ALIGN THE DESIGNS

The LEARNING M!X, A BRIDGING CONCEPT BETWEEN SRL-SCHOOLS AND EDTECH

Introduction

The Learning M!X is a comprehensive framework that integrates innovative school practices with EdTech. Developed via design thinking with innovative schools and EdTech partners, The Learning M!X provides a common language and structure for the development of a consistent approach within schoolteams towards SRL related class management. On the other hand it also provides a framework for the development of new features. The two ends combined would also serve als a way to exchange of best practices between schools and teachers.

At the core of The Learning M!X is the idea of learners taking ownership of their learning process. This is achieved by dividing lesson preparation into smaller, manageable learning activities, which are organized into sets and guided by didactic rules of play. Teachers are empowered to design their own templates or blueprints for their specific teaching practices, and EdTech can adapt to the context-specific needs of each teacher and school.

The Learning M!X concept also focuses on the activation of metacognition and self-regulated learning (SRL) in students, which has been shown to have a significant impact on learning efficiency. By providing a structured approach to support SRL in both digital and physical learning contexts, The Learning M!X is a valuable tool for teachers and EdTech providers alike in ensuring the effective integration of digital learning into K-12 education.

WHY?

POINT OF NO RETURN

Digital learning is on the agenda! More than that, it has found its way into many practices. There, a certain pandemic has provided an acceleration, so to speak - a digital "booster injection". That brings us on our current point of no return in digital enhanced learning for K12 education. In itself we may call this a good thing, but the challenge now is to ensure that during that digital learning, students are learning well.

Betting on metacognition and SRL is therefore a particularly good idea from a scientific point of view. Also finding a good balance between digital and physical learning is important. Can digital tools facilitate self-regulated learning (SRL) both in digital and physical learning contexts?

Metacognition & SRL

Without metacognition, no learning! We put it a bit sharply here, but the power of metacognition, or actively managing one's own learning process, is scientifically very strong and has a huge effect on learning efficiency. A systematic approach to support SRL digitally in the learning context is appropriate (Mooij, 2009). The INSTALL-ed project zooms in on exactly that! Metacognition is activated when learners feel ownership of their learning process and can develop confidence in it. Especially when their learning environment gradually helps them grow in that autonomy. We speak in that context of growing in Self Regulated Learning (SRL, Self Regulated Learning, Zimmerman 2001). But how can you manage SRL? And can digital tools make that proces more manageable for teachers?

The learners Ownership

Without ownership, no metacognition! Both our education system and the current EdTech market (providers of software and digital learning materials for education) have grown from a pattern of thought in which it is the teacher and by extension software and e-content providers that holds the reins of that learning process. In this project we investigated how to deal with this in a different way. In other words, how the student can gradually take more control of his or her own learning process. And how EdTech can overcome some systemic problems, and even more, facilitate innovative school practices that empower learners in their autonomy, self-regulated learning and collaborative learning.

Bridging the Gap: A Generic Concept for Integrating School Didactics and EdTech

The LEARNING M!X

A concept? We needed an integrating concept that bridges several innovative school practices with each other and with EdTech. GO! one of our parters in INSTALL-ed had developed a LMS in co-creation with 4 innovatieve school practices. A competency based evaluation practice, a project based learning practice, a flexible learning space practice and a co-teaching practice.

A common language? The Learning M!X concept provides a common framework a common language that can support a multitude of didactic innovations on the one hand, but give learning platforms and EdTech a generic structure/architecture for the development of new features on the other hand.

The Learning M!X. This generic structure can also, at the same time facilitate the exchange of good practices between teachers and schools. The underlying question in all these innovations was: 'How can we gradually give learners more ownership in their own learning process, with features that strengthen learners in growing their SRL skills and teachers in their coaching role regarding SRL?

Learning activities as a fundamental corer stone. If we want learners to be able to learn autonomously, it is good to zoom in on the word learning activity. When learners could have an overview of each learning activity (digital as well as physical), in one overview, when those learning activities are also small achievable steps, then that learner can navigate more autonomously through that learning process than when we speak of a classroom and linear conceived learning process where the direction for all learners is continuously in the hands of the teacher. In other words, dividing a lesson preparation into learning activities can give more direction and autonomy to learners.

Sets & rules. Of course, when we do that, it is also good to remember that learners do not automatically have the skills to navigate learning activities on their own. We need to provide those learning activities in a structure that helps them to understand the learning process (see sets), but we also need to support them with tools and understandings that help them to build their self-regulatory skills along the way (see didactic rules of play)

Blueprints & EdTech. These learning process structures (sets) differ according to the approach of a teacher, team or school. therefore, it is good to think about how you as a teacher design sets and ground rules depending on your didactic praxis. Do you work project-oriented, do you work on remediation, do you work theme-oriented, do you do co-teaching. Thinking about sets and rules depends on the specific praxis. Teachers should be able to design their learning M!X templates or blueprints, that they can use every time they prepare a week, a project, a theme, a lesson. For EdTech that means something very simple, but so complex, m.e. Context is king! But the learningM!X architecture enables exactly that challenge.

Blueprint your own
..........-M!X

The learningM!X is a blueprint or template in which you can prepare your lessons. It is a blueprint in which you establish structure and ground rules for SRL classroom management in advance. You do this depending on the classroom practices you use. Example, a project-based classroom practice, a theme-based classroom practice, a flexible learning space practice, ... or even your own Misses Brow practice.

