5 Easy Ways to Empower Students to Take Ownership of Learning in a Digital World
Inside: With information available to students at the touch of the screen, what is the role of the teacher in the learning process. This article shares 5 ways to empower students to interact with classroom content and methods for teachers to stay connected with the learning process.
Sitting in a desk, surrounded by your peers, listening to the teacher talk about cells while your mind drifts to what you will be doing after school tonight.
Then snapping back to reality when you hear the teacher utter the word “test.”
Your heart races.
You realize you did not hear most of the last fifteen minutes of instruction.
Now you will have to carry the fifty-pound textbook home tonight and read the entire chapter hoping whatever you missed would be there and not something additional the teacher added.
So much for your after-school plans.
At that moment, you suddenly made decisions about your learning.
You would have to find a way to get the information necessary for the test.
You would attempt to listen better the next day.
If not, you would have to take up weight lifting to carry the textbooks back and forth to school every day.
When students are motivated to learn, they will work hard to get the information they need.
What Has Changed?
At its core, not much has changed.
Students still daydream in class.
Teachers still try their best to share knowledge, inspire students, and help students reach their full potential.
Students still get excited about things they are passionate about and will do whatever it takes to learn more about them.
But along the fringes, things have changed a lot.
In the past, students had limited access to information. If students wanted to learn about something for an upcoming test, a project, or something they love, they had limited options.
Go to the library
Read the textbook
Listen to the teacher’s instruction
The easiest of these was to listen to the person in the front of the classroom who was pouring out information all day.
Today that is no longer the case.
Our students have been raised in a world where information is available at a simple touch.
When a question came up in their homes, they watched their parents reach for a smartphone, tablet, or laptop and quickly find the information.
When the student wanted to know how to build a better shelter in Minecraft, they watched a YouTube video.
Needed to fix their bike? YouTube
The best type of sneakers? Google
How to remove gum from their sister’s hair? TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Google....
Our students have learned anytime they need information, it is available to them.
Learning From Trial and Error
We know, as educators, that often the information they are relying on can be unreliable.
It may be skewed to obtain the desired outcome of the person sharing the information.
It may be provided simply to attempt to get the reader to buy something.
Or it could be wrong because the individual posting it online is uninformed.
However, through trial and error, most of our students have learned to be cautious of what they learn online.
Perhaps the Minecraft house didn’t work so well, so they went back. They watched more videos, read more websites, and then went back ready to try again.
This immediate access to knowledge is different than what most educators experienced during their school years.
And it makes it harder for teachers to understand how to teach these students who sometimes seem completely uninterested in what the teacher is teaching.
Take the example above about the student who got lost in daydreaming. In today’s world, that same student can quickly choose from multiple options to gather the information the teacher was sharing:
Text a peer
Send an email to a classmate
Search the title of the chapter/unit in Google or another search engine
Go to YouTube and watch some videos
Visit the teacher’s website or Learning Management System and review the information the teacher has there
Any one of these will get the student information on the topic the teacher was lecturing on.
One might argue it won’t be exactly the same information, or the student may not get the right piece of information. However, the student likely will gather enough to pass the test and even learn additional facts along the way.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Praying Mantis
Let’s think about an example.
Perhaps the teacher was talking about life cycles and specifically described the life cycle of a butterfly while the student was daydreaming.
The student gets on the bus and quickly searches for information about butterfly life cycles. They come across a website about lifecycles and see the diagram showing a butterfly’s life cycle.
Knowing they will need to know the different phases, they read over them in the diagram but then head to YouTube and watch a couple of videos of the metamorphosis process.
The student is amazed at how much the butterfly changes, and they notice videos show other animals’ life cycles. This gets them thinking, and another search of animal life cycles leads them to even more amazing things:
Cicadas live underground for 17 years before emerging for just a few weeks
Kangaroo babies are born blind and hairless and climb to their mother’s pouch
Seahorse dads are actually the ones to give birth!
Praying Mantis…. Well… there can be murder involved
Students will naturally dive deeper into the areas that interest them. In fact, they may suddenly become the classroom expert on the praying mantis.
The downside of this is the next day in school, the test only asks about the lifecycle of a butterfly.
The student likely will remember enough and have enough context based on everything they learned to pass the test. But no one is asking what else they learned, and no one is celebrating their newfound knowledge of animals with fun life cycles.
So What is the Point of Having a Teacher?
Reading about how students can learn independently and have access to all of this information can make a teacher feel a little less needed than they perhaps thought they would be.
Most of us went into college, never imagining this world with instant access to information. We were excited to learn and to be able to be the person to teach all of these amazing things to our students.
And suddenly, we aren’t as needed for that anymore.
