Building Independent Learners

As any parent or teacher knows, children learn best when they solve problems on their own. In this week’s module of our class Digital Learning Environments, I chose to look at how ISTE Coaching Standard 3e, which calls for  troubleshooting “basic software, hardware, and connectivity problems common in digital learning environments,” could be applied in K-5 elementary Technology and Computer Science classes. In this post I wanted to not only find digital tools that could support this standard, but more importantly, understand best practices for helping students solve problems they encounter when learning to code or use various software or hardware devices.

Student Choice

The most logical way to encourage independence in students is to “…harness [their] intrinsic motivation to learn” (Cooper, 2017) by offering choice, particularly with regard to subject matter or the medium they use to express their learning. By allowing choice, teachers send the signal to students that their interests and voices are worthwhile. In return, students are often willing to persevere through challenges that arise, assuming there are supports in place to help them be successful. 

Questions are Better than Answers

Allowing students to choose also shows there are multiple ways to approach a problem. It is unlikely that everyone in the class will pursue the same topic if given a choice, or come to the same conclusion or answer. In the article “Avoiding Learned Helplessness,” Miller (2015) stresses that teachers need to stop giving students the answers and instead use questions to “…probe students’ thinking and push them to think about their learning.” It’s often easy to look at a student’s code and see what is causing them problems, for example. But instead of giving them the answer, we should ask them what they are trying to do, what happens when they break their code into smaller pieces, etc. It takes more time, but it will help students know what to do the next time they encounter a similar problem.

Support Comes Before Independence

It quickly became clear in my research that the best way to help students become independent is to provide the proper support. Just as we can’t throw the car keys to a teenager and expect them to drive, we can’t expect students to act independently until they have been shown what independent learning looks like and have practiced how to do it. I created a mind map while researching the topic and was a little surprised to see that over three-quarters of the nodes on the map were devoted to scaffolding and supports.  Figure 1 shows some top level categories of independent learning support for students, based on my research.

1. Share Learning Goals with Students

It seems obvious, but students have the right to know what the goals are for their learning. Letting them in on the “secret” makes them partners in their own education and helps them pay closer attention to salient information.

In his article “How Can Educators Best Promote Student Agency,” Ross Cooper (2017) stresses to be sure and distinguish between standards and learning targets. He said standards can have “…multiple independent actions” which should be broken into multiple learning targets. Also, goals should be presented in “student-friendly language” and ideally should be in the form of a question. An example in a 3rd grade Computer Science lesson might be: “How can we get a program to make a decision between two or more choices when we need it to? The actual standard addressed is “Create programs that include sequences, events, loops, and conditionals.” (Washington State Computer Science K–12 Learning Standards, 2018), a much broader and probably less interesting goal to a 3rd grader!

2. Make Resources Available

Cooper (2017) says “Do not lock it or block it: If students are going to design and drive their learning, they must possess the tools to do so.” This not only means making tools available, but also teaching students how to use them. 

Curation tools such as Wakelet, Padlet, and Webjet.io, which was recommended on the Cult of Pedagogy website (Gonzales, 2019), can be used by teachers to display and organize tools or procedures that they want students to access when they need help. (OneNote, Google Docs or SeeSaw classrooms could also use those tools for curation.) For this post, I spent time using both Wakelet and Webjet.io. I liked that Webjet.io has more sophisticated options for organizing content, including cards, boards, folders, mind maps and lists, but I found the interface harder to use than Wakelet. (Figure 2 shows screenshots from both products.) 

In addition to using text-based prompts or professional videos as resources, the article “6 Strategies for Promoting Student Autonomy” (Hockett and Doubet, 2017) recommends that teachers record directions and post them in a folder online so students can replay them as needed. Recordings can be something as simple as an audio recording or a video of the teacher giving instructions (either using video conferencing or screen-recording apps such as ScreenCastify or Screencast-O-Matic).  Teachers can also use GIFs to create short, animated how-to lessons. For example, Figure 3 was created with Screentogif to show how to open the Scratch “Getting Started” tutorial.

Of course old-fashioned anchor charts, laminated cards and paper checklists work too, but the benefit to the digital tools is they can be easily customized and reused without physical wear and tear.

classmates as a resource 

“…Think broadly about the word resource. People are resources, texts are resources, and community organizations are resources.”

Miller (2015)

Fellow students can be a huge resource and teachers should encourage and facilitate student collaboration. In tech and Computer Science classes, collaboration can include pair and buddy programming, designating class experts for apps or procedures, or providing online space to share or discuss projects or tips. 

3. Provide Predictability

“When students know the ‘content, duration, and/or consequences of future events’ their level of engagement rises and problem behaviors decline – a good definition of motivation.”

