Today we continued to work on our Lego Mindstorms robots and spend the second half of the day at the beach building sandcastles. Paul had us participate in a sandcastle building competition. All 16 cadres were tasked to individually build a sandcastle in seven minutes for a competition. After we finished, we were asked to explain our design while our fellow cadre members judged the final product. We talked through the process with Paul after the competition and asked to consider the following questions. How do you feel explaining yours and judging others? Did you ever consider that you were unaware of the criteria for judging? Do we see this in education occasionally where assessments are given with no information upfront about how it will be graded?
It is rather primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices” (Gee 22). Based on Gee’s description of an academic discipline, it is no wonder that students without any context are not motivated to learn.
Next we worked collaboratively in our design groups to build a sandcastle that represented our perspective of the “ideal classroom of the future.” Our group decided to metaphorically represent that there was no such thing as a perfect ideal classroom. Instead, a classroom could be an immersive experience reflected by the community surroundings.
For the individual competition, I felt myself focusing less on presenting a perfect product and instead having fun with the opportunity to build a sandcastle. I haven’t been on the beach for years so the opportunity in itself is one I’m incredibly thankful for. I really appreciated that Paul took us out of the classroom to learn within the community. I remember being in undergrad and we would occasionally joke with the faculty member that the weather was too nice to be inside and that we should take the class outside. The faculty member would decline the offer and proceed to begin class in the lecture hall. Not a single time did we go outside.
I have a feeling that this experience in itself was the inspiration for our group answer to the ideal classroom–one molded by external influences. How could this be adapted in an online class? This opportunity exists online as well where we tend to cling to the walls of our learning management systems which neatly holds what the course components we have already prepared for instruction. Assignments can exist where a student is asked to seek out artifacts from the web and bring them back to share with the students in the classroom. Groups can collaborate on building wikis about their assigned topic and then invite other groups and beyond to explore the content.
Maybe we shouldn’t have to wait for the weather to be nice to leave the classroom. Rather we should be intentional about creating learning opportunities that go beyond the classroom walls (and that doesn’t just mean the library).
There are multiple reasons I believe I was motivated with this specific project. The first is that it was active learning where I wasn’t just learning about design and learning theory through merely consuming the content through an oral presentation but we were working through it with our instructor guiding the experience. Additionally, I really think I was extrinsically motivated by having such a unique learning environment. I felt relaxed to merely play and, in turn, didn’t focus too hard on how my product would be received or evaluated.
Learn more:
- Wikipedia: “Active Learning”
- “Creating Motivating Learning Environments: What We Can Learn From Researchers and Students”
- Book: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
- Ryan, Richard M. and Deci, Edward L. “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions.”
This post is the third post in a series with my reflections from Cadre Camp, a week long submersive learning experience for new students in the Pepperdine Master of Arts in Learning Technology (MALT) program. You can view the entire series here.