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EdTech

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How to Tell if Your Edtech Integration is Successful

by Stacy Hawthorne March 14, 2023

written by Stacy Hawthorne 5 minutes read

A few years ago, I was talking with a school Superintendent at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference. He expressed concern about a new EdTech integration. The district recently implemented a 1:1 initiative (one computing device per student). He commented that he passed several classrooms where students weren’t using their new devices. He assessed this as “bad.” My question to him was, how did he know it was bad? Assessing an edtech implementation as “bad” because students aren’t using a device constantly is misguided. It was as if he said an implementation is successful because all students are on a device.

The Goals of EdTech Integration

The goal of any edtech integration should be to advance student learning outcomes. A secondary goal is to increase time for learning. This often comes through increased efficiency achieved from the technology. Dixon, Cassady, and Cross (2005) provide a great example of achieving both goals. They wanted to determine if using computers in writing impacted the critical thinking skills displayed in high school student essays. They also wanted to determine whether gender played any effect.

Example of Assessment Framework

Students were required to handwrite an essay at the onset of their junior year. During the fall of their senior year, the students were required to write a second essay. In the second essay, half of the students of each gender were asked to compose their essays using a computer. Essays were evaluated using a modified AP English Composition rubric. This helped reviewers identify displays of critical thinking. Boys in the study who used the computer to compose their essays increased their word counts by 83%. The boy’s rubric scores increased from 3.1 to 4.1 over the handwritten group.

Increasing word counts is an example of increased efficiency gained by the edtech implementation. On the other hand, increasing rubric scores exemplify advancing student learning outcomes. I.E. critical thinking. Interestingly, girls in the study showed no statistically significant difference between the two writing modalities. In this case, the edtech didn’t help or harm this group of students.

The Power of Ongoing Assessment on EdTech Integration

Carly Britt, a Learning Experience Designer at Clarity Innovations, believes that schools and districts need an ongoing assessment process to gauge the success of an edtech integration. She notes that “to integrate edtech successfully, schools must regularly evaluate the success of their edtech implementation efforts through various measures aligned to a common vision. Leaders and educator teams can evaluate edtech success through collaborative classroom observations and learning cycles. Before observing teaching and learning in a classroom, educators collaboratively discuss best practices and edtech integration with one another to highlight areas to watch.”

The key here is that the discussion should be an actual dialogue where classroom-based educators have an authentic opportunity to have their voices heard. This can’t be a top-down initiative if it’s meant to succeed and foster growth. Carly continues that after classroom observations, “educators then discuss effective practices used, review formative and summative data gathered, and consider potential next steps for instruction and professional development.

Fostering a Culture of Learning that Supports Your EdTech Integration

This process continues to cycle to foster a culture of learning and growing collectively. The culture of learning enhances both technology implementation and instructional practices to meet all learners’ needs best.” Importantly, Carly highlights one key point about effective assessments – it’s a cycle, not an event.

You need to discuss, design, and budget assessments in the planning stages of the edtech integration. Educators don’t implement a curriculum and then design the assessments after the students have completed the curriculum. Therefore, a well-designed curriculum uses a backward-design process where you design assessments first. The curriculum is created to ensure students have the best chance of demonstrating mastery of the assessments.

Edtech integrations should be designed using a similar approach. Furthermore, think first about the integration’s goal, then how the team will know they have met it. Therefore, having these discussions early in the process will lead to long-term success for the edtech integration.

Measuring the Success of Integrating Tools

Measuring the success of edtech integrations requires schools to reevaluate what they are assessing. Too often, schools assess inputs (number of devices or apps implemented) or outputs (number of educators using x or the number of students who earned x certifications) (Burns, 2013). Although input/output assessments can provide valuable data, they do nothing to help educators understand the impact of the edtech integration.

What schools need to know is why and how edtech integrations had an impact. Burns notes that “impact is distal” and focuses on long-term changes at the school or district level. She notes that assessing an integration too early is akin to a doctor giving a ten-day dose of antibiotics and assessing effectiveness after three days.

The idea that edtech integrations are human change endeavors was highlighted in Professional Development for Edtech Change. Human change doesn’t happen overnight. Additionally, human change is even more difficult when the people expected to implement the change are afraid of the outcomes. Assessment must be non-threatening and designed to gather data that improves outcomes.

