What is Andragogy?
Ferdi Serim, author of Digital Learning: Strengthening and
Assessing 21st Century Skills, defines andragogy as a theory of how
humans learn. This is an important
term to add to your vocabulary. Up
until recently, pedagogy (how we teach) has been the dominant term in major
discussions on education. The pivot in the 21st century is away from
centering on teaching and looking closer to how we learn.
Ferdi Serim has listed six (6) tenets of andragogy – how we
learn:
1. Need
to Know (Why You Do)
2. Experience
(Including Error)
3. Readiness
(Just in Time)
4. Orientation
(Problem Centered)
5. Motivation (Internal)
6. Self-Concept
(In Charge of Your Own Learning)
Official Coach Lerning Academies is a 21st
century concept of education and addresses all of these tenets.
1. Need to know
(Why You Do):
Educators often have to address the question of why do we
need to learn this or when will I ever use that because of our fragmental
approach to teaching. Official
Coach Lerning Academies use compelling story lines to provide context (a
problem to solve) that motivates and guide students through the learning
experience. Coach Michael
Lerning is the central character, but there are several others that provide hilarious
misadventures in learning.
2. Experience
(Including Error):
Official Coach Lerning Academies allow students to develop
deeper understanding by learning from their mistakes without penalties. Students are not graded in the
traditional method of allowing mediocre work (a D+ for example) to pass as
acceptable work for credit.
Students must demonstrate mastery through problem-solving project-based
assignments. Students earn badges
of achievements when they demonstrate mastery. The lessons learned while earning badges cannot be
quantified or graded but provide the best kind of education.
3. Readiness (Just in Time):
Most students study under the premise that anything and
everything covered in class might be on a test (Just in case studying). The result is called load and
dump. In other words, they study
everything that might be on a test and then forget the information after the
test. The information that they
were studying had no relevance to anything outside of the test and, therefore,
no longer important enough to remember.
This is not a conscious decision among students, but a result from how
our brain is wired to learn and remember what is important.
Official Coach Lerning Academies provides relevance by
putting problem-solving projects in the context of a compelling story
line. Students study and learn
what they need to know to solve a problem and complete a task.
4. Orientation
(Problem Centered):
Marc-André Lalande invented a new word –
Schoolisyzation.
“- n. the act of force fitting a notion or concept into a
real-life context or vise-versa, for teaching purposes, resulting in a somewhat
absurd lesson or exercise that would never be considered outside of a teaching
facility.”
These are problems meant to put a concept into a context for
students, but instead provoke bewilderment that anyone would ever need or want
to do that in real life.
Official Coach Lerning Academies presents problem-solving
assignments in the context of a compelling story line that makes sense and
motivates the student to solve.
5. Motivation
(Internal):
Self-motivation is key to learning. The expression – you can lead a horse
to water, but can’t make it drink, is well known, but not actually true. Our school systems have been salting
the oats to force students to participate for a very long time. Official Coach Lerning Academies want
to take our students for a run that will work up a thirst. (OK, I may have stretched that analogy
too far).
The point is this:
Story telling, song, dance, and games have been used to teach for
thousands of years because they work.
Students are so caught up in the enjoyment of learning that the do not
realize that they are being taught.
This is the heart of what makes Official Coach Lerning Academies
radically different from other programs.
We have re-imagined education for the 21st century and found
that current technology makes it possible to center on learning as oppose to
force teaching.
6. Self-Concept
(In Charge of Your Own Learning):
This tenet is about people having the need to be responsible
for their own education – make their own choices. This includes involvement in the planning and evaluation of
their instruction. Official Coach
Lerning Academies provides students with opportunities to choose among options
where they want to follow in the gamified story line, but this is actually
superficial to their education. In
addition to completing problem-solving project-based assignments – there is
Challenge-Based Learning.
http://www.challengebasedlearning.org/pages/welcome
As described by the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow – Today
(ACOT2) program, Challenge-Based Learning is an engaging multidisciplinary
approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the
technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems through
efforts in their homes, schools and communities.
Individual Official Coach Lerning Academies are not
disengaged from the real world around us.
There are true-life problems in our communities and around the world
that our students must be a part of the solution. Our students are required to periodically submit a
Challenge-Based Learning project.
And since Official Coach Lerning Academies are not bound by traditional
school hours and days, our students have the flexibility to be fully engaged in
Challenge-Based Learning.
Official Coach Lerning Academies is a unique and radical 21st
century change in education.
Please show support by following us on Twitter and liking our Facebook
page.
…
Official Coach Lerning Academies is a 21st century concept
of education. Regionally accredited independent study schools that blend online
gamified story lines with project-based mastery. It is still in the developmental
stage. Students are not enrolled in a particular school, but rather have
membership privileges in all of the academies. Coach Lerning is the name
of a character of a gamified story line that motivates and guide students
through the 21st century learning experience.
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