Discussions about the necessity
of integrated thinking abound today, as do large-scale educational experiments
with this concept. Quest University in Squamish B.C. was founded
in 2007 to teach students techniques to creatively combine rather than simply
reiterate what they have learned.
Students there are encouraged to integrate knowledge from across
disciplines to explore a central, self-directed question. More recently, the Rotman School of
Management in Toronto has teamed up with a variety of public and private K-12
schools to provide students and staff with lessons in integrative
thinking. The brainchild of Rotman dean
Roger Martin, the I-Think
program is designed to teach students alternatives to either-or decision
making. Meanwhile, the Ontario Ministry of Education as a whole has been tinkering with the idea of providing more
integrated course offerings since 2002. Interdisciplinary
Studies is an exciting framework which allows Ontario secondary school teachers
to offer senior level courses covering ministry expectations from across the
curriculum.
It is truly wonderful to see
these progressive changes in educational thought; however, it has thus far
proven challenging to apply integrative thinking techniques to the day to day
realities of the classroom. As with most
philosophies, the devil is in the details.
This is why I have recently been experimenting with online curating as a
tangible, accessible application for integrated thinking. I first came across the amazing curating site
Scoop.it while consulting for Twenty One Toys, an educational start-up
working out of the Centre for Social
Innovation. In my brief time working
in this environment I have been amazed at the seemingly natural ability of
entrepreneurs to access and synthesize tremendous amounts of information. This is precisely the kind of thinking I want
to cultivate in my students (and in myself!)
Upon closer inspection, I have come to understand that the ability to
navigate and creatively connect large amounts of information is a logical
process which can be both learned and taught, with a little help from the
internet.
Scoop.it is part of a growing group of sites which
allow users to collect, organize, and reflect on online content. This process begins by defining a unique
topic which acts as a unifying arc for all content linked to the site. When users post information which they have
found online, they are asked to offer their brief insights. They can choose to share these insights on a
variety of social media sites, and when they have collected enough content they
can even publish an online newsletter based on their efforts. Using the site is very easy, but it allows
for useful and challenging applications of integrative thought. I am in the process of experimenting with it
in a variety of ways:
·
Providing
interactive homework: Homework should be an opportunity for students to build
upon what was taught in class. Scoop.it can
be used to provide students opportunities to arrive at divergent rather than
convergent conclusions about my courses.
I am trying an approach to homework in which the majority of at home
readings/video posts are provided on my scoop.it page. Each student scoops course content from here onto a
page they curate themselves. More
importantly, they will expand upon this content by finding a related item (article,
video, photo, blog, poem, song…) for each resource I have provided. By the end of the term, each student will
have built an online “textbook” which reflects both the structure of the
course, and their unique insights. I am
also encouraging students to publish their scoops on Twitter and/or Facebook to
stimulate discussions outside of class. And
although I do not want to frame this as a numbers-based exercise, I do think that
the possibility of gaining followers and increasing traffic to their Scoop.it
page will provide additional incentive to curate interesting content.
·
Emphasizing
interactive studying techniques: Tests have gained the unfortunate and
inaccurate reputation as the ultimate crucibles of the educational process. Rather than being a confrontational activity,
a well composed test allows students to think holistically about a given
section of a course. It has always
bothered me, therefore, that so many students prepare for these integrative
exercises by re-writing course concepts in fragmented notes or flashcards. While thinking that they are being efficient
studiers by focusing on isolated areas of misunderstanding, what they are
actually doing is robbing themselves of the context which makes the entire
course cohere.
Last semester, I challenged my students to use Scoop.it to prepare for
their Communication Technologies exam. I
wanted to see if the process of actively searching for course content, rather
than passively reiterating it from their notes, would lead to greater
success. Beyond that, this exercise was
also used to encourage my students to go beyond what they had learned. In addition to posting content related directly
to course content, each student had to include and justify content which
explored ways that the internet is fundamentally changing the history I had
taught them. An example of a student’s first
attempt can be viewed here.
·
Teaching integrative
research techniques: Increasing instances of plagiarism, and the less
serious but still troublesome problem of students equating research success
with quantity both stem from the same misguided assumption that research is
only about gathering information. The
age old adage that “knowledge is power” needs to be updated to reflect the
realities of a knowledge soaked digital world; “connections are power” is a
much more fitting slogan for the age of the web. Using techniques practiced throughout the
term in activities briefly outlined above, I hope to convince my students of
this.