An Example of a Successful Assessment

A great example of this is an online survey (see p. 10-11) that Davidson Academy Online uses to gather student feedback on the effectiveness of its online courses each semester. The leadership team administers these surveys and has been for over five years. The survey results are analyzed each semester to look for patterns and areas of opportunity. These surveys are non-evaluative for the teaching staff. They have allowed the team to improve outcomes each year and have a long-term impact on student learning. The entire team buys into the value of this assessment to improve every aspect of this highly successful online school.

Assessment is a critical part of every successful edtech integration. Assessment should measure outcomes and impact, not inputs. Therefore, outcomes are the immediate effects on students, and impacts are the longer-term changes at the school and district levels (Burns, 2013). Assessment needs to be a cyclical process, not a singular event. Overall, this cyclical process allows for continuous improvement and emphasizes that edtech integration is a key way the school or district is advancing student learning. In summation, as the John Doerr book title reminds us, we need to “Measure What Matters.” Above all else, respect the ideas and inputs of the people implementing the change. Successful edtech assessments are collaborative.

March 14, 2023 0 comments

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Agile For Learning – Part 1: Wide Open Questions

by Jessica Cavallaro February 17, 2023

written by Jessica Cavallaro 7 minutes read

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.

February 17, 2023 0 comments

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EdTech Professional Development K-12

Professional Development For Edtech Change

by Stacy Hawthorne February 7, 2023

written by Stacy Hawthorne 4 minutes read

The first part of this series, People Make Successful Edtech Integrations Possible is about investing in collaboration. Essentially, “it’s not an edtech initiative; it’s a human change endeavor.” This article focuses on best practices for professional development that will make edtech integration successful. Effectively, how do we support the educators who are expected to change due to new edtech?

Professional Development Requires Collaboration

The most important consideration when designing professional development is the individuals you support. This isn’t new news to educators, who have been taught to consider their learners when designing and implementing lesson plans for decades.

A 2018 Education Evolving report by Krista Kaput draws on a wide range of research to make the case for student-centered learning over adult-centered, standardized models. Too often, schools design professional development without considering the individuals who are implementing edtech.

Professional Development- Worst Case Scenario

The last year that I was teaching in the classroom, the district was focused on differentiation. To advance the initiative, a full day of professional development was planned. During this day, teachers from all three middle schools came together. Hundreds of teachers were gathered in one of the middle school cafeterias, and we sat on hard plastic stools fixed to the middle school lunch tables.

The district was so invested in differentiation they brought in a professional speaker on the topic. Over the entire school day, she delivered a PowerPoint presentation that consisted of over 100 slides about differentiated instruction. At no point was the professional development differentiated based on the needs of the teachers who were required to be there.

Now I know this is probably a worst-case scenario for professional development and likely has happened to others.

Setting Up Effective Professional Development

Danielle Tymitz has been designing professional development for over a decade, and her work focuses specifically on digital learning. She notes, “[i]t sounds so simple, but one of the best gifts you can give your staff is meaningful, pertinent professional learning coupled with time to explore, plan, and implement the new skill. This can come in personalized PD sessions, just-in-time resources like videos and handouts, or even genius hours where teachers can explore something specific to their audience and subject.”

These opportunities put the teacher at the center of the learning and allow for authentic differentiation in their learning. When surveyed, most teachers report that their attitudes about using technology improved after attending high-quality professional development tailored to their learning needs.

Professional development should follow the same best practices that you would expect for classroom teaching. This means that sometimes the edtech initiative will need to be differentiated. It’s almost impossible to think a single piece of edtech will work universally.

Picking the Right Tools for the Job

Part one of this series emphasized planning for six common hurdles for edtech integrations: (a) resources, (b) institutional barriers, (c) specific subject matter, (d) attitudes and beliefs of stakeholders (this includes educators), (e) knowledge and skill level of end-users, and (f) assessment. These hurdles are equally applicable to designing professional development programs.

Emily Russo spent six years as a district instructional technology integration specialist at the Ulster County BOCES. She points out, “Picking the right tool for the job is so important. What grades K-3 find useful and usable are not the same as those teaching grades 4-6 or even 7-12.

Using A Multi-Variable Approach

Often, I find there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for K-12. That said, the tools should build on each other throughout their schooling. For example, introducing a coding tool like CodeMouse or BeeBot in K-2 gives kids a foundation. In 3-6, they can move on to Edison or block coding in Scratch, and 7-12 can move quickly on to drones, VEX, or other more complicated code-based systems.” This same level of personalization can and should be applied to almost any edtech integration.

