LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Educator Self-Assessment
Limited
Evidence
The learning design does not yet take advantage of interaction or student voice. It is unclear how students can contribute to the learning. Opportunities to optimize the physical or virtual environment have not yet been employed.
Emerging
Accelerating
The learning design states how an interactive learning environment establishes a climate and culture for learning. In doing so the learning design includes strategies to engage most students but does not yet have clear approaches to ensure equity or to generate student influence. The physical and virtual environments provide new contexts for learning.
The learning design includes an interactive and equitable learning environment to enable deep learning for all students. It includes strategies to develop collaborative processes with and between students and incorporates student voice to influence the ways we work together. Physical and virtual environments provide diverse contexts for learning.
Advanced
An equitable and interactive learning environment permeates the learning design; all students are deeply engaged and committed to collaborative processes. Their voice drives learning and improvement.
The physical and virtual environments within and beyond the classroom provide rich, authentic contexts for learning
Evidence
Our classroom learning environment. We have desks arranged in groups, and students are free to move desks to suit their grouping needs.
The student's virtual learning environment was housed in a Hāpara workspace. Here students had access to all learning materials and could add their own "cards" with text and attachments.
The student wrote: "I found that student voice was very important throughout the process. It was quite interactive and allowed many of us to think deeper."
Our classroom learning environment. We have desks arranged in groups, and students are free to move desks to suit their grouping needs.
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Reflection
Students also used alternative spaces including the Learning Commons as alternate space, for example, one group went to a seminar room in the Learning Commons to watch a film for one of their products. Another group of students filmed a music video in various areas on school property, including outdoors. Students certainly were able to adjust their inquiries and let the learning take them to exciting, unplanned places. Both physical and digital learning spaces enhanced the learning, and these topics are explored more thoroughly elsewhere in the documentation for this inquiry.
Student Voice
"There were regular check-ups with which Ms. Harnick asked about progress"
"I found that student voice was very important throughout the process. It was quite interactive and allowed many of us to think deeper."
"This inquiry is Accelerating in Leaning Environments because we were given a chance to speak and learn from each other openly (especially in the socratic seminar) but since most people's projects were individual and were not shared with everyone else I found that the learning was limited."