Fostering Online Disciplinary Engagement, Knowledge, and Achievement With Participatory Learning and Assessment

• In Event: 65.063 - Theory-Driven Design of Online Learning Systems, Data Structures, and Analytic Techniques

Abstract

Objective
This research aims to generate general principles and specific practices for fostering interactive networked learning in online courses while also addressing prevailing educational accountability concerns regarding disciplinary knowledge and achievement. Existing online principles and practices were extended into two new online learning contexts and new “participatory learning analytics” were refined and initially validated.

Theory
This work is rooted in the situative theories of cognition that emerged from the Institute for Research on Learning in the 1990s (i.e., Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno et al., 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991). In contrast to the individually-oriented learning principles from human information processing (e.g., Anderson, 1990) and constructivism (e.g., Glaser, 1984), situative theories result in learning principles that focus on social participation:

1. Learning is fundamentally social.
2. Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities.
3. Learning is an act of membership.
4. Knowing depends on engagement in practice.
5. Engagement is inseparable from empowerment.
6. “Failure to Learn” is the normal result of exclusion from participation.
7. We already have a society of lifelong learners.

Method
Iterative cycles of design-based research (Cobb, et al., 2003) and embedded quasi-experimentation (Cook & Campbell, 1979) were used to generate more specific principles and practices that were capable of supporting participatory learning in formal educational settings. An extended program of such research with educational multimedia and videogames resulted in resolutely situated approaches to achievement motivation (Filsecker & Hickey, 2014 Hickey, 2003), assessment (Anderson, et al. 2007; Barab, et al. 2007; Hickey, Kindfield, Horwitz, & Christy, 2003; Hickey, Ingram-Goble, & Jameson, 2008; Hickey, Taazoobshirazi, & Cross, 2012), accountability (Hickey & Anderson, 2006; Hickey, Zuiker et al., 2006, 2012), and validity (Hickey, et al., 2006). The current work has drawn additional inspiration from studies of online participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009), interest-driven learning (Ito et al, 2009), connected learning (Ito et al., 2013), and productive disciplinary engagement (Engle & Conant, 2002).

Results
Design research of hybrid secondary English (Hickey, Honeyford, McWilliams, & Clinton, 2010; Hickey, McWilliams, & Honeyford, 2012) and the authors own graduate education courses (Hickey & Rehak, 2013) resulted in five educational design principles that make up a framework that is currently called Participatory Learning and Assessment:

1. Let contexts give meaning to disciplinary knowledge.
2. Recognize and reward disciplinary engagement.
3. Evaluate disciplinary artifacts through reflections.
4. Assess disciplinary knowledge appropriately.
5. Measure disciplinary achievement discreetly.

Evidence
This paper first summarizes the peer-reviewed evidence that this framework does indeed foster the forms of disciplinary engagement that indirectly (but consistently) foster disciplinary knowledge and achievement. This paper will demonstrates the framework’s robustness by summarizing its ongoing use in a massively open online course (MOOC) on educational assessment and in multiple courses in a fully online high school. Finally, this paper introduces new participatory learning analytic methods being used to streamline, automate, and scale this approach.

Significance
Together, these efforts support true “21st Century” networked learning that prepares students for increasingly networked futures while accommodating prevailing concerns for classroom and school accountability.

Author

• Daniel T. Hickey, Indiana University