Jessica Cavallaro 
Jessica Cavallaro wrote this article in 2023 to describe how Wide Open Questions can help students develop an agile mindset as artificial intelligence changes assessment. The section below, added in 2026, explains where the idea comes from, what research says about it and how a teacher can try it.
With the recent eruption of technology and, specifically, AI challenging traditional means of assessment, the world of education needs a dramatic shift in mindset and focus. The jobs and industries held constant during our formative years are no longer guaranteed. Using Agile for Learning, we can bridge the gap between future careers and student learning.
When the industry shifts, higher education adapts. K-12 education is sadly behind. As educators, we must best prepare our students for an increasingly complex world that relies heavily on technology. Instead of continuing down the same path, we must adapt and change our mindsets toward the skills that will transcend technology. This allows our students to succeed no matter what changes and shifts in their lives.
Developing Agile for Learning
The shift we must focus on is the development of an agile mindset. This is distinctly different from growth or fixed mindset, which dominates our lexicon.
A fixed mindset values expertise but discourages risk in learning or development. A growth mindset opens up the possibilities of change and helps us acknowledge that character, skills, and knowledge can shift over time. The agile mindset goes beyond the growth mindset by acknowledging change opportunities. The agile mindset openly searches for process and outcome changes.
One way to cultivate an agile mindset in the classroom is to explore Wide-Open Questions.
Using Wide Open Questions for Agile Classrooms
Wide Open Questions are based on real-world application of knowledge. Unlike Essential questions that usually have one answer or are directly tied to content, WOQs allow students to build connections between the new content being taught and their schema and interests.
For example, a WOQ may ask students studying earth science to explore how our gadgets can be recycled. In a social studies course, students may be asked if one government can meet the needs of a diverse population. These questions are real and complex, and they require students to find ways unique solutions.
WOQs guide students to apply the information they are learning in class to the issue. They encourage students to think outside of the box for new information.
Creating Agile Thinkers
Wide Open Questions offer no easy solutions. This pushes students to grapple with possible solutions. Students must learn new knowledge from the unit, explore connections of the WOQ, propose possible solutions, and prove why their solution answers the question. This process involves problem-solving, collaboration, creative thinking, and reflection.
The complexity of Wide-Open Questions means there are no easy solutions, and students must grapple with impediments that arise through their research and testing. WOQs help students develop an agile mindset by ensuring that students explore multiple possibilities. It deepens learning by not just applying new knowledge to the problem but integrating it with background knowledge and outside interests and applying it all to a real-world problem.
Through this pursuit, students learn to learn from mistakes, reflect on their assumptions, and persevere when working with complex issues.
Creative Problem Solving
Wide Open Questions work well in the classroom because they are not “googleable.” WOQs require deep thought, analysis, and critical thinking. They are the questions our students will be working to solve as they become adults. Technology will aid in gathering information, sorting data, and building projections. Still, creative problem-solving must come from students, which is why they must have the opportunity to practice in the classroom.
Implementing Wide Open Questions in the classroom is an incremental step to developing an agile mindset. Students will be engaged in learning because they see the purpose of their work. Most importantly, students will be developing a skill set they will need as AI replaces the common recall tasks.
Agile mindset in the classroom: where it comes from, what the evidence says and how to start
Jessica Cavallaro argues above that schools should help students develop an agile mindset, and that Wide Open Questions are one way to do it. An agile mindset in the classroom means a way of working in which students plan, try something, get feedback, reflect and change course, in short cycles, and expect to change their approach as they learn. The term comes from software development, so this section first explains its origin, then reviews what research on its use in schools has found, and ends with decisions a teacher or leader can make.
Where the idea comes from
Agile methods were formalized in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto, which set out four values and twelve principles for software teams. Three of the twelve principles help explain why educators borrowed the idea. One says to welcome changing requirements, even late in a project. Another says to deliver working results frequently, every few weeks to a few months. A third says that at regular intervals the team reflects on how to become more effective and adjusts its behavior. In a classroom, those principles become a project that students can revise, a series of short cycles of work with something to show at the end of each, and a routine in which students look back at what worked.
The phrase agile mindset is now used for the habits behind those practices. Researchers Konstantin Oltmann and Ralf Romeike describe the agile mindset as focused on adaptability, collaboration and continuous reflection. They note that it shares with the growth mindset a view that ability develops through effort and feedback, while it adds a focus on working with others and responding to the people a project serves. That is consistent with Cavallaro’s point that the agile mindset goes beyond growth mindset. Taken together, the principles and the paper point to four characteristics of an agile mindset: adaptability, willingness to revise a plan, collaboration and regular reflection on results.
What research has found in schools
The most recent review of the research is a position paper by Oltmann and Romeike of the Freie Universität Berlin, written about K-12 computer science and available as an author-accepted version from a 2025 conference. The authors reviewed the literature and report generally positive effects of agile-based approaches on student engagement and project outcomes. Common practices were user stories, short sprints, pair programming, and structured reviews and retrospectives. One cited study of Scrum in a high school reported higher motivation, cooperation and creativity. The paper also states that robust longitudinal evidence on lasting effects is limited, and that teaching agile values explicitly has received little or no attention in research.
These limits matter for anyone planning a school-wide change. The research is drawn mainly from computer science classes, so it does not show the effect in a history or earth science course like the examples in Cavallaro’s article. The authors also draw on industry experience to warn that adopting agile procedures without the underlying values tends to become superficial. A classroom that holds a weekly review meeting but never changes its plan because of what students say has the routine and not the mindset.
Wide Open Questions in the age of AI
Cavallaro describes Wide Open Questions as real-world questions that connect new content to what students already know and care about, and as questions that cannot simply be searched. In practice, a teacher can test a draft question before using it by putting it to an AI chatbot and asking whether the response would earn full credit. A question that gets a complete answer in one attempt probably asks for recall. A question about recycling gadgets, or whether one government can serve a diverse population, as in Cavallaro’s examples, tends to call for choices among competing goals, which students must justify. The rest of the series continues the idea: see edCircuit’s Agile for Learning, Part 2: Challenge Days and Embracing Vigor over Rigor: Cultivating Agile Classrooms for Inspired Learning.
Decisions for teachers and school leaders
- Start small. Choose one unit and one Wide Open Question, and plan two or three short cycles within it.
- Build in reflection. At the end of each cycle, ask students what to keep, what to change and what they will try next, and record the answers.
- Allow the plan to change. If students find a better route midway, count the change as part of the work.
- Assess process as well as product. Give credit for the quality of revisions, the use of feedback and the reasoning behind choices.
- Support the teachers. Because the research warns against adopting only the procedures, leaders should give time to discuss the values behind them.
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