This is an Ako prototype for Te Pūkenga. The aim is to represent the core concepts of the Studio system as originally devised for the BIT at Otago Polytechnic.
- How might we increase buy-in for learning soft skills, e.g. teamwork and communication?
- How might we encourage learners to stop dreading or hating group work?
- How might we decrease the amount of time we spend agonising over percentage points and marking, and spend that time coaching learners to success instead?
- How might we scaffold learners all the way to having all the skills they need for independent project work, without causing them unnecessary frustration?
- How might we ensure graduates are work-ready when we don't know what specific skills/technologies will be involved in their future jobs?
- How might we encourage learners to complete work for the sake of learning and not just because it's worth marks?
- How might we allow learners to make mistakes and learn from them instead of failing?
- How might we encourage process-focussed thinking instead of goal-focussed attitudes?
- How might we provide for the learning preferences of both the Kareao and the Kanuka?
Jump to Challenges
We found that having a dedicated soft skills course, like "Professional Practice", failed to get learner buy-in from all learners. Many did not understand the relevance of learning the theories and skills of communication and teamwork in a stand-alone course. The answer is therefore to make those soft skills central to the practice of their "hard skills". In other words, have courses dedicated to performing the technical skills in a context which requires practising the soft skills as well.
Example: in the BIT we have group projects at all levels in which learners apply the technical skills they have learnt in their core and elective courses to a "realistic" larger project running in parellel with the traditional curriculum. They enjoy actually using the technical skills they've been learning, and find that they can't complete the project without learning to communicate and work as a team along the way. They are carefully coached by a teaching team to ensure they are heading always in the right direction. Refer to How might we allow learners to make mistakes and learn from them instead of failing? for more details.
We have found that learners always let out a groan when they find out they are about to do some group work, especially if there are marks involved. They often assume it will be messy, hard and unfair. This is largely due to their past experiences with group work in educational settings. For example, there's often just one or two group members doing all the work, or, one or two group members coasting and still getting the group mark. Firstly, we need to properly train all learners how to work in a team, and secondly assess them on this skill individually. They also need to feel that the task is meaningful and large enough to warrant group work, and also not feel that they could do a better/easier job of it on their own.
Example: in the BIT we have had feedback along the lines of "this is the first time I've done group work and not hated it". This is because we make sure each person has buy-in to the project, both by making it compulsory to contribute properly as an individual in order to pass the course, and also by assigning the team technical, meaningful, realistic and, importantly, open-ended tasks. Refer to How might we encourage learners to complete work for the sake of learning and not just because it's worth marks? and How might we encourage process-focussed thinking instead of goal-focussed attitudes? for more details.
How might we decrease the amount of time we spend agonising over percentage points and marking, and spend that time coaching learners to success instead?
Since we already have learners working in teams in answer to How might we increase buy-in for learning soft skills, e.g. teamwork and communication?, and we already need to make sure that we are assessing teamwork skills individually as per How might we encourage learners to stop dreading or hating group work?, the problem of agonising over percentage points becomes a very central problem. How can you claim that a learner was 51% a team player? You could measure the quantity of their contributions to the group, but if they have contributed 100% of the work then they are not a team player at all! On the same note, it would be unrealistic and feel artificial to learners to expect them to do precisely one fraction of the team's task, and how would you assign individual marks if they did more or less than that quantity? The solution is to scrap the idea of percentage or numerical marks and focus on useful feedback instead. In the workplace, you either earn your salary or you don't. And if you don't, you can expect performance management. And if you perform better than expected, you might be able to progress to a higher level. So rather than using a marks and grades model, use a performance and development review process instead. A person is either ready for a promotion (pass) or they're not (fail). Ascertaining which is the case becomes a conversation and a negotiation. This is a skill that the learner will need for the rest of their lives, so contributes to answering How might we ensure graduates are work-ready when we don't know what specific skills/technologies will be involved in their future jobs?.
How might we scaffold learners all the way to having all the skills they need for independent project work, without causing them unnecessary frustration?
A few years ago, we coined a term to describe behaviour we were seeing in our Project Based Learning courses: "Responsibility Shock". Learners had all the technical skills and should have had sound knowledge about soft skills they needed to succeed in Third Year Project, but for some reason they were unable to put these skills to use without constant guidance and supervision—learners in their final year were still struggling to work independently. This seems to be because, although they had the necessary technical and soft skills, working independently (i.e. having sole responsibility for your work) is a different skill for which we had not trained them. This seems to be quite common in capstone projects where staff find themselves needing to provide much more support and at a much more basic level than they expected.
