designing for difficulty: social pedagogy as a design framework for liberal education randy bass...

Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogy as a Design Framework for Liberal

Education

Randy BassGeorgetown University

April 20, 2012

Indiana UniversityScholarship of Teaching and Learning Seminar

Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, “Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course

Design in Undergraduate Education” (White Paper, forthcoming, 2012)

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Funded by the Teagle Foundation

Working group and case studies from 24 faculty on 14 campuses

Why Social Pedagogies?

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Digital stories created by students in general education history courses as a way of experiencing what it means to construct historical narrative.

Senior Biology majors creating biology lesson plans for implementing in DC Public Schools as a way of deepening their knowledge of biology as their senior thesis.

What do they have in common?

• In each example, students are developing their knowledge in contexts that centrally ask them to think of their audience as someone other than the professor.

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• In each example, learning is not only distinctly a social activity, but the implementation of social learning— the act of constructing and communicating understanding to an authentic audience— is a central part of the learning design of the course.

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• In each example, the evidence of learning was not necessarily in the “product.”

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Why social pedagogies?

• We believe it calls attention to an under-appreciated common thread of a growing range of effective pedagogical practices: the role of social learning as an essential and integrating component of rigorous course design that can achieve higher-end learning outcomes.

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“Chance favors the connected mind.”

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“Chance favors the connected mind.”

Steven Johnson

Integrative thinking

socially networked

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“She has to speak from a position of authority.”

Threshold Concepts (Meyer and Land) Ways of knowing, acting, and

speaking, and sometimes identity

Instructional Bottlenecks (David Pace)

Understanding where students get stuck based on disciplinary thinking


Critical thinking?Inquiry and Analysis?Oral Communication?Written Communication? Integrative Learning? Lifelong Learning?

Where do we find evidence of someone learning to speak from a position of authority?

Digital Stories

https://commons.georgetown.edu/projects/digitalstories/

For whom were you writing? I thought if I had never heard of this then other people haven’t…

I was definitely writing for my generation

I’m writing for others who had been tokenized

I wrote it for myself.

I’m writing for women, and definitely for young girls

Social Pedagogies

Framework

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Social pedagogies design framework*

* Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, White Paper, “Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design in Undergraduate Education.” 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation 18

“We define social pedagogies as design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an “authentic audience” (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course.

Social pedagogies build in iterative cycles of engagement with the most difficult material, and through a focus on authentic audience and representation of knowledge for others, help students deepen their understanding of core concepts by engaging in the ways of thinking, practicing, and communicating in a field. Ideally, social pedagogies strive to build a sense of intellectual community within the classroom and frequently connect students to communities outside the classroom.”*

Social pedagogies design framework*

Constructing and Communicating

Understanding for an Authentic Audience

* Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

Social Core

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Communicating Understanding

Authentic Audience

Constructing Understanding

Social Core

Design Layer

* Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation 20




Authentic Audience


Social Core

Design Layer


The interdependence of the three layers…

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Authentic Audience


Social Core

Design Layer





Deepened and contextualized understanding


Authentic Audience

Constructing Understanding Flexibility with knowledge in

open-ended contexts

Voice and a sense of purpose in a specific domain or community

Ability to give and get feedback from multiple perspectives

An integrated sense of intellectual and personal significance

Social Core

Design Layer

Broad student learning outcomes

* Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation23

Three findings for the effective application of social pedagogies to course design…

1. You have to value social pedagogies centrally (have a social pedagogies ethos) even if social pedagogies constitute only one component of a course experience.

2. Social pedagogies require the alignment of a constellation of elements (i.e. linking knowledge, practice, audience, assessment) and rarely work well in isolation or as an “add on” to a course design.

3. If you have social pedagogies in a course they must be valued, somehow, in assessment to have value for students.






Authentic Audience


open-ended contexts




Social Core

Design Layer



Case Study: Bioethics and Moral Imagination (Profs Bass and Little)

Case Study: Bioethics and Moral Imagination (Profs Bass and Little)

General education course: either Writing or Ethics

27 students

Bioethics topics:

Refusal of medical treatmentSexual refusal and Sexual flourishingAbortionEnhancement (cognitive, reproductive)

Initial Thoughts Survey

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Personal Synthesis (halfway point)

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Contraception Project

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Contraception and Conscience

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Contraception and Conscience

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“dually educate and engage readers to examine their own beliefs”

“academic endeavor through a bioethical lens”

Working Space: Wiki

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Committed Catholic Positions

Public Policy and Health

Conscientious objection (medical)

Working Space: Wiki

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Working Space: Wiki

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Working Space: Wiki

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• Key Source Documents• Empirical Data• Thoughtful Perspectives

Building the site

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Building the site

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Working Space

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Obama Video: Locating Evidence of Learning: Reflection (Blake, David, and Charlie)

: Bioethics and the Moral Imagination:Obama Video Annotation (Blake, David, Charlie)

Obama Video Annotation (Blake, David, Charlie)

Obama HHS Announcement Video

Working Space & Intermediate process

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Where is evidence of learning?

