Constructionism 3.0

Listening to MIT's Vijay Kumar speaking is always informative. Kumar has vast experience in research in online and digital learning environments, and he conveys his knowledge in an accessible style. He was keen to argue that the future of education has two fundamental characteristics - open and digital. His previously published book Opening Up Education explains the first in plenty of detail, but the second, digital, was uppermost in his keynote presentation at ELI 2015, the Saudi Arabian premier e-learning event. He said that it is at the intersection of digital and open that learning innovation occurs, and that education will be transformed if attention is paid to them both. He showed through several examples of his own work with online learning how visualisation and animation are vitally important for students. Visualisation takes the abstract, and makes it concrete he explained. Kumar went on to discuss the role of assessment in online learning. He maintained that assessment should be embedded within the digital learning environment, and should be frequent, because it provides constant feedback to students on how well they are doing. He showed that the completion rates of MIT online programmes has improved dramatically because of these features in their provision.

The most intriguing aspect of his keynote were his remarks about constructionism 3.0. Contructionism is a theory of learning by making. I asked him how this could be defined as 3.0, and how it might be different to 2.0 or even 1.0. Alluding to the early work in educational programming by Seymour Papert (LOGO), Kumar suggested that this equated to constructionism 1.0 because it was largely a solo led form of learning, with students interacting directly with the machine. Constructionism 2.0, was learning by making using tools such as Scratch, which became quite a social form of learning. Constructionism 3.0 he explained, was where this form of learning by making was distributed widely, and could be witnessed in movements such as Fab Labs and makerspaces. Constructionism of this form does not necessarily require a space, but often does, where makers meet and learn from their problem solving endeavours and through challenge based approaches to fixing, hacking, modding, designing for 3D printing, and a whole host of other forms of making by adjusting existing structures and tools.

Photo by Paul Keheler on Wikimedia Commons


Constructionism 3.0 by Steve Wheeler was posted from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Making the future of education

Many would agree that a lot needs to be done to bring education up to date. The methods we use to try to align school and university teaching with the demands of contemporary society will shape the extent to which we succeed. Some advocate the flipped learning approach and to a certain extent, the transfer of content delivery from the classroom to the home (or elsewhere) makes a lot of sense. Time in the classroom with the experts should be used for assimilation of that content, and the critical thinking and application of it, which is a great deal more difficult. A lot of institutions are adopting versions of this method, and are employing technology, particularly video and online content to achieve it.

But this is just the start, and more can be done to ensure that the present day education system adequately prepares young people to take up their roles in a rapidly changing world. One of the most significant movements in recent years, and one that I believe will have a profound impact on current educational provision, is the makerspace. Alternatively referred to as hackerspaces or hacklabs, makerspaces are based on the principles of peer learning and knowledge sharing. You have probably noticed at this point just how similar this approach to learning is to work based learning practices. People teach each other by passing on their knowledge, and learn within their community of practice, focusing on their specialisms.

In makerspaces, people come together to fix things, modify existing materials and design structures, and generally explore alternatives as they learn together. They are zones of self directed learning where there are few limits to the imagination. There is usually a lot of experimentation, exploration and prototyping and testing of new ideas. This can be a very powerful means of learning not only about the things you are fixing or modding, but also about the processes that underline them such as risk taking, discovery and problem solving. A specific theory of learning, Seymour Papert's constuctionist learning theory, could be applied to explain this. Papert suggests that when we involve ourselves in making things, we become a part of that process, by constructing mental models to represent it. Furthermore, the power of sharing what one has made with an audience reinforces the achievement and motivates learners to achieve even more.

It's not that difficult to see how this approach might be used in schools to promote better learning, and encourage students to engage more.  Makerspace learning can enable students to acquire and practice skills they will later need in the world of work. Some thinking has already gone into the pedagogy of makerspaces, and later posts on this blog will attempt to describe how these can be established in schools and universities. In the meantime, if you wish to explore this idea further, check out 7 things you should know about Makerspaces by Educause.

Photo by Mitch Altman on Flickr


Making the future of education by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.