We are needed for something possibly even more important.
Our students have instant access to information. They no longer need to rely on a teacher standing in the front of the room pouring knowledge out.
What they don’t have is
a good understanding of how to find the correct information quickly.
a way to compare and contrast opposing viewpoints that they read
methods to check for validity of what they are encountering online
ways to synthesize information and take out the essential parts
a direction for what to start looking for and when it is most valid to learn
a list of information that is “must know” by specific points in their life
processes for deciding what to do with the information they have learned
systems for sharing the information that fascinates them
a set of guidelines for interacting with the information they discover
The list could keep going.
When the teacher was the one sharing the information, students didn’t always have to do these things in the same way because they were only given the information they needed.
Now, information is everywhere.
A teacher’s new job is to help students learn how to learn.
How to Empower Students to Take Ownership of Learning
We know despite our desire to allow students to follow their passions, we still have state and national standards to meet, a curriculum that must be covered, and testing that will judge what our students know. So how do we go about empowering students to take ownership of their learning when we need them to make specific learning gains during our classes?
This, That, or the Other Thing
As often as possible, allow students to make choices about what they are learning within a topic. This starts with knowing the learning targets and the specific information students will need to know by the end of a unit.
Once you know the specific targets, take the time to think about the different topics and angles this topic could be taught.
For example, if students need to know the parts of a cell and the difference between plant and animal cells by the end of a unit, could they also learn how cells have changed over time? Perhaps they could delve deeper into the different functions of cells. Maybe they could compare cells to the school environment and study how people and cells interact.
Suppose we allow students to take in the basic information on a topic from us but utilize it to gain a deeper understanding of something they are passionate about. In that case, they are often going to go far beyond what we expect in learning the material.
Letting Out Their Creative Side
We have all heard it is essential to give students options in how they show their knowledge. However, we often all also default to the standard worksheet, essay, or presentation.
Allowing students to represent their knowledge in various ways will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of the material they are learning.
Ideas for showing student understanding of a topic:
Posters
Presentations
Write a song
Write a poem
Create a lesson plan
Make a website
Create a newspaper
Create a smash journal
Record a “newscast”
Diorama
1:1 conversation with the teacher
Embrace the Student’s Learning Style
This means if the student learns best by doing independent research, or by watching videos, or having a discussion, let them.
We know this is not always feasible for every lesson. However, as often as possible, allow students to explore and learn in ways that work best for them.
Embrace the access to information our students have grown up with.
Provide the topic
Provide the learning targets
Let the students learn
This is scary for most teachers. Perhaps you do not want to do it for every lesson, and maybe you want to pair it up with some brief, direct instruction first. But letting students learn in the way that comes naturally to them can provide amazing results.
Extend Learning
One of the best parts of students having access to so much information is the learning does not end when students leave your classroom.
Encourage students to talk to family members about the things they are learning. Have students use their cameras to take pictures of places or objects that tie into the lesson. Let students take notes on their phones or devices throughout the day to share in class the next day.
Show students ways to save information they find at different times of the day. For example, if a student thinks of a cool way to explain cells through a city model and looks up a video about it in the evening, how do they keep track of it to use it the next day in class?
Help students keep their materials organized and ready to use whenever they have new ideas.
Learn With Students
While our students have grown up with instant access to information, many can still be inefficient in their methods or how they process the information.
This is where modeling comes in.
Introduce a topic to your class and ask questions. Have students ask questions.
Then look it up together. Have students suggest where you could go online to get information. Look things up, watch videos, analyze what you see and if it is giving the information you want.
This models for students how to analyze information and helps them learn more efficient methods for finding specific information they need for your class.
It also empowers students to be confident in their abilities to find information and use it in a way that will help them in school.
Let’s Summarize- Five Ways to Empower Students to Take Ownership of Learning
#1- Let students connect your topic with a passion area.
#2- Get creative- encourage students to show their understanding in inventive and engaging ways.
#3- Embrace the student’s learning style- Provide students with the opportunity to learn independently, as a group, with technology, through discussion, etc.
#4- Extend learning outside of your classroom- encourage students to ask questions, discuss topics, and learn more whenever they have a new thought or question.
#5- Learn with your students- model learning on a smartboard or projected screen in your classroom. Let students direct the searches and learn how they find information. Share your methods as well and learn together!
While it may appear students are spending more time disengaged during class, they are taking in more information than ever before.
They were raised with instant access to the information we could only have accessed via a pile of heavy encyclopedias. It is available at a touch.
Now is the time to empower students to use this information and take ownership of their learning to become lifelong learners.
Looking for more? Check out these 20 Quick Ways to Engage Students in Your Classroom
