Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogy as a Design Framework for Liberal Education

1. Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogy as a Design Framework for Liberal Education Indiana University Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Seminar Randy Bass Georgetown University April 20, 2012

2. Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, “Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design in Undergraduate Education”(White Paper, forthcoming, 2012) Working group and case studies from 24 faculty on 14 campuses Funded by the Teagle Foundation

3. Why Social Pedagogies? Senior Biology majors creating biology lesson plans for implementing in DC Public Schools as a way of deepening their knowledge of biology as their senior thesis. Digital stories created by students in general education history courses as a way of experiencing what it means to construct historical narrative.

4. What do they have in common? • In each example, students are developing their knowledge in contexts that centrally ask them to think of their audience as someone other than the professor.

5. What do they have in common? • In each example, learning is not only distinctly a social activity, but the implementation of social learning— the act of constructing and communicating understanding to an authentic audience— is a central part of the learning design of the course.

6. What do they have in common? • In each example, the evidence of learning was not necessarily in the “product.”

7. Why social pedagogies? • We believe it calls attention to an under-appreciated common thread of a growing range of effective pedagogical practices: the role of social learning as an essential and integrating component of rigorous course design that can achieve higher-end learning outcomes.

8. “Chance favors the connected mind.”

9. Steven Johnson “Chance favors the connected mind.” Integrativethinking socially networked

10. “She has to speak from a position of authority.”

11. “She has to speak from a position of authority.”

12. Threshold Concepts (Meyer and Land) Ways of knowing, acting, and speaking, and sometimes identity Instructional Bottlenecks (David Pace) Understanding where students get stuck based on disciplinary thinking

13. “She has to speak from a position of authority.”

14. “She has to speak from a position of authority.” Critical thinking? Inquiry and Analysis? Oral Communication? Written Communication? Integrative Learning? Lifelong Learning? Where do we find evidence of someone learning to speak from a position of authority?

15. Digital Stories https://commons.georgetown.edu/projects/digitalstories/

16. For whom were you writing? I thought if I had never heard of this then other people haven’t… I was definitely writing for my generation I’m writing for women, and definitely for young girls I’m writing for others who had been tokenized I wrote it for myself.

17. Social Pedagogies Framework

18. Social pedagogies design framework* “We define social pedagogies as design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an “authentic audience” (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course. Social pedagogies build in iterative cycles of engagement with the most difficult material, and through a focus on authentic audience and representation of knowledge for others, help students deepen their understanding of core concepts by engaging in the ways of thinking, practicing, and communicating in a field. Ideally, social pedagogies strive to build a sense of intellectual community within the classroom and frequently connect students to communities outside the classroom.”* * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, White Paper, “Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design in Undergraduate Education.”2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

19. Social pedagogies design framework* Social Core Constructing and Communicating Understanding for an Authentic Audience * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

20. Design Layer Constructing Understanding Social Core Constructing and Communicating Understanding for an Authentic Audience Communicating Understanding Authentic Audience * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

21. The interdependence of the three layers… Design Layer Constructing Understanding Social Core Constructing and Communicating Understanding for an Authentic Audience Communicating Understanding Authentic Audience * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2011; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

22. The interdependence of the three layers… Design Layer Constructing Understanding Social Core Constructing and Communicating Understanding for an Authentic Audience Communicating Understanding Authentic Audience * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2011; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

23. Broad student learning outcomes Design Layer Deepened and contextualized understanding Constructing Understanding Flexibility with knowledge in open-ended contexts Social Core Constructing and Communicating Understanding for an Authentic Audience Voice and a sense of purpose in a specific domain or community Communicating Understanding Ability to give and get feedback from multiple perspectives Authentic Audience An integrated sense of intellectual and personal significance * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

24. Three findings for the effective application of social pedagogies to course design… • You have to value social pedagogies centrally (have a social pedagogies ethos) even if social pedagogies constitute only one component of a course experience. • Social pedagogies require the alignment of a constellation of elements (i.e. linking knowledge, practice, audience, assessment) and rarely work well in isolation or as an “add on” to a course design. • If you have social pedagogies in a course they must be valued, somehow, in assessment to have value for students. * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2011; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

25. Broad student learning outcomes Design Layer Deepened and contextualized understanding Constructing Understanding Flexibility with knowledge in open-ended contexts Social Core Constructing and Communicating Understanding for an Authentic Audience Voice and a sense of purpose in a specific domain or community Communicating Understanding Ability to give and get feedback from multiple perspectives Authentic Audience An integrated sense of intellectual and personal significance * Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, 2012; Funded by the Teagle Foundation

26. Case Study: Bioethics and Moral Imagination (Profs Bass and Little)

27. Case Study: Bioethics and Moral Imagination (Profs Bass and Little) General education course: either Writing or Ethics 27 students Bioethics topics: Refusal of medical treatment Sexual refusal and Sexual flourishing Abortion Enhancement (cognitive, reproductive)

29. Initial Thoughts Survey

30. Personal Synthesis (halfway point)

31. Contraception Project

32. Contraception and Conscience

33. Contraception and Conscience “dually educate and engage readers to examine their own beliefs” “academic endeavor through a bioethical lens”

34. Working Space: Wiki Conscientious objection (medical) Committed Catholic Positions Public Policy and Health

35. Working Space: Wiki

36. Working Space: Wiki

37. Key Source Documents • Empirical Data • Thoughtful Perspectives Working Space: Wiki

38. Building the site

39. Building the site

40. Working Space

41. Obama Video: Locating Evidence of Learning: Reflection (Blake, David, and Charlie)

42. : Bioethics and the Moral Imagination:Obama Video Annotation (Blake, David, Charlie)

43. Obama Video Annotation (Blake, David, Charlie)

44. Obama HHS Announcement Video

45. Obama HHS Announcement Video

46. Working Space & Intermediate process

47. Where is evidence of learning? And what is it that we’re looking for evidence of?

48. Web Literacy Assignment: Self Assessment

49. Web Literacy Assignment: Self Assessment From the Self-assessment by one of the Obama video annotators: “The Obama video would not have been possible without the collaborative work of David and Charlie. The three of us met on three occasions for several hours to “hammer out” drafts of the video. I believe I made a large contribution to this aspect of the project and took a lot of initiative during each meeting to make sure we each knew what to do. Furthermore, I made sure that our annotations were related to either bioethics or the video directly. I focused on the “context” and “argument” annotations. I believe both of these helped me further apply bioethical principles, including conscientious objection, individual liberties, and equal access.” intermediate choices were being made (but no examples) naming key concepts in bioethics

50. Web Literacy Assignment: Self Assessment Beginning to address how this work helps with what is “necessarily difficult” in bioethical analysis? “Working on the Obama video annotation and American Congress of Obstetricians Gynecologists source document analysis allowed me to apply concepts of bioethical analysis within this project. Through these two tasks I learned the importance of examining information without letting personal predispositions guide my thinking. It was important to stay unbiased and simply look at the sources from a perspective of explaining the meaning and adding more depth to the conversation. In the beginning this was more difficult, but as the project progressed, I learned how to do it with greater success. I think my work on the video and source document shows my ability to analyze information from an unbiased, bioethical perspective that aims to increase contemplation of the topic at hand.”