It shouldn’t be new news that teachers are experiencing high burnout; technology can often be a source of that burnout. Technology should focus on helping teachers strengthen their classroom practice or solve a problem so they can spend more time working with individual students. Professional development linked to classroom practice and site-based rather than centralized is more effective.

Journey to Successful Professional Development

Professional development is a journey, not a destination. It can’t be a “one and done” if the edtech initiative is going to be successful. Remember, edtech initiatives are human change endeavors. “Professional development is more effective if designed as an ongoing process rather than a series of discrete, disconnected topics.”

This means including opportunities for job-embedded professional development, ongoing coaching, accessible resources, collaboration, and celebration of success. Tymitz reminds us that “Teacher time is at a premium. Designing relevant, meaningful, personalized professional learning is more important than ever. Infusing choice in professional development not only values the time and energy of the staff but also creates opportunities for closer collaboration between participants who share similar skills, audiences, or goals.

February 7, 2023 2 comments

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Virtual Study Hall: Visualizing a New Student Support Model

by Stacey Ludwig Johnson December 29, 2022

written by Stacey Ludwig Johnson 5 minutes read

Using Virtual Study Halls To Expand The Digital Landscape

Without a doubt, our nation’s students have been met with setbacks and disruptions over the past couple of years, with schools thoughtfully trying to leverage all the online and in-person tools and techniques available at this important time in education’s history. When we look across the K-12 and higher education landscape, it’s clear that all students deserve a supportive and nurturing learning environment – now more than ever – where they can thrive or rebuild any loss in their academic pursuits. Virtual study hall can be a support function that creates growth.

As the largest nonprofit, accredited college of education in the nation, the Teachers College at Western Governors University’s (WGU) School of Education has long recognized that new support centers, methods, research, projects, applications, and scaffolding are needed to create a holistic Community of Care for each student, supporting them no matter where they are on their journey.

One Community of Care model that we recently launched is the Virtual Study Hall – an equivalent of brick and mortar’s teacher or faculty “office hours,” but with much more flexibility, given our devotion to personalized online learning, flexible scheduling, and the strategic use of new, emerging educational technologies. Since launching the program a year ago, WGU’s Teachers College has offered more than 5,000 hours of hosted study hall sessions to our students.

For other K-20 institutions considering improvements to their student support network, here are three hallmarks of our Teachers College’s Virtual Study Hall that we have found vital in achieving the twin goals of offering just-in-time academic support while also building belonging and community:

Mapping the Virtual Study Hall Model

It may be helpful to think of the Virtual Study Hall as the online version of a traditional campus library. Students walk in and can see other students who look like them. They can have a quiet place to study. In addition to breakout rooms for specific course instructors and mentors, “study break” rooms are a great place where students can take a short break, go on camera, and just visit each other.

And, in an improvement over the ground-based library, the Virtual Study Hall offers a visual normalization of asking for help. Often at traditional colleges and universities, the students who would most benefit from academic support don’t seek it out because of a perceived stigma. The same can be true in online learning environments if it’s not woven into the mix via learning experience design that puts students at the center of the instruction.

Engaging Virtual Study Hall Program Mentors

At WGU’s Teachers College, each student is assigned a Program Mentor – someone the student becomes very close to over time as this person will stay with the student, in most cases, from just before starting their first course until they graduate. Regular check-ins help ensure that the students are always supported, and barriers are removed so they can progress in their studies.

Our program mentors are now weaving the Virtual Study Hall into their welcome conversations with new students. In the early one-on-one calls, mentors often ask students when they will study each week, what support they have at home, and how they’ve planned their life and work to allow for time during the day or night to do their studies. Then, once they see the student’s schedule, program mentors can overlay that with study hall session offerings and suggest the student take some of that time and study directly in the study hall.

Building Peer Support Communities

According to a report published by Timely MD, “peer-to-peer models expand the network of student support simply because of the number of peers available to help one another.” In Virtual Study Halls, it’s important to provide a platform through which students get ahead academically and feel part of a community.

We recognize that students also need time to connect, decompress from busy lives, and feel part of the whole. In addition to the study hall and breakout rooms for specific course instructors and mentors, our Virtual Study Hall has ‘study break’ rooms where students can go to take a short break, go on camera, and visit with each other.