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And what is it that we’re looking for evidence of?

Web Literacy Assignment: Self Assessment


“The Obama video would not have been possible without the collaborative work of David and Charlie. The three of us met on three occasions for several hours to “hammer out” drafts of the video. I believe I made a large contribution to this aspect of the project and took a lot of initiative during each meeting to make sure we each knew what to do. Furthermore, I made sure that our annotations were related to either bioethics or the video directly. I focused on the “context” and “argument” annotations. I believe both of these helped me further apply bioethical principles, including conscientious objection, individual liberties, and equal access.”

From the Self-assessment by one of the Obama video annotators:

naming key concepts in bioethics

intermediate choices were being made (but no examples)


“Working on the Obama video annotation and American Congress of Obstetricians Gynecologists source document analysis allowed me to apply concepts of bioethical analysis within this project. Through these two tasks I learned the importance of examining information without letting personal predispositions guide my thinking. It was important to stay unbiased and simply look at the sources from a perspective of explaining the meaning and adding more depth to the conversation. In the beginning this was more difficult, but as the project progressed, I learned how to do it with greater success. I think my work on the video and source document shows my ability to analyze information from an unbiased, bioethical perspective that aims to increase contemplation of the topic at hand.”

Beginning to address how this work helps with what is “necessarily difficult” in bioethical analysis?




Authentic Audience


Social Core

Design Layer





Authentic Audience


Social Core

Design Layer



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Authentic Audience


Social Core

Design Layer







Authentic Audience


open-ended contexts




Social Core

Design Layer



Social Pedagogies and Questions of Evidence

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The Formal Curriculum

InformalLearning

Participatory culture

High-impact practices

Experiential Co-curriculum

What are the shared and salient features of participatory cultures in Web-based environments?

Jenkins, et. al., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (MacArthur Foundation, 2006)

wikipedia

Video gaming communities

grass roots organizations

fan sites

Participatory Culture of the Web

• Features of participatory culture – Low barriers to entry– Strong support for sharing one’s contributions– Informal mentorship, experienced to novice– Members feel a sense of connection to each other– Students feel a sense of ownership of what is being

created– Strong collective sense that something is at stake

Jenkins, et. al., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (MacArthur Foundation, 2006)

Formal undergraduate

curriculum

Experiential co-curriculum




curriculum




Study abroad

Ug research

Community-based learning


curriculum




Study abroad

Ug research


$$$

Mission and Brand

Core Practices

Core Values

Formal undergraduate curriculum

The recentered curriculum: from the perspective of high-impact learning

And a percentage of other courses that student identify as transformative and/or highly engaging…

High impact practices:

First-year seminarsCapstonesWriting-intensiveCourses w/ experiential component


The recentered curriculum: from the perspective of high impact learning

Study abroad

Undergraduateresearch


LeadershipSocial entrepreneurship

High-impact experiential curriculum



The recentered curriculum

From the perspective of significant learning, this is the new center of higher

education.

For a fuller treatment of that argument see a recent article in Educause Review, March/April 2012

High impact experiential curriculum



Moving target… What does learning look

like in this space? How do

we design to capture it?

Assess it?




The recentered curriculum

Authentic

Integrative

Social

Adaptive




The recentered curriculum: questions of evidence

Authentic

Integrative

Social

Adaptive

Capture of intermediate stages

Capturing and interpreting “activity”

NOVICE MIRACLE EXPERT

product product

Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

NOVICEprocesses

EXPERTpractice

LEARNINGprocesses

LEARNINGprocesses

How can we better understand these intermediate processes?

How might we design to foster and capture them?

evidence of process

Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

LEARNINGprocesses

Social pedagogies and intermediate processes…

(one version of) Learning Analytics

71SNAPP Group: http://ceit.uq.edu.au/content/snapp-group

(one version of) Learning Analytics

72Blackboard ™ Analytics / Bb Learn

Michael Smith & Ali Erkan, Ithaca College


• Using Wiki’s to teach history

• Students work in collaborative teams to write history wiki-texts on subjects that interest them in historical context




The recentered curriculum: questions of evidence

Authentic

Integrative

Social

Adaptive

Capture of intermediate stages

Capturing and interpreting “activity”

How to make meaning from experience: “reflection”

Comments [email protected]

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Thanks to:

Margaret Olivia Little (Philosophy, Georgetown)

Our students in Bioethics and the Moral Imagination

Heidi Elmendorf (Biology, Georgetown)

Steven Johnson, “Where Good Ideas Come From,” TED

Ali Erkan and Michael Smith

The Teagle Foundation

designing for difficulty: social pedagogy as a design framework for liberal education randy bass...

Documents

learning seminar slide

social pedagogies framework

learning design

role of social learning

social pedagogy

social activity

social core design layer

disciplinary thinking