#student collaboration

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Student Collaboration: Tips for Developing Success at Vikas The Concept School

According to the Responsive Classroom school of thought, there are four types of Teacher Leadership Styles. Autocratic leadership is reminiscent of the stereotypical drill sergeant, teaching students compliance through fear-based manipulation and coercion. Permissive leadership is more like a complete lack of leadership, with no creation or enforcement of structure or accountability for students. Flip-flop leadership bounces back and forth between permissive and autocratic, largely stemming from a lack of education or support for a teacher who tries to do what’s best for their students. The final leadership style, Responsive Classroom calls authoritative. It is a top-down management of the classroom, like the autocratic style, but focuses far more on relationship building and activating the internal motivation of students.

As far as effectiveness goes, authoritative teachers are the best way to go among these four options, and for many teachers and students, authoritative leadership is the best style possible. However, I do not agree that authoritative leadership is the only style of leadership that is capable of creating a positive and successful learning environment, nor do I believe that these four styles are the only leadership styles available.

If I were to define my own leadership style, I would classify it as cooperative, not authoritative. My students are not the recipients of my teaching, they are partners in their own learning and growth. Authoritative leaders, no matter how responsive, assume that they have ultimate authority in the classroom, but that simply isn’t true. The student always has the choice in how they want to respond to the situation, and while teachers have control over many things, they cannot control the behavior of their students, nor should they seek to. All they can do is set expectations for their students and respond in consistent, logical ways.

As a cooperative leader, I take ultimate responsibility for overseeing the structure, set-up, and procedure of learning in my classroom. Students take ultimate responsibility for their engagement and participation. Classroom rules are not edict I impose on them, but rather mutually agreed upon guidelines for creating a positive learning environment. I hold them accountable for following those rules, but if a rule isn’t working, my students must be involved in changing that rule. On the one hand, this requires careful negotiation at the beginning of the term and can often take up class time that would otherwise be spent on curriculum. However, doing so increases student buy-in, meaning they are more likely to follow the rules and less likely to resist the established consequences of those rules. Now, at the beginning of a term, I may insist on a particular rule being included, but as the term goes on, if my rules are harmful to the social, emotional, and academic success of my students, they have every right to demand a change. If I’m being fair and focused on respecting them as individuals, this almost never actually happens, as students who were initially resistant are shown the benefit of that rule.

As a cooperative teacher, my ultimate goal is student autonomy. I know I’ve been successful in teaching my students when my presence becomes superfluous. This is true in classroom management as well as academics. I’m an English teacher. If I’ve successfully taught students how to use commas, then they no longer need me to check their comma usage. If I’ve successfully taught them how to talk with their peers, then they no longer need me to monitor their language; they can monitor it themselves. I will always be the expert in my content matter and in education, at least as long as they are in my classroom, but that doesn’t mean I am the supreme authority of the learning that transpires there, nor am I the supreme authority in the classroom environment. When I assume complete authority over my classroom, then my students become disenfranchised, powerless to control the direction of their own improvement. Without student autonomy, there can be no learning. When I deprive my students of any choice except whether or not they participate in the learning, many will choose not to learn, because it is the only way they feel like they have control over their own lives.

Whatever the content of their curriculum, any middle or high school teacher’s primary goal should be to prepare their students for adulthood. The tricky part of that is we don’t know what their adulthood will look like. We don’t know if they will further their education or how much. We don’t know what kind of job they will have or what kind of social situation they will find themselves in. We can’t see the future, and even with clear evidence, it can be difficult to predict. What we can do is teach students how to be in charge of their own learning, so that whatever concrete skills and knowledge they need to be successful, if we haven’t taught it to them, they can teach it to themselves. However, we cannot teach students to teach themselves without giving them ample time to practice in a safe environment with a scaffolded process that gives them room to make mistakes and improve. Essentially, we are training students to take over our jobs. We must give them opportunities to be in charge of their own learning, or they will never learn how.