Also, a chat function allows students to share their achievements and support each other, creating the sense of community many were asking for without the noise of a live group conversation. When students post messages about recent academic accomplishments, other students chime in with support, cheering them ever onward.

Virtual Study Hall Trajectories

As we all work to change trajectories for students with education as the key to change, building a platform such as a Virtual Study Hall provides coaching, mentoring, advice, structure, and friendship. Our Teachers College students have shown us in no uncertain terms that this is meeting an extraordinary need in their lives and their learning experience journey. As the nation’s education ecosystem continues to evolve, let’s commit to starting up, standing up, and scaling up new student support models, which are not only essential for the success of our students but also irreplaceable as a nurturing part of the schools that our students call home.

Dr. Stacey Ludwig Johnson is the Senior Vice President of Western Governors University (WGU) and Executive Dean of the School of Education.

If you liked this article, explore more articles on virtual learning here.

December 29, 2022 0 comments

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Using Student Self-Selected Groups For Classroom Success

by Jessica Cavallaro November 28, 2022

written by Jessica Cavallaro 4 minutes read

Adopting an agile mindset in the classroom means trusting teams to organize and complete work in rapid iterations. To truly implement this framework, use student self-selected groups to develop student-led projects. For real learning to occur, there must be student agency, and this is the first step.

Having students, led by team captains, self-select their team is a tenant of an agile classroom. It is essential that students understand their power of choice, teamwork, and communication. When beginning a unit with choice and trust in student decisions, the impact is immediate. Students are engaged, nervous, and excited by the idea of having agency in their learning. They immediately know this is not the “game” of education but a different dynamic that they are not used to.

Preparing Students to Choose Their Teams

This task of choosing groups is not to be taken lightly. Successful student groups make or break a learning experience. When given choice with no parameters, students do not have the tools or strategies to choose teams that will excel and resort to working with friends. The foundation of an agile classroom is to explicitly teach the skills students will need to lead and develop a passion for learning.

There is a foundation that must be taught before students are ready to pick teams that they will work with for 4 – 6 weeks. This usually begins with a discussion or writing prompt about how each individual learns best. It is clear that all people do not learn the same. We are individuals that function in unique ways. For most students, this is the first time they will have this discussion in an educational setting. This reflective exercise helps students explore their own cognitive practices. Through probing questions and a lively discussion, their individuality shines as they come to the conclusion that they all have strengths and weaknesses in all aspects of their lives. This can be cemented in learning journals, where students reflect on how they learned best that week, or weekly retrospectives, where the class discusses their individual successes for impediments and how improvements in the future. This base of meta-cognitive practices enables students to take the next leap into better understanding team dynamics.

Team Captains and the Qualities and Skills Checklist

At the beginning of a new unit, the teacher chooses team captains. There is no magic formula for the selection process, but a promise to the students that, at some point, each person will serve as a captain.

Each student is then given a Qualities and Skills checklist. Students are instructed to select the top five qualities and skills. The important part of this process is to keep these sheets anonymous, so students are forced to analyze the attributes of each individual over who they are. Each paper is assigned a number that corresponds to a student on the teacher roster. Only the teacher has access to both. Students could only see the number on top of each checklist as go through the process of choosing well-rounded groups rather than groups of friends.

Prior to the selection, the class should discuss what makes groups successful. Should we all be creative? detail-oriented? a leader? These are all great characteristics, but can so many different skills weaken the overall strength of the group? Should our teams be like-minded or diverse? What outcomes should be anticipated from our groups?

From years of forced group work, students have strong opinions about how teams should work. They are opinionated and offer perspectives on working with others that are insightful. By giving them space to work through these thoughts together, they are able to gain a deep level of clarity about how to build teams. A skill that will aid them in their futures.

Forming the Groups

Team captains are given access to the groups of qualities and meet to pick those that they think would build the best group. Since the captains chose solely on qualities and skill, they have no idea who is in their group. Team Captains return to their teachers only with numbers, anxious to hear who is in their groups.

Students have described this as nerve-wracking. They are not used to making decisions in the classroom, never mind decisions that will greatly impact the next few weeks of their lives.

When groups are formed, students may try to figure out who listed what skills. Often times you can overhear conversations about dividing work based on who has what qualities.

In self-selected groups, students are proud to be chosen for their strengths and not reputations or names. Each person is valued because of what they can contribute to the success of the group.