Wright (2015) referencing Kern & Clemens, 2007, p. 67

Predictability in the classroom gives students a greater sense of ease and control. Teachers can do this in tech and computer science classes by posting a schedule of what students will be doing that day and how long they will have to work on each step (Wright, 2015).  For pair programming, Lewis (2016) recommends using timers to switch between Navigator and Driver roles and also telling students how long they will be working together.

Another tool recommended by Cult of Pedagogy (Gonzales, 2019) is ClassroomQ, an app that allows students to add themselves to an online queue for help. Teachers can see the order in which students have added their names, as well as their questions. What I like about this app is that students have to concisely describe their questions, are given a sense of control (they can see how many students are ahead of them in the queue), and can continue working on the lesson while they wait.  Teachers can also quickly see if multiple students are having the same problem so they can stop and review the topic with the whole class. Obviously this tool is better suited to older elementary and above, but I look forward to trying it next year. Figure 4 shows the Teacher and Student views of the app.

4. Break Things into Manageable Chunks

Wright (2015) recommends using checklists for complex academic tasks and transitions. The checklists should include the sequence of steps needed to complete the task, project, or transition, and instructions for completing each of the steps. Examples in a tech class might range from how to safely carry and log onto a laptop to how to connect and program a MakeyMakey board. I plan to create posters for the daily activity checklists using Canva or Piktochart to display in the classroom. Checklists for individual projects can be kept online using the curation tools described in “Make Resources Available” above.

5. Model What You Want to See

A combination of traditional and digital tools can be used to share artifacts and behaviors that we would like our students to model, including:

• Project Goals –  Video, images, or digital text can show exemplary work (Cooper, 2017) that students can access, analyze and compare with their own.
• Collaboration Skills – such as a demonstration of what pair or buddy programming interactions should look like, either in-person (Lewis, 2016) or in this Code.org video. 
• Problem Solving Skills – providing access to what Wright (2015) calls “fix-up skills” or lists of procedures to follow or prompts to use if students get stuck. The Collaborative Discussion Framework (Park and Lash, 2014) is a helpful resource. 

6. Give Feedback and Encouragement

To become independent learners, students need to know where they are going, how they are doing along the way (so they can course-correct if needed) and finally, whether their work met the goals they established with their teacher. Digital tools provide many means of providing feedback and encouragement to students. Teachers and other students can comment directly in student work using Google docs, add verbal or written feedback in classroom notebooks like Microsoft OneNote or on communication and classroom management platforms like Edmodo or SeeSaw.

For Computer Science classes, teachers and the students themselves can see their progress in Code.org and Google’s CS First curriculum. In Scratch, teachers and students can remix code with added comments. Students can also give each other feedback and encouragement when they try out each other’s coded games, quizzes, or presentations. Finally, if students keep an online computer science journal where they plan out their coding projects and include pseudo code and links or screen shots of code they’ve written, along with comments about what they’ve learned, teachers and students can use these to review and celebrate their progress.

References

Cooper, R. (2017). How can educators best promote student agency? EducationDive.com. Retrieved from: https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-can-educators-best-promote-student-agency/508050/

Gonzales, J. (2019). 6 Ed tech tools to try in 2019. Cult of Pedagogy. Retrieved from: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/ed-tech-tools-2019/

ISTE Standards for coaches (2011). ISTE. Retrieved from: https://www.iste.org/standards/for-coaches

Lewis, C. (2016; N.D.) CS Teaching Tips: Tips for pair programming. CSTeachingTips.org. Retrieved from: 

Video (2016):  https://youtu.be/TWj78n4ZuMY 

PDF (N.D.): http://csteachingtips.org/tips-for-pair-programming

Miller, A. (2015). Avoiding learned helplessness. Edutopia. Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/avoiding-learned-helplessness-andrew-miller

Creative Technology Research Lab (N.D.). Peer collaboration during K-12 Computer Science instruction. Retrieved from: https://ctrl.education.illinois.edu/TACTICal/Collaboration

Park, M., & Lash, T. (2014) Collaborative discussion framework. Original link retrieved from: https://ctrlshift.mste.illinois.edu/2015/04/03/collaborative-discussion-framework/; google doc with more detail: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rx7d9iUr_sLra2ylcH4Z-h6NqWjAeoAmesDqJbxCrJw/edit

Washington State Computer Science K–12 Learning Standards (2018).  Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Retrieved from: https://www.k12.wa.us/student-success/resources-subject-area/computer-science/computer-science-k-12-learning-standards

Wright, J. (2015). Counteracting ‘learned helplessness’: 10 quick classroom strategies. Effective Behavioral Interventions. Retrieved from: https://www.interventioncentral.org/sites/default/files/workshop_files/es_boces_2015_16/ten_strategies_classroom_learned_helplessness.pdf