Live and let learn

It’s always exciting for me to discover someone else who shares similar ideas about learning and facilitation…. even more so when that someone has more experience that I can learn from! Two weeks ago after our Teaching is Dead…long live Learning workshop, I had the opportunity to hear Liz Renshaw and Gregor Mackenzie talk about their Personalised Learning project… and I sat their nodding my head throughout ’til my neck got sore! Just now I’ve watched Robin Petterd’s demonstration Two stories: Supporting project based learning in multimedia design - and I’m getting a sore neck once more…

As I listened and watched Robin demonstrating the tools that he used, I couldn’t help thinking how my own learning and facilitation is following a similar (although less developed) path. Earlier in March I wrote about my own experience (and frustration) Teaching Web Design, and outlined an idea that Jude Cooke, Genie Melone and I had for helping our learners manage their own learning. Eight months on, and I’ve learned quite a lot about the pro’s and con’s of facilitating project-based learning… I’m loving it, and I think my students enjoy the flexibility too, but there are sooo many areas where I could do with help from someone with more experience.

And today Robin has provided that experienc! After watching Robin’s demo, I’ve got some excellent ideas to integrate into our WebDesign class! For example, in class we usually have a weekly theme (such as Mobile Web Browsing, or Web2.0 - Hype or Revolution) that gives us something to learn together, as most of the time people are working on their individual projects. We also have a weekly team meeting where we catch up and discuss our project work. Robin uses the project meeting as an opportunity for each learner to explicitly put a number to their project’s completion (as a percentage), and uses the discussions and problems that come out of this as topics for optional “skills sessions”… a great way to let individuals learn what they need, when they need it!

More impressive are the scaffolding structures that Peter uses to help students learn to manage their own learning and projects… I guess these resources comes out of experience facilitating project based learning. (Peter, I think I’ll take you up on your offer of sharing those spreadsheets!) Another tool that Peter (or others might find helpful) in this regard is BaseCamp. Using a free basecamp subscription - everyone in our project ‘team’ (ie. our class) can update their todos and milestones so that we can all see each other’s progress. And on top of that, students are learning to use a tool that professional web designers swear by! (For more about BaseCamp and our Web Design class, you can listen to me raving about it at the recent TALO Swap/Meet, thanks to Stephan Ridgeway)

Look forward to learning more from Robin (and anyone else out there who’s nodding their head!)