The solution is to start gradually training this skill from day one. Just like the technical skills, e.g. programming, it takes a long time and a lot of careful instruction and guidance to learn how to confidently proceed with a project, applying all your other skills as needed rather than as instructed. Learners need to be able to predict the outcomes of their judgements and decisions, and trust their own instincts. This can only be achieved by practising making decisions and discovering what the outcomes and consequences are. There's no way to rote learn every possible outcome of every possible judgement call.
The challenge for educators is that this takes time and careful curation of progression. But the concept of scaffolding is well-established and a proficient curriculum designer can easily produce something that has the progression to independence built in alongside the progression of technical and soft skills. The learner time put aside for it is worthwhile, as we have discovered in the BIT at OP. This approach can also be demanding of staff time, and this is a challenge that is inherent in this prototype and mitigated slightly by How might we decrease the amount of time we spend agonising over percentage points and marking, and spend that time coaching learners to success instead?.
There is a whole research project in the pipeline to investigate scaffolding in the Studio courses.
How might we ensure graduates are work-ready when we don't know what specific skills/technologies will be involved in their future jobs?
On day one of Studio 1, we tell learners that there's only one skill an IT professional has and because they're starting on that skill today they should consider themselves an IT professional already. Professional on Day One.
The skill is to be able to teach themselves new IT. In other contexts this might be called independent learning, but in an IT context it's quite a specific set of techniques. One example is that using a search engine to answer technical questions is a different technique from general Googling skills.
It's a small white lie that there is only one skill required, because in reality there are two. The other is communication skills, and this is a work-ready skill in common with all programmes of study. See How might we increase buy-in for learning soft skills, e.g. teamwork and communication? for more detail.
To this end, Studio is entirely focussed on scaffolding these two skills—gradually allowing learners to gain experience in how these might look and function in the workplace and guiding learners towards trusting their own judgement in both areas (see How might we scaffold learners all the way to having all the skills they need for independent project work, without causing them unnecessary frustration?).
How might we encourage learners to complete work for the sake of learning and not just because it's worth marks?
Learners often arrive with a mindset that they are here to tick the boxes and get the bit of paper needed to move on to the "career" stage of life, especially if they have been encouraged at school to credit-count their way towards NCEA. This can result in young people who are highly trained to perform only for concrete reward. It's a very goal-focussed way of approaching education and can prevent learners from properly habituating good processes if they see a faster way to achieve a pass. See How might we encourage process-focussed thinking instead of goal-focussed attitudes?.
This has led in some programmes of study to learning design where every lab is worth a small proportion of the marks. A better approach is to make nothing worth any marks, and retrain learners into the mindset that they are rewarded for working hard and following sound processes rather than for completing quantitative goals.
For example, in Studio we ensure learners are aware that "the whole semester is the assessment". In a formal sense, the assessment is the PDR at the end (see How might we decrease the amount of time we spend agonising over percentage points and marking, and spend that time coaching learners to success instead?). Just like in the workforce, a performance review for the purposes of promotion is a single event during which performance is measured, but the performance itself has happened over a longer period of time and evidence for this must be presented. This will not only include some examples of the actual work completed, but also an assessment of the employee's overall work ethic, how they interact with colleagues and whether they contribute to a healthy workplace culture.
When learners are assessed on their ability to produce a quantity of work to a prescribed standard, there isn't room (or usually there isn't time) to make and learn from a large mistake in process. If they "do it wrong", they lose marks. If we flip this approach entirely, we simply need to reward learners for learning from mistakes, which we have the luxury (and time) to do if we are already following the advice for How might we encourage learners to complete work for the sake of learning and not just because it's worth marks? and How might we encourage process-focussed thinking instead of goal-focussed attitudes?.
In other words, yet another advantage of "the whole semester is the assessment"; assessing process rather than goal; teamwork rather than proportion of output (How might we encourage learners to stop dreading or hating group work?), is that big mistakes are actually very beneficial to learning. Especially if they hold up or set back the project (which we certainly wouldn't want to happen with the other approach). Making a poor technical decision and discovering the consequences is a much faster way to learn than being taught "never do this, never do that".
