Richard Culatta called for a digital revolution in US education in his 2013 TEDx talk. He highlighted the effectiveness of teaching based on collaborative problem solving. His examples demonstrate how effective technology integration creates “authentic tasks” (O’Donnell 2012) by giving students agency. Collaborative problem solving, or other forms of problem based learning (PBL) promote Bransford, Brown, and Cocking’s notion of expert-style learning (2000) by encouraging the transfer existing knowledge to new problems. However, designing TPACK lessons for collaborative problem solving is difficult in practice.
The Onion does a great job explaining the difference between calling for something in a TED talk and actually doing it:
It’s easy to add some group work or technology to a lesson, but Culatta critiqued this as merely using “…technology to digitize traditional learning practices.” Maker education provides one way for educators to move from digital translation to digital transformation. When grounded in specific PBL practices, Maker education can provide a platform to help instructors build lessons that authentically produce collaborative problem-based strategies among learners.
Understanding TPACK is a far cry from doing it. I learned this first-hand in designing my first-ever lesson plan. So and Kim explored the gulf between understanding and practice in their 2009 study of pre-service teachers. Their subjects demonstrated knowledge of TPACK and constructivist practices. However, the teachers in the study struggled to design lesson plans that effectively applied their knowledge.
“…Student teachers were able to understand the pedagogical approaches of PBL and what technology integration meant to them for teaching and learning (espoused TPCK), but had difficulties applying their beliefs and knowledge into designing pedagogically-sound technology-integrated lessons (in use TPCK)” (p. 112).
Their findings evoke Culatta’s “digital divide”. The student teachers’ lesson plans centered on overly simple problem statements and technology seemed to be added as an afterthought (p. 109). The subjects were only digitizing existing practice. They lacked unifying and authentic problems around which to construct their lessons. These teachers needed to find problems with lots of solutions, that automatically integrate technology, and that inspire collaboration. As I learned in my first Raspberry Pi assignment, these features are inherent to Maker projects.
Maker projects won’t transform teaching unless rooted in intentional choices around the various constructivist instructional practices. Culotta provides many examples of collaborative problem solving in the classroom, but what do instructors need to know to invent such lessons themselves? O’Donnell’s 2012 work on constructivism provides a layout of various constructivist frameworks, but doesn’t specifically focus on collaborative problem solving. Davidson and Major (2014) provide some much-needed insight about specific instructional approaches to group learning. They explored three constructivist pedagogical practices: cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning. Davidson and Major argue the need for instructors to better understand the distinctions among these techniques because they have “…become so entangled that it is difficult to distinguish between them, and there are unclear and even muddled messages in the literature” (p. 8). These three group learning approaches differ in ways that aren’t necessarily complimentary. Maker education may indeed help instructors answer Culatta’s call to action, if they can ground lessons in a specific practice.
I suggest that PBL is often the best approach for Maker lessons. PBL emphasizes lessons where features such as critical thinking, communication, and content knowledge all occur as the natural result of the central problem (p. 26). In a Maker project, the problem of creating something innovative requires learners to leverage pre-existing knowledge while critically evaluating solutions and resources. “In problem-based learning, it is the problem that drives the learning” (Davidson and Major, 2014, p. 25). The apparent simplicity of this statement belies a critical affordance of PBL: learning isn’t manufactured by the instructor, rather, learning becomes the authentic outcome of a real-life process. A Maker project becomes the central problem for students in problem-based learning.
Richard Culatta called for a transformation. However, educators often find it difficult to implement transformative educational practices. Lessons built around Maker projects may be one great answer. As Culatta said, “technology creates creators” (2013). When grounded in a PBL approach to group learning, Maker technology projects provide a vehicle to help instructors design for authentic collaborative problem solving.
References
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368.
Davidson, N., & Major, C. H. (2014). Boundary crossings: Cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3), 49. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1651854557?accountid=14784
O’Donnell, A. (2012). Constructivism. In APA Educational Psychology Handbook: Vol. 1. Theories, Constructs, and Critical Issues. K. R. Harris, S. Graham, and T. Urdan (Editors-in-Chief). Washgington, DC: American Psychological Association. DOI: 10.1037/13273-003.
So, H., & Kim, B. (2009). Learning about problem based learning: Student teachers integrating technology, pedagogy and content knowledge. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25(1), 101-116. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61863160?accountid=14784
TEDx Talks. (2013, January 10). Reimagining Learning: Richard Culatta at TEDxBeaconStreet [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0uAuonMXrg