You can put your own blueprint down in a template that is then called, for example, project M!X, theme M!X, or Misses Brown M!X. In it you prepare your learning activities over and over again, in which the students can then work autonomously. The repetition of structure and ground rules provides a unified language and tools that gives SRL classroom management hands and feet.

The great benefit of such a blueprint is clarity! Because you start working with such a template on a structural basis, week after week, you can commit much better to a consistent approach. You can also learn structurally from that approach and thus adjust the blueprint after a period of use.

GIVE STRUCTURE TO LEARNING PROCESSES

Sets. Sets of learning activities allow you to give structure to the learning process. Thus, learners go through this structure time after time and implicitly learn something about the learning strategy behind that structure. For example, by structuring a projectM!X into these 4 sets (orient, prepare, execute, reflect), learners implicitly learn that these stages each have their importance for a learning project.

Example 2. By placing a set of learning activities aimed at activating prior knowledge in a subject-based learning mix, e.g., VakM!X, at the front each time. Learners implicitly learn that this is an important phase in a learning process. It also gives gentle coercion to the teacher to provide activities each time that aim to activate prior knowledge.

SMALL DOABLE STEPS IN LEARNING

Having an outline for each learner of small feasible learning activities, or tasks (digital, physical, social, individual) is key.

The learning activity is the cornerstone, the lego-brick of learning M!X.. To achieve ownership in each learner's learning, the learning process must be broken down into small achievable steps that those learners can go through.

Learning activities give an overview of both instructions and tasks, digital and physical, individual and collaborative, creative and reproducive, ...

Together they provide one single overview in which you can bring all learning resources together.

But also, because SRL needs good scaffolds and class management, one single overview that you can enrich with didactic rules of play.

Unfortunately, interoperability is still insufficient in the current EdTech landscape.

Especially when you also want to be able to combine individual learning activities, adjust a sequence, adapt texts of paid e-content and combine this with your own content for your own context,

We hope this learningM!X concept can inspire the industry to make learning content more:

a. cut up into small individually deployable learning activities b. interoperable
c. editable

SCAFFOLD SELF REGULATED LEARNING

Didactic rules of play aim to support the learner in his/her growth toward full SRL-autonomy. Each teacher/team/school can create, invent, adopt/adapt its own rules of play. These are deliberately used to systematically coach/teach SRL skills. Gradually, rules of play can be omitted or adapted, where the learner has acquired more SRL skills in the meantime. In this way you can use these rules to build a learning line for SRL in your learningM!X templates.

Examples:

<self estimation> Provide 2 to 3 levels of estimation in which the learner self-identifies what they need to make underlying learning activities. follow the instruction moment, work through instructional materials individually. As a teacher, get the overview of who chose instruction and who did not. You can hold learners accountable for their choice according to the results. And suddenly you find yourself as a teacher in a coaching role.

<checking off> by making every learning activity (digital and physical,...) checkable in one overview, both students and you always have an overview of the progress in the learning process.

<help> you can provide a rule that makes it clear that a learner needs help with a specific learning activity. That way they don't have to sit with their arm up all the time and they can work on another learning activity in the meantime.

<.... my own rule....> there are a lot of possible rules. More so you can make your own or adapt existing rules to your own context.

You can apply a rule to single learning activities like <checking off> or to sets of learning activities like <self estimation>.

All together, this is the lego of Learning M!X that you use in your own creative way to benefit your own learners needs towards SRL.

SCHOOL PILOTS AND EDTECH WORKSHOPS

Learning M!X was not a new practice, but the digital platform for its application was no longer available at the start of this project (2019-2020). Today, there are still schools that would like to work with that platform. The pedagogical desirability of the underlying concept can be substantiated from those questions.

Therefore, as described above, Learning M!X was rethought into generic principles with which we could support schools independent of the digital platform they were working with. We selected 4 secondary schools and 4 elementary school to run a pilot project. This involved introducing schools that were not yet familiar with learningM!X to its principles. They were also guided by pedagogical counselers in working out a learning M!X blueprint and in its implementation (depending on the speed of the process). In addition, we wanted to invite edTech companies to adapt their LMS to the learningM!X (openness to interoperability in terms of learning activities, support for a blueprint, sets of learning activities, ground rules). For the latter, we organized design workshops in the schools.

SCHOOL PILOTS

More info on pilot schools can be found here.

EDTECH PARTNERS

INSTALL-ED collaborates with these 6 Ed Tech companies. The project matched 4 of the companies with a school where the Learning M!X is beïng used as a framework to organise Self Regulated Learning (Cynzy, ClassID, Smartschool, Digitale Methode). Bookwidgets collaborated with the pedagogical Counseling Service of GO! to co-create Learning M!X features on their platform. Microsoft wil provide a workshop on the use of their tools for the aim of supporting SRL in the classroom. Even more, during our final event, each of these partners will give a workshop. Be sure to sign up, and find out which partners they are on this page.

WORKSHOPS

The workshops were facilitated by GO!, using service design. Teachers created personas and a customer journey from the learningM!X blueprint they had developed. This included zooming in on digital needs that the EdTech partner could support.

Then the edtech partner went to work with the output from that workshop. On 17/02, they will show a click model designed on the output of this design session. Any participant in the sessions on 17/02 can provide feedback on it. Microsoft's workshop differs from this. Microsoft will show how to get started even without a concept to support SRL in the existing functionality of MS Teams, OneNote etc.

WHAT?

USER STOrIES

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

User STories & Zimmerman

We are working on a mapping of desirable digital functionalities within Zimmerman's framework. The picture on the left is in Dutch, but on 17/02 we will also present an english version in the leerM!X workshop. Register here.