In Studio we let them do it their own way knowing that there's a better way but allowing them to discover it themselves. We are able to do this because we have made time for it by spending less time marking and less time preparing and delivering lectures, as per How might we decrease the amount of time we spend agonising over percentage points and marking, and spend that time coaching learners to success instead?. In a two hour session, we could deliver a one hour lecture and have learners follow detailed instructions for a one-hour lab. On the other hand, we could give learners a direction to head in and let them spend two hours practising how to make decisions and problem-solving together. It's tempting to worry that learners will somehow miss out if we reduce how much of the former they experience (lectures and labs) but with gentle guidance the latter (experiential learning in teams) can result in learning that is deeper and retained for longer. We have the added benefit that these processes more closely resemble the workplace, helping us with How might we ensure graduates are work-ready when we don't know what specific skills/technologies will be involved in their future jobs?.
Attitude and outcome is not a chicken-and-egg scenario. A desired outcome can sometimes be produced with the wrong attitude, though we can't expect consistency. On the other hand, the right attitude pretty consistently produces desired outcomes. Therefore, we assess for attitude rather than outcomes. Moderation is a challenge of this approach, but not an insurmountable one. We must also be careful to avoid "portfolio shadowing" where learners spend more time compiling and presenting evidence for a portfolio assessment running parallel to the course work, than they do actually learning towards the course outcomes.
This relates very closely to How might we encourage learners to complete work for the sake of learning and not just because it's worth marks? in that it's most important to reward for quality of approach rather than quantity of outputs.
In Studio this is aided by the iterative way of working that we get from Agile software engineering. There is no such thing as a finished product in this modern world of software-as-a-service, which helps us to prevent learners from looking too far ahead to a rushed but finished product and instead focus on producing small amounts of high quality work at frequent intervals. Of course, Agile techniques are also beneficial to How might we allow learners to make mistakes and learn from them instead of failing? as they are designed to allow software engineering teams to quickly recover from changing requirements or unforeseeable changes of direction (and failed features).
People have different learning styles and preferences. Not the old-fashioned VAK learning styles, but much more deep-seated cultural and personal tendencies built up of a learner's entire personal background.
Two of these we see emerging in Studio courses might be described as the Kareao (the Supplejack vine) and the Kanuka.
The Kanuka is easy to see. Look at the young forest from the next hill, and you might be led to believe it's mostly Kanuka as you see the uniform grey-green of the canopy. We could be led to believe that the Kanuka is the predominant species in our forest because of this visibility, and also because each individual Kanuka is clearly defined from its colleagues, each with their own straight trunk and reaching branches heading directly towards the sunshine. Measuring a single Kanuka is easy and anyone can see at a glance who are the tall, successful Kanuka.
The Kareao, on the other hand, is much more difficult to spot. You actually have to make a big effort to go into the forest and see things from the inside perspective. Once you find Kareao, and you will because they are as significant in stature and strength as the Kanuka just in different ways, you will find it difficult to see a direct path or an individual trunk. Kareao prefers to work in unison with other members of the forest and intertwine with the natural progression of things. It's this preference to take a more thorough and thoughtful but less direct route, to work in harmony with others, that signifies the Kareao's success and strength. Measuring the success of a single Kareao stem is impossible—we can only measure the strength of its presence in the forest as a whole.
Our traditional English education system favours the Kanuka. Because we can measure the height of the forest easily, we can assign funding accordingly. Because it's clear which Kanuka are successful, we can designate them as qualified and award them their official documentation.
But what of the Kareao, whose strength and supporting nature is crucial to the biodiversity and overall success of the forest in the long term? How can we find ways not only to measure the height of the forest, but also its density and resilience? We need to be fair in our recognition that a thick trunk and a visible canopy are not the only things worth funding.
We will need to let go of some of the values of our English education traditions in order to give the Kareao equitable opportunities and recognition. We need to realise that education doesn't need to be individualistic and highly measurable in order to be useful and successful. How might we start thinking about this, and ensure we provide for both the Kanuka and the Kareao?
We should strive to increase buy-in for soft skills and communication. We should encourage learners to embrace and enjoy group work. We should stop agonising over percentage points and spend time coaching and guiding instead. We should scaffold learning carefully and identify and reduce frustration. We should focus on work-ready habits rather than specific technical skills. We should encourage learners to work hard for the sake of learning and not just to achieve a mark. We should encourage learners to make mistakes and help them learn from those experiences, and we should promote process-focussed learning over ticking goal-focussed boxes.
In this way, the Kareao is rewarded for its thoughtful pathway towards the canopy and for its depth and breadth of strength gained by working as a whānau in the forest. It also helps support the tall Kanuka to withstand stormy weather and develop not only a high canopy but a strong root system.