Early on, the promise of MOOCs was simply to make education globally available and scale to many more people than a single classroom could allow. That has certainly come true in exciting ways, but it goes farther than that. Some perceive that the promise of MOOCs are meant to provide a more efficient way of delivering the same kind of conventional learning that we had growing up: there are 'right' and 'wrong' answers, teachers knew everything and were responsible for getting the 'right' answers into your brain and you were meant to absorb knowledge. And MOOCs certainly do that, too: xMOOCs are generally known to deliver this kind of education (x = extension of our existing education system).
But the really profoundly exciting thing that's emerging with MOOCs is this flavor of learning that has more to do with people directing their own learning, learning from peers, figuring things out for themselves, evolving understanding, dynamic and changing perspectives, and a broad 'classroom' that merges with 'life' in satisfyingly messy ways. This has been come to be known as cMOOCs (c = connectivist, focusing on social influences within the learning landscape). You can read my words and intellectualize it as 'oh, good to know' but go and do a cMOOC yourself - if you have an ounce of dedication to your own learning and a bit of curiosity, just see if you don't get excited and a bit transformed! This has to do with how we feel about ourselves and what we want out of life. Your learning will never be the same.
Now that I'm in the throes of designing a cMOOC, I'm learning that there is an even deeper level of potential inherent in this learning movement. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of MOOCs is that it has the potential to overtly move into the space of personal psychology, beliefs and habits the way that 'Education' never did. This is profoundly exciting if it can come to pass because it means that learning can build up and leverage creative skills; learning becomes a dynamic attitude and habit intrinsic to the learner. It has significant implications for cultural mindset and the development of proactive and enterprising groups of people. But for this to be so, the MOOC has to be designed and delivered in a way that facilitates it. It doesn't just happen by taking any online class.
I'd like to share some principles that are emerging for me in my experience of designing a cMOOC.
First, some background about this cMOOC: I am working with a small group of women around the world to design a cMOOC for professional teacher development (PTD). Now, that may seem a bit dry and stuffy, but we wanted to do it in a way very different from traditional PTD programs. The cMOOC will be called "Five Habits of Highly Creative Teachers" and launched on the Canvas Network (date TBD). Delivering a PTD offering to teachers via a cMOOC will inherently get into that space of non-traditional, which was our primary objective when we started. Teachers will be able to expand their thinking with this new experience and new platform for learning. And teachers get to practice using technology by virtue of taking this class; for those who feel like technology is leaving them behind, this is a powerful practical opportunity.
Here's the the clincher: we had the additional goal of getting the teacher to have more creativity in the classroom as a result of their professional teacher development. How to do this was less clear. Just providing a cMOOC wasn't going to make this happen. Thankfully, the women I work with are steeped in what it means to be creative and practice creativity. To pull this off, we needed to figure out how to design a cMOOC in such a way that scaffolds the exploration and practice of creative habits and solutions. That's less straightforward, but I believe we're cracking that nut, and it's very, very exciting!
What follows is a draft of a diagram I made to represent the journey we intend to take teachers on in our cMOOC "Five Habits of Highly Creative Teachers." I have been working with Cathleen Nardi, Strawberry-Blue Olive, Melissa Goodwin and Maureen Maher in the creation of this cMOOC and they have, in no small way, profoundly influenced how I think about MOOCs and what it means to learn with and from others.
Don't use a shoehorn if you can help it
This is the only 'mechanical' or technical thing on my list. MOOC platforms provide templates that you can use to deliver your content/lessons. To some extent, the template will constrain/allow you to certain styles of delivery. Sometimes those platforms represent traditional views of what learning means. For instance, you might find a template that suggests you will be delivering lectures and having graded quizzes. It may suggest that you need to provide a syllabus. Don't let the template dictate your approach. There are so many technical tools available to us - more than at any point in history. If your approach is different from templates available to you, break the mold and hack your way to your vision of the learning experience. Personally, I like project-based platforms for creative learning, and I would certainly incorporate social streams that allows embedding of media and the facilitation of conversations. Likewise, don't restrict students to the learning platform if you can help it. Let them loose with the wealth of technical expressive media available.
Create 'lessons' of exploration
Not for a moment did we consider creating content aimed at directing teachers to look up, absorb and demonstrate understanding. That already exists in spades on the internet and causes eyes to glaze over. Having access to content isn't learning, it's access to content. And as far as we're concerned, the content can sit there until we need it and can be bothered to look it up.
What emerges for me, is that creative teaching consists of 1) asking well crafted, open ended questions with loose boundaries around the space of exploration and 2) creating something as a means of exploring, understanding and explaining something (project based lessons). These approaches allow learners to examine and challenge personal beliefs, and have personal and dynamic understandings. Additionally, they require students to practice playing, being curious, supposing, asking good questions, and figure out why/how we know what we know. Creating something is an act of physically manifesting an understanding and making it matter.
Provide provocative and inspiring ways of thinking
We refrain from delivering our own knowledge as a form of a 'right' answer. Whatever expertise we may have as instructors, we're exploring using that expertise to set up 'triggers' within the topic that will serve as provocations toward certain discussions. 'Triggers' can simply be a question framed in an idiosyncratic way, or inspiring videos full of new tangents. Anything with that takes what you think you know and puts it on the edge of what you know, ready for action. Coming up with 'triggers' is no small thing - it's a bit of an art and takes a not only a depth of knowledge, but having had certain revelations ourselves. We could pass our insights directly on to students, but what better favor could we give them but to help them have their own? And the deeper and richer, the better!
