same for the duration of the transdisciplinary thematic unit. The home group begins the day by looking at what needs to be accomplished and scheduling the day. Some of the activities planned will be group work, some will be individual work, some will be giving attention to the teacher in a lesson. The home group gives each student support and students are encouraged to use one another for clarification of directions. This helps them learn the importance of a team or community. Academic achievement, however, is an individual accomplishment. Collaboration works best when individuals each have something to bring to the process.

So what types of group work do students do?

Collaborative activities should present students with an open-ended problem to solve, that is, a problem with no one right answer. It may be a math problem that could be approached through a variety of ways. It may be to present a solution to an environmental or societal problem. It may be to make a prediction. These problems cause students to need information and skills. At this point, students would turn to the teacher, a textbook, a peer, technology, or some other resource to find information and build skills. Individual students should first do some information finding, thinking, and brainstorming before coming together as a group. Then the group comes together to discuss ideas and complete the assignment. The teacher carefully creates the assignment to allow for both individual and group work. Simply having a group of students complete a short-answer worksheet, look up vocabulary words, or answer comprehension questions are not examples of good collaborative work and are not encouraged.

Will my student's grade suffer from group work?

If the above plan is followed, students will benefit from collaboration and learn together. In addition to a shared grade for the collaborative part of the assignment, students are graded on the individual pieces of the assignment, homework and any many other individual assignments, quizzes, and tests. So group grades should represent only a small portion of your child's overall grade. The only exception to this is in cases where students are unaccustomed to working as a group and take advantage of the social situation, thereby not staying on task. In this case, the skills necessary for strong group work must be developed. Typically, with teacher facilitation, this problem corrects itself quickly.

What if one student does all the work?

One student should never carry the weight of the group. If that happens, the teacher needs to reevaluate the structure of the task itself (and any accompanying rubrics for group and individual work). The assignment should have specific tasks for each student to complete. The teacher should facilitate that work and deal accordingly with students who are not doing their share.

What if the teacher doesn't see the problems the students are having?

During the time that students are in the room, the teacher's job is to be continually circulating and facilitating, unless giving a full class lesson or mini-lesson. The teacher is never attending to other tasks (such as grading papers or writing lesson plans) sitting at his/her desk, working independently on the computer, etc. Working in this way, the teacher has a very good understanding of the capabilities of each student and the interactions of each group. Teachers report knowing much more about their children and their individual strengths/weaknesses than they did when teaching from the front of the room.

Is this process in the experimental stage?

Absolutely not! This type of instruction is well supported by research. The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (affiliated with Columbia University) studies and documents classrooms like these in order to help others make the same transition. "Attention has been turned to active learning, and a century-old concern for independent work and competition - a focus on the more individual dimension of human existence - is slowly receding in favor of more cooperative learning relationships - a focus on the social dimension of human existence" (Murphy, 1991, p. 20). Studies have shown that such classrooms report increases in achievement, higher-order thinking skills, self-esteem, and positive attitudes toward those who are culturally or racially different.

What is the purpose of the round tables?

Today's work world is a very collaborative place; most business projects are accomplished by teams. You don't often hear of the individual inventor anymore. We have realized that two heads really are better than one. Yet, in traditional classrooms, children rarely, if ever, work with one another in truly collaborative ways. In learner-active classrooms, students work as parts of collaborative teams. That doesn't mean that they only work as a team. Even if you move four student desks together, each student "owns" a space and there are two huge cracks dividing the work surface. Small round tables enable students to share both the task and the space. We find that round tables greatly enhance the work environment, open up more classroom space, and reduce the noise level resulting from students trying to talk across large desks.

Isn't individual achievement important?

Absolutely! We're not suggesting that students should never work alone, but even when they have individual work to accomplish (computational skills or writing, for example), they still have a home group to which they belong. This group provides support, encouragement, feedback, and assistance. Students can still work independently or at round tables. Some teachers keep a few desks for students who need or want privacy when working, but that's usually not the case.

What kinds of activities are students doing?

Instructional activities are not primarily focused on completing short answer, skill worksheets, though skill building is one of the kinds of activities in which students are engaged. Instructional activities are largely focused on applying learning to complex situations requiring higher-order thinking skills. The lower-order skills are considered to be 1) recalling information, 2) comprehending information; and 3) analyzing information. The higher skills are considered to be 4) applying information to new situations; 5) creating new information; 6) evaluating the creation of that new information. Students need all six of these skills. Conventional instruction focuses on the lower-order skills in hopes of someday building to the higher-order skills. The learner-active classroom begins with the higher-order skills, recognizing that in order to, for example, apply information to new situations, the student must be able to recall, comprehend, and analyze it. So the lower-order skills are taught and learned in order to achieve the overall goal of the higher-order instructional task. Skill development is emphasized and valued but not as an end unto itself, rather as a means of completing more complex tasks.

What about homework?

Homework is important! It is difficult, however, to take group work home. Therefore, all group work should be done inside the classroom only! Students should be doing homework that builds individual skills or prepares for work with a group. If the student has too little homework, the teacher needs to see if the student is simply rushing through work in school to avoid homework. If the student has too much homework, the teacher needs to see if the student is having difficulty with the work or with managing time.

Isn't this putting a lot of responsibility on the student?

It may seem that way, but students today have a lot of responsibility placed on their shoulders, particularly with many parents working and students finding themselves responsible for taking care of younger brothers and sisters or making good use of their time alone. Children today have to deal with strangers, drugs, violence, and other less than desirable situations. What better place to build responsibility than in school? Teachers need to build the skills students need to manage time and resources as much as they build academic skills. Students cannot be expected to suddenly take on a host of new responsibilities, so teachers build these responsibilities into the day over time. In the beginning of the year, typical fifth graders may plan a total of an hour of their day; by the end of the year they're planning the whole day.

So students have a list of "things to do" and spend the day working on them?

Not exactly. Some of those "things to do" are teacher-directed lessons and class discussions. It is important, however, that the student sees the bigger picture, understands how the various activities fit together under a greater concept theme, and plan the time that is flexible around the times that are planned by the teacher. For that reason, students are given a written overview of, for example, the events of the week. This should not be a checklist of textbook assignments, but a list of the problem-based activities to be solved and long-term projects with perhaps a few textbook and other assignments. By and large, the need for a student to complete a workbook page or worksheet arises out of tackling the problem or project, not "because it's Tuesday, and that's where we are in the book."