The practice of self-selected groups teaches students to value diverse teams and look for the strengths in others. It is a practice that goes beyond teaching a traditional curriculum but the real-life skill of working with others to accomplish complex tasks. It builds empathy and communication skills all people need to be successful throughout life.

November 28, 2022 12 comments

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3 Agile Principles for Students

by Jessica Cavallaro November 23, 2022

written by Jessica Cavallaro 5 minutes read

The Agile Principles were created by software developers to streamline communication, collaboration, and efficiency when building new solutions.

Using Agile Principles In The Classroom

The principles and values that make agile unique bring the human experience back to systems saturated with bureaucracy and inefficiency. The driving force behind agile, the mindset and philosophy, brings teams together, builds AI- Proof “soft” skills, and makes work transparent. When employed in the classroom, it engages students, deepens learning experiences, and helps students develop the independence and confidence they need in all aspects of their lives.

All 12 Agile Principles can be applied to education for instant changes in learning outcomes. The principles below stand out for their ability to change the student experience. Software developers created agile to streamline communication, collaboration, and efficiency when building new solutions. The principles and values that make agile unique bring the human experience back to systems saturated with bureaucracy and inefficiency. The driving force behind agile, the mindset and philosophy, brings teams together, builds AI- Proof “soft” skills, and makes work transparent. When employed in the classroom, it engages students, deepens learning experiences, and helps students develop the independence and confidence they need in all aspects of their lives.

Agile Principle #2- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Building an agile mindset is essential for students graduating into a fluctuating job market. Issues with straightforward solutions can now be automated, leaving our students working with complex problems daily. The ability to analyze, test, collect data, reflect and change course are fundamental to their success in all areas of life.

Unfortunately, students do not get enough access to this thinking in education. Outside a science lab, students are given exact instructions and graded based on compliance. In an agile classroom, students must work through the content, develop skills along the way, and create authentic assessments.

Students and teachers must be flexible throughout this journey regarding their final product. The “competitive advantage” is a personalized approach to education. When we value learning instead of products, students can build on their schema, making unique connections, and building deeper understanding. The product can change as long as students learn, create connections, and build skills.

This model reinforces that new information can change our ideas and outcomes. It provides positive feedback changing our minds based on new data and information is good for us and allows us to find the best solutions. It ultimately removes the stigma of “being wrong” and helps students develop the agile mindset that will serve them best in the world.

Agile Principle #7- Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Learning is messy when done right. It’s always nice to tie up a lesson in a beautiful bow and hang it on the classroom walls. Often that kind of learning shows superficial knowledge and no deep understanding. The goal is real learning, not beautiful decorations. In Agile, when software is successful, it works; the same is true for learning. Learning is successful when it drives further learning.

Sunken cost syndrome affects all of us, regardless of age or context. We have all worked with students that have put time and effort into a project that is clearly not solving the issue, but they push on, believing that starting over would be a failure. In agile classrooms, students are constantly tasked with evaluating their work and ensuring that it “functions.” This means assessing whether the new data is helping to solve the problem, keeping students focused on the task, and encouraging conversations that hold each team member accountable.

With so much information around us, it is easy to get lost in the problem-solving process, but ensuring that all increments and people are “working” allows student teams to work more efficiently and effectively.

Agile Principle #12- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Reflection is the heart of learning. As students learn, they need to be explicitly taught how and why to reflect. This is often left off the table for other skills or more content, but this is a mistake. How do we know if we are learning if we never reflect?

The team must communicate what they are doing, what works or doesn’t, and what the future may hold. The Kanban board aids students in reflection because it makes communication transparent. The students know who is doing what, when, and how. They see movement through their project, and as they communicate on the board, it forces them to think of the “HOW’ and “WHY” together and by themselves. When reflection becomes part of the culture of learning, students automatically use it as a tool to adjust their behavior and eliminate the excess. No one that takes time to reflect on their progress keeps the inefficient parts.

Continuing Learning Success With The Agile Principles

For students, this builds reflective practices and executive functioning skills. Once students learn to break down large tasks into smaller incremental steps, the natural tendency to procrastinate is diminished. Visually viewing work also helps students manage their time, build accurate schedules and plan ahead. All skills need refinement, no matter the age.

Agile classrooms build the AI-Proof skills that are essential for all pursuits. These principles scaffold and build an agile mindset that allows students better understand concepts, dig deeper into new knowledge and develop “soft” skills. To see more agile resources learn more here.

November 23, 2022 16 comments

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