Ask Simple Questions to Start Co-Designing Instruction with Students

 

At the heart of any learner centered classroom is the co-designing of instruction by teachers and students. This can seem like a very daunting tasks at first. How can I work with each student individually to design a path to outcome mastery? How can I give up all of this control of my instruction? How can I get students to buy into this process?

All of these questions are valid, but they are not the questions that should be asked at the start of this process. Students and teachers who are new to this process can't expect to go full on designing individual paths from scratch. Also, there is not going to be an equal balance between teacher and students when it comes to instructional design. At the beginning of the process, it makes sense for the locus of control to still lie mainly with the teacher. As I begin the process with a new group of students every year, I solicit information from students that I use to design instruction. 

There are different times that I solicit this information. At the end of a lab, at the end of a practice quiz, and at the end of a unit, I ask several questions to help me design instruction for my learners.

At the end of any lab, I include a simple feedback question. 

At the end of a quiz (strictly formative), I ask reflection questions that include what practice students need in terms of content and format. For example, at the end of our last quiz on forces, I asked the following questions:

After we complete the summative assessment for a unit, before we begin the next unit, I ask the students a series of feedback questions:

What's working?

What's not working and how could it be fixed?

What worked in terms of the assessment design?

What options have you had for \assessments in other classes that worked for you?

While it is great to solicit feedback from students, that is only the start. The key to getting quality feedback is to act on the feedback you get. You may not be able to act on every suggestion, but the more you act on in terms of designing instruction the better. When you present a lesson or activity in which you included these suggestions be sure to point out that they were driven by student suggestions.

A part of this strategy is trusting that students know what is and isn't helping them as learners. If these questions seem a little to open ended, it's a good idea to give some examples of instructional design strategies you have intentionally included in class. Stating these explicitly can help students see that instruction is designed by the teacher and not simply prescribed from on high. Acting on student feedback can help learners see how they can play a role in this process.

Of course this is only the beginning of the process, as both teachers become more comfortable with giving up more elements of control and students demonstrate the maturity to become more autonomous, the locus of control can begin shifting more in the direction of the learner. But in order for students to provide useful feedback on different learning strategies, they have to have exposure to them. For this reason, it is important for teacher to try out different learning strategies in the classroom.