Learning Ecosystems: 3 Insights from Talking to Teenagers About Distance Learning
Like many with children at home over the past several months, “distance learning” has been both top of mind and … intense. In my journey through design-focused work, I’ve been increasingly drawn to the combinations of approaches that help us understand learning ecosystems, including human-centered design, qualitative research, and story-telling. So when I started to feel overwhelmed, I turned to what I do when I’m not sure which way to turn or I’m confused … I decided to get curious. And I decided to talk to some high-school students in my public school district. I wanted to talk about what’s working and what’s not and, ideally, surface some implications for how we design learning ecosystems going forward.
I was seeking to gain some insight into the question “what needs to be true about a distance learning ecosystem for kids to learn effectively?” This is a go-to way to frame a research question for me. I find “what needs to be true?” is a strong framing question because through this lens we project ourselves into the future state we are seeking to create. We ask ourselves to reflect back on whether or not we have successfully created new and necessary conditions for success. What is now true in this new reality? Therefore, what are we really working towards in the present? It’s a fun mental gymnastics party trick. Try it during one of your zoom cocktail parties.
Now, what has really been going through my brain about distance learning is “How the hell am I going to keep my kids engaged & learning? What about college?!? What about SUMMER?!?! Or next FALL?!? AARRRGHH!!” But since that would never pass peer review and would probably startle my son and his friends, I reframed by asking them 3 simple questions:
What is working about distance learning?
What is not working about distance learning?
What is your advice to decision-makers making plans for the 2020/2021 school year?
Methodologically, I was lucky to have a couple of things I could leverage to do some quick data collection and analysis from a distance: (a) access to teenage interviewees via one of my sons, (b) interview design and research analysis savvy - see some of my other projects to see what I mean, (c) curiosity about a new qualitative research video editing and transcript service called Reduct.Video (note: I learned about Reduct at the virtual conference I wrote about in a recent last blog post … synergy!).
My (very simple and designed over a single cup of coffee) methods:
Conduct one 59 min virtual student focus group (via Zoom)
Interview 3 high school juniors and one college freshman
Upload the recorded interview to my Reduct demo account (thank you for letting me try it on, Prabhas & Pukar!)
Analyze data into 3 highlight reels of key insights (each 3-4 min long)
My key take-aways? Like many of my favorite insights, they seem glaringly obvious once they rise to the surface. They pass the “Oh! Of course!” test (which is one of my favorite reactions when I present data because it often means we’ve hit on common and human-centered sense).
Insight #1: Students are able to manage and thrive with a thoughtful combination of asynchronous (self-paced) and synchronous (real-time) learning
I get all my assignments at the beginning of the week and I can finish stuff at my own pace, which has been really nice
The more simple stuff we can teach ourselves through a worksheet, and then she'll go over the main concept or the harder concepts through a Zoom lecture
Sometimes the teacher will have us go into breakout groups to discuss specific [ideas] we want to talk more about
My biology teacher picks out some free response questions that he thinks are more challenging, and he'll walk us through them [as a class via Zoom]
Insight #2: Social-emotional needs are foundational - not secondary - to academic learning
Yes, our health is very important … but our mental health is also extremely important
I get that a lot of my teachers want to just treat it like school … but I do miss talking to my classmates. There's no time to just ask people, “Hey, how are you doing? I miss you. I miss being in class with you. What are you up to?”
Knowing [what my teacher is going through] is really helpful and it makes me a little more accommodating of him just knowing that's his situation
Insight #3: Predictable schedules and expectations across all teachers are critical for students to be able to manage distance learning
I don't know why all my classes are [on Tuesday morning], but I wish [my teachers] collaborated to spread out their classes and spread out their workload and to not overload some days more than others
A lot of my teachers are just like, "You're on my schedule. I will do what I want when I want and you will go along with it" and it's frustrating
We had a week to do the final exam and so I started it [as soon as it was posted] and stuff was being added as I was doing it
If you want to join me in geeking out on whether these align with other educational research for a moment, check out the PELP Coherence Framework from the Public Education Leadership Project at Harvard University. The PELP framework is designed to give structure to help educational leaders recognize the interdependence of various aspects of a school district (aka learning ecosystem) and understand how these aspects reinforce one another to support the implementation of an improvement strategy. I am not an expert in this framework, but I am a fan.
I was tickled to find I could easily map these same three insights directly onto key components of the PELP framework.
Instructional Core: Students are able to manage and thrive with a thoughtful combination of asynchronous (self-paced) and synchronous (real-time) learning
Theory of Change: Social-emotional needs are foundational - not secondary - to academic learning
Strategy, Structure, Systems: Predictable schedules and expectations are critical for being able to manage distance learning
The ease of this “insights/framework” alignment gives me hope that qualitative research, story-telling, and human-centered design are beautifully aligned tools we can use to find solutions we will likely need for years to come as we move into the new post-pandemic reality of schools and learning.
Now, my simple and opportunistic research study is clearly not definitive. And I acknowledge that, while my group of student interviewees was heterogeneous by race and gender, they were homogeneous in that fact that all had stable and well-resourced homes to support their learning. I have a hypothesis that these three insights on distance learning ecosystem dynamics will prove to be even more important when students are dealing with inconsistent or unpredictable living situations.
I’m still playing with what I learned and will likely post more in the future. For example, I’d love to spend more time on the implications - especially as school districts are making decisions that will affect the 2020/2021 school year right now. And I’d also love to spend more time talking about my experience with Reduct, which turned out to be a delightful way to play with qualitative research, e.g. video editing and transcriptions, quickly and easily.
But the huge plus of this project? It made me smile, cry a little, made me frustrated for students, sympathetic for teachers, brought me joy, and made me feel hopeful about the world. I had a really fun excuse to talk to some amazing and thoughtful teenagers. If you have not done so recently, go ask a teenager some questions. Then listen. I highly recommend it.