Collaboration in New Spaces: One Room, One Summer, One Two-Year Technical College
Amy Edwards Patterson, Moraine Park Technical College
Introduction
Identify the Needs of Students
Articulate Pedagogical Goals
Operationalize Goals
Continue to Change
Celebrate Rewards
Develop Solutions for Challenges
Identify the instructional needs of students
To move forward with this particular project and begin identifying the instructional needs of students, the group converged into a larger team of stakeholders (see video 2). R. Selfe (2005) explained that one of the most valuable aspects of designing a new, technology-rich learning space is the opportunity for teachers “to re-examine the needs of students in light of rapidly changing cultural communication contexts” (p. 60). With instructors informally receiving input from discussions with students in the classroom environment, the team developed a short list of elements deemed central to the instructional needs of students. For example, students told the instructors that they expected experiences grounded in “real world” situations, such as opportunities for collaboration on meaningful tasks and hands-on projects that would build important skills for their future. Students hoped to build skills that would help them be productive and eventually allow them to serve as valuable assets in the workplace. In addition, students desired an inclusive environment that made them feel comfortable and allowed them to work with groups when necessary, while also taking into account opportunities for individual work.
The plan to create a more innovative space developed from the assumption that students right out of high school expect innovative learning spaces, as Hurtienne explained in the “Background and Inspiration” video (see video 1). However, the college has discovered that returning adult students, dislocated workers, and other nontraditional students greatly benefit from these nontraditional learning spaces as well. A collaborative learning environment allows our nontraditional students to more readily share their expertise and rich life experience through smoother collaboration. In “Collaborative Learning: Boon or Bane?” Donald C. Stewart (1988) wrote that one factor contributing to the development of collaborative learning was the appearance of nontraditional students through open-admissions programs. This collaborative learning method appealed to students who were not already prepared, whether academically or socially, for life in academic communities. “Learning in groups,” Stewart (1998) quoted Kurt Lewin and Paul Grabbe, “is often more effective than learning individually because learning involves more than simply acquiring new information. It also involves the acceptance of new habits, values, beliefs, and ways of talking about things.” Through collaborative experiences enhanced through space design, students can further develop as learners and leaders.
The team applied these student needs to imagine a space with mobile components, a collaborative atmosphere, and the latest educational technology. Then, the team established a college initiative to explore funding options to support students’ needs within the active-learning classroom. Luckily for the team, Moraine Park Technical College occasionally offers funding to establish new initiatives focused on innovation. To propose a new initiative, an applicant must complete paperwork and develop an elevator pitch to defend the goals and outcomes of the project, while clarifying the expected impact on the college community—particularly the impact on the students at the college and their needs (see video 3 below). After reviewing a great deal of paperwork and attending a listening session, the vice presidents of the college determine the best projects to fund. For the active-learning classroom, the college initiative process lasted about one year, starting with paperwork prior to the vetting process. During the planning and request stage, “the only struggles we really had—and I wouldn’t call them struggles, but areas we had to plan around—were educating the policy holders to say this is why we want to try a nontraditional room; this is what we want to try with nontraditional furniture and nontraditional technology [as a method to identify and meet student needs]” (Hurtienne, personal communication, 2012). The policy holders approved the project, supportive of the opportunity to stand behind students’ pedagogical needs, and the team was ready to move forward.
Figure 3: Impact on the College Community |
The project might have been approved, but at that point, funding sources wouldn’t become available for a few months—not until June 2011. For a while, the team believed that, despite approval, the learning space probably would probably not be funded. However, as Hurtienne explained, once the funding was official, “we had a very short window between July and August to work with departments within the college to make sure the equipment was [purchased,] installed, and set up” (personal communication, 2012). Hurtienne also reports that, “during those two months, there were regular meetings with the committee, the educational resource department, and our facilities department talking about … where the furniture should be located, how the technology should be installed, where that should be located … and just doing minor problem solving” (personal communication, 2012). During this phase, the team needed to move from identifying student needs to articulating explicit pedagogical goals.