EDLD 5313 Assignment 1 – Creating Your Significant Learning Environment – Malick, S.

Several fundamental ideas in “A New Culture of Learning” are copacetic with the innovation plan for the University Press and they can be incorporated in a variety of ways.

The UP certainly has a culture of its own, but it has never been defined or evaluated for its component parts and analyzed. One of the goals of the innovation plan is to document the UP culture so that it can be perpetuated and propagated into a legacy of a definable, significant learning environment.

Part of the UP culture’s ability to sustain itself has been through a continuation of relationships over several decades. The challenge is that these relationships are not sustainable because of basic human mortality. The idea is that the innovation plan blueprints the UP culture into a definable model for learning and teaching.

Many of the concepts included in “A New Culture of Learning” are evident in the practices of the faculty, students and staff of the UP, however it has often been characterized “just the way we do things” by previous and current advisors. But, this way of doing things, is in fact, a significant learning environment.

For example, the concept of cultivation focuses on what students and staff already know and includes the practice of what the group does in day-to-day, year-to-year operations. Stories are assigned and reported. Layouts are made. The newspaper is published and distributed. It’s how these practices have been transmitted to successive groups of students that is evidentiary of cultivation. The innovation plan not only documents this process, but guides innovative change that takes place.

This change of cultivation is innovative and disruptive because it is constant and subject to the changes in technology used and with the influx and outflow of students throughout a given semester. The innovation plan incorporates the Maestro Concept (Ryan 1991) to essentially have a peer-coach assigned with all new students. It has typically been an informal thing that was just done by one of the editors – now it will be an exclusive assignment to insure that all new students get the relationship connect to a veteran staffer to infuse and cultivate the UP culture.

Another example adding the COVA model to the UP culture. In some aspects, parts of COVA are already a part of the UP culture, but there is not a pattern or a process attached within the culture. For example, portfolios are an important item for students to catalog their work with the idea of presenting it to future employers representing a body of work they have done.

This is the most substantial aspect of the innovation plan – all staffers will be required to produce a semester portfolio for a grade.

How COVA applies is that while the UP culture has always advocated ownership of students and their work, it has always been treated as a means to an end. The purpose has been one-dimensional and rigid – students need a portfolio to get a job. The COVA model will help to expand and deepen the learning experience at the UP as the start of what will be a continually changing aspect of the students professional career – change and adaptation. COVA will help identify a structure in how students look at their learning experiences.

Students must identify that their future work is a matter of choice and ownership. They, in themselves, must be the voice of authenticity in their work. The COVA model will identify the purpose of the students work portfolio as an agent of stability and process for their career.

The portfolio serves a model for engagement and participation in what they have learned and what they will learn. A portfolio is not meant to be complete. It’s meant to show process and a progression of that process.

A majority of our students are seeking to work in media or communications of some sort and it is a field that is constantly in change and will be. The portfolio should be a reflection of that.

Another concept is compatible is collective learning. It happens daily and one item already in place as of the Fall 2016 semester is internal staff Facebook page and messenger thread. The collective learning manifests in the team, Maestro, method to communicate in how we cover and report our stories. Both serve to provide a unified platform for students to collaborate on their work. It transitions as a place for all students to participate in multiple discussions and permits the ever changing of students been added or dropped from the UP staff.

The UP staff transitions every semester because students graduate and move on and the Facebook platform allows seamless additions and subtractions to that collective. The platform also allows room for the dispositions of learning by having an equal access to keeping an eye on the bottom line, diversity of viewpoints, change, fun and living in the now.

The social media platform also provides a space for hanging out, messing around and geeking out.

Since the incorporation of the Facebook spaces students live stream each other while covering events and gives anyone on staff the opportunity to be where someone else is at and have the opportunity to participate in that event as well.

What is learned during this process is participation and the ability to work collectively.

These concepts allow a more guided and consistent approach to a lot of the things the UP already does and additionally creates a institutional memory or knowledge that can be used as a legacy to enhance the learning of students and staff that will come later.

The challenges are plenty. The main challenge will be coaching a level of consistency on the part of the advisors and editors. The change in UP culture is a challenge because this process is now identified and formally addressed as an issue within the culture itself. This process is new and time management will be challenge to hold consistent participation and engagement.

As the instigator and investigator of the innovation plan, I know I have several challenges in front of me. I know my perspective is not broad enough alone to be a singular influence, I honestly don’t know. I think I will certainly have an important role. I think my role is also to find as many primary influencers and voices as I can to develop my philosophy. My actions will speak for themselves. I hope my actions are a positive influencer, I think they have the potential to be.

EDLD 5313 Assignment 1 – Creating Your Significant Learning Environment – Malick, S.

Assignment Value: 75 points

In this assignment, you will need to create your response to A New Culture of Learning and outline how you will move toward creating significant learning environments.

Instructions

Create an argument for how a shift to a creating significant learning environments can enhance learning. Consider how creating significant learning environments will influence or impact your innovation plan that you created in EDLD 5305?

In addition to the MAIN contextual points above and to your Discussions, consider the following questions as you draft your response/argument:

• What fundamental ideas from A New Culture of Learning will you bring into your learning environment? How will you do this?
• What will be your main challenges and how will you address those challenges.
• How will adopt the perspective of creating significant learning environments impact your organization?
• How can we get people to think so broadly or holistically? (please note this is NOT holistic learning)
• Is your perspective broad enough to become a foundational perspective that will influence your learning philosophy and your actions?