Discovery-Based Learning: A Brief Explanation
Those of you who have taken the Contribute classes this month or the Excel pilot classes last June probably are already familiar with Discovery-Based Learning, a term I keep throwing around and building classes upon. Have you been wondering where this term came from or what role I think it can play in staff education? If so, please read on.
When trying to re-imagine staff education, I thought about what I knew of how people learn. As a student, and particularly a student of education, I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about the ways we learn and teach, as well as the kinds of structural decisions in classrooms that affect teaching and learning. For example, a simple example of structural impact is found in the ways seats are arranged. When chairs are in a circle, students feel encouraged to interact with one another. When chairs are in rows, especially attached to desks that do not move, students feel locked in and less likely to engage with (or comfortably see or hear) the rest of the class. Similarly, when useful information is seen as a commodity given or even sold to a student from an authority figure, students are likely to play a more passive, receptive, role in their learning. When information is presented as a tool that students can use to find meaningful learning on their own or in collaboration with peers (even with “teachers” as peers), students are encouraged to play active roles in their learning. It’s probably needless to say that I find the active role much more satisfying. If you think back to your own growth and learning, do you find that your most rewarding learning experiences have come from passive or active roles you have taken within a learning environment?
Okay, so if you agree that taking an active role in your learning is valuable, you may still be wondering what Discovery-Based Learning has to do with staff education. In staff education classes, Discovery-Based Learning is what you are doing when you’re working in your small learning groups. In our classes, learning groups consist of two to five learners and one to two learning facilitators. The learning facilitators are fairly confident users of whatever program the class is on, and they are prepared in previous meetings to position themselves as facilitators of your learning rather than traditional teachers. There are times when a teacher simply needs to tell everyone some basic information from which they can work; in those situations, as in our Contribute and web architecture class, a head teacher fills that role and gives a brief interactive lecture at the beginning of the class. The majority of the class, however, is about you and your learning needs: you bring your questions and your learning goals, and the learning facilitators guide you and your group to discovering the answers you need on your own. It takes patience, but the result is worth it – you will be more likely to remember what you learn if you figure it out and do it yourself.
Where does this term come from? Discovery-Based Learning is a widely used term in education to describe one of several student-centered teaching and learning techniques used in “active” learning environments (in which students are active participants in their own education). If you do a Google search for the term, you’ll get an idea of just how widely it is used. The idea first truly solidified for me when, as part of a class I took at the College called “Critical Issues in Education,” I read “The Having of Wonderful Ideas,” by Eleanor Duckworth. I highly recommend the essay! In it, Duckworth illustrates how “the having of wonderful ideas” or, one might say, the act of discovering something neat for oneself, is “the essence of intellectual development” (Duckworth 1). When you first start using a new program like Contribute, for example, you might not know where to begin in your exploration, especially if you haven’t had practice in exploring computer programs in the past. Learning facilitators in our classes are there to ask “the right question at the right time” to spark “intellectual excitement” that can eventually lead to the learner’s ability to ask the right questions for herself (Duckworth 5). Once we learn how to explore programs – how to ask the right questions and how to go about seeking those answers – we can begin to have confidence in our ability to teach ourselves. As Duckworth helpfully points out in her essay, “Having confidence in one’s ideas does not mean ‘I know my ideas are right’; it means ‘I am willing to try out my ideas’” (Duckworth 5). By gaining confidence in your ability to explore, you validate your ideas as at least possibly good, if not wonderful. This is notably different from a traditional classroom in which one’s ideas are almost irrelevant next to the ideas of the teacher or manual being handed out to the students. Rather than solely being given information in Discovery-Based Learning, you are being asked to take the information you are given and play with it, explore it, and make it your own.
Can you remember a time you learned something new on your own, when you asked yourself a question and found your answer yourself? Or, how about when someone facilitated your learning with a helpful question or even helped you find the answer collaboratively? What was the experience of not being simply given the answer like for you? Please leave comments!
Work Cited
Duckworth, Eleanor. "The Having of Wonderful Ideas." "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, Second Edition. New York: Teacher's College Press, 1996.