As a middle school teacher, I know my students have an increased need for respect, self-determination, and independence. While 6th graders need more scaffolding and support in having authority over their learning than, say, 9th graders, they still need some authority. And let me tell you, as a teacher who struggles with coming up with logical and respectful consequences for mis-behaviors, it is a relief to turn the question back on the student and say, “What do you think the consequence should be?” They almost always are more harsh on themselves than I would be, allowing me to be the good guy who reminds them the goal is growth, not punishment, but it also allows them to take responsibility for changing their behavior because they took part in determining the consequence and learn self-discipline in the process. Not because I had authority. Because we collaborated.

Above: Director Fil Kopelman discusses the next scene with Actor Ryan R. McIntyre on the set of the “MEV”.

UPDATE #8: Where we're at now!

‘Seasons’. A Virtual Campsite Adventure.

Hillary Chong is a current student at QUT working with Deb in the studio and some researchers from Griffith University (Ali Lakhami) and the Hopkins Centre for Rehabilitation (Sally Stewart). Hilary has made some terrific progress with her VR experience for people with limited motor skills... particularly for those with varying levels of spinal cord injury.

Due to the limited mobility of the player, Hillary has concentrated on a seated experience with some interaction. And found that a ‘camping’ scene provided a terrific excuse to do just this. Adding to this adventure, Hillary came up with a plan to enable the player to customise the terrain according to seasonal selections!

One of the most satisfying things to do in VR is to play around with the virtual physics. So to keep the player rooted in the VR world they should be able to interact with the objects around them. The theme that I want to begin with would be camping. So things like a tent and campfire are necessary, where the player can roast marshmallows on the fire. If there is water the player can throw stones across.

You can see more about her progress and research on her project blog: https://codingworlds.tumblr.com/tagged/research

VR for Peeps with Spinal Cord Injury

A quick sample of one of our most recent VR projects for people with Spinal Cord Injuries. Ryan Lawrence is a Game Design student at QUT who has combined his love for Hiking with gaming to produce a stunning prototype environment based on the Kondalilla National Park in Queensland.

Patients with spinal cord injuries have a range of limited movement so there are 2 options for moving through this virtual world:

Automated ride-through - people can experience the full walking tour while seated

Manual walk-through - using the controllers, people can mimic the movement of using walking sticks to move along the same pathway

Other Collaborators on this project are:

Researchers:

Deb Polson - VR and Interaction Designer

Ali Lakhani - Griffith University Researcher

The first asked students to build a chair using only newspaper and masking tape that could support the weight of each of the members of their team. Each group had to complete the following:

Complete and submit a blueprint for the chair

Build only using newspaper and masking tape

Make the chair safe (won’t collapse)

Build a chair with legs

Build a chair with a backrest

Build a chair to the specifications of your blueprints

Consider comfort of the user when creating your design

At first groups told me that this was an impossible task. As they began working, prototyping and testing students started to discover ways to make a seemingly weak material, newspaper, extremely strong. Below are two examples of chairs built by students.

Following this project we discussed as a class if we did an effective job of engaging in the design thinking process in this project. Students decided that they did a good job of ideation, prototyping and testing, but the project lacked the empathy and discovery elements which are crucial to the design thinking process.

Our next project I found on Standford d.school’s website, the 5 Chairs Exercise. In this project, students were tasked with building a chair to meet the needs of an assigned client. Students built three model chairs. Each model was made out of one of the following: out of toothpicks, popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. Our initial newspaper chair allowed students to live in a space of play through prototyping and testing. This project allowed students to continue in a space of play, but instead there was a purpose – this project became meaningful.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3

With each of these projects students were clearly able to articulate the constraints that each material presented to them and how they had to be innovative in their ideas to ensure that they met the needs of their client. Photo 1 shows a chair designed for an elderly man. The chair comes equipped with a recliner and holder for the Grandpa’s cane. In Photo 2 comfort was taken into consideration with cushions, massage and heat components (shown by square pieces of popsicle sticks or curved lines formed with hot glue). Finally, in Photo 3 we have a chair built for an astronaut. There are straps in place to ensure the astronaut does not float away when in space.

Through teaching design thinking this year, I have found the piece of empathy is key to a successful project. Students buy into the projects when they are able to relate or connect to a client and/or see a purpose to what they are doing.

Until next time, Mr. B