Call attention to beliefs and frames
Remember that I'm talking about teaching creative learning. Creativity is based in abductive reasoning. You can't get to it or practice it from a place of deductive or reductive reasoning. Crudely put, abductive reasoning is systematic guessing that uses observation and hypotheses to inform. It leads to multiple possible valid answers as opposed to one 'correct' answer. In the use of abductive reasoning, you rely on what you suppose and test it against what you currently believe to be true. This is where your beliefs come into play. If you happen to believe a very particular set of things, it's from that perspective that you will generate your set of possible answers. By being aware of your beliefs, and possibly suspending your beliefs by framing the situation in different ways, you can open the gates wider to additional answers. But it's not always easy to be in touch with what you believe much less allow it to be malleable. Willingness to change your beliefs can unleash creativity beyond pre-existing boundaries. You can also suppose things that you don't actually believe to be true and use your beliefs to try to contextualize realities that could make it true. By directly calling out and examining beliefs in lessons (what do you think? how do you see this?), we are able to increase awareness and be deliberate in directing our attention creatively.
Provide situations where practice provides learning
I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between skills, talents and habits when it comes to how we acquire and practice knowledge. When you start looking at 'knowing' as a byproduct of having practiced something, it might be fair to say that skill, talent and habit all start to refer to the same thing even if there are nuanced differences: they all become the ability to act proficiently and progressively based on what you currently know. Whatever it is that you want to call it, the truth is that our current version of skills are too basic to tend to today's nonlinear, interconnected and complex challenges. In order to get to these more sophisticated skills, we need to come at things in a completely different way that has to do with practicing abductive reasoning (see above) and not waiting to be told what to do (see below). The ability to practice these things are only possible if you're willing to not be right (fail), have a provisional attitude (iterate) and make things. cMOOCs that deliberately provide situations where one can practice these kinds of skills provide a profound learning environment.
Conduct learning activities around both personal and shared understandings
It's one thing to figure something out for yourself but to share it with others while also being open to influence is a skill unto itself. Creative learning requires that we tend to exploration on both fronts: figure out where you are with it and adjust it according to outside influences as you see fit. It's a very interconnected learning model. But you can't get anywhere if you're not clear where you are first. So I like the idea of having individual exercises where you take the time to reflect on and explore what something means to you. And then exercises that involve group work whether it's another exercise or a critique or a feedback system where ideas can evolve and grow together. Inevitably the group work will wrap back around and inform the individual exercise (it turns into a big cycle) and that's what we want to see happen, and that's what we want to support. Explicit structures that allow for it help people figure out how to model it for themselves purposefully.
Appeal to and dwell in the space of intrinsic motivation
I'd like to say that the days of doing what people tell you to do are gone, but the truth is they're still here. We're still programmed to obtain approval by successfully achieving what someone tells you to do. When you do something, you expect something as compensation. That compensation provides external motivation. But in truth, the longevity of your learning and degree of thriving depend on your own sense of personal satisfaction. We know from Teresa Amabile (professor and director of research at Harvard Business School, author of The Progress Principle and Creativity in Context) that "The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it's in the arts, sciences, or business." Getting a t-shirt, a degree, a certificate or a trophy can be very motivating, but it's motivation with a limit.
Education reform needs to figure out how to help people do things whether there is an external reward or not. There are two ways to go about this:
- Come at it from the passion side of things: Passion is largely oblivious of and independent from external rewards. When people are passionate about something, they'll do it even in the face of potential failure (and often despite failing). They'll also do it without a carrot dangling in front of them.
- Come at it from the 'had enough' side of things: If you have a group of people who are uncomfortable about how things are, you have better chances at appealing to their intrinsic motivation because they want change, not tchotchkes.
Take teachers. Teachers tend to get into the teaching profession because it is a 'calling' for them. They do it out of service to others. Their passion is inextricably bound to the positive change they can bring to their students. It's great that they get paid but studies show that for teachers, payment is a way to meet economic necessity, not compensation for doing a certain quality of work. It's their passion that keeps them in the thick of it and motivates them around doing more, doing better, etc.
On the other hand, teachers who may be disenchanted with how they're supported, trusted and valued are more likely to take our "Five Habits of Highly Creative Teachers" MOOC if they believe they will get support, trust, value, and empowerment across a number of fronts. They don't need a prize to get them to take the course; they believe they will be able to take change into their own hands.
Same goes for a bored kid. If they get bored enough, they'll figure out something else to do. They'll do it because they want a change of state, not because they're seeking rewards. If we figure out how to not have to cross through boredom to help them follow their passions we'll all be golden!
Make it a journey
It turns out that how we practice learning is much more profound than the content we obtain. Not to trivialize what we learn, it's just that what we learn may not stay 'true' through our life and at some point we may be revisiting what we think we know. I find 'learning outcomes' to be kind of funny, paradoxical and no longer helpful in the broader context of education. It implies that all learning should be aimed at fixed outcomes. The truth is that the world as we know it is always changing. Exploration and curiosity are critical skills to have if we intend to keep up with it. In my personal experience as a designer, the way we address this is by infusing our cMOOC with activities that make the process more obvious. We talk about what we thought of when we reached for an answer, what it caused us to think about, what questions it caused us to ask and what kinds of artifacts we created in attempt to understand it.
What we get from taking a journey and practicing exploration is both knowledge and wisdom (what a sweet bonus!).