Action Research
Hello World: Building Expertise in Global Education
Hello World: Building Expertise in Global Education
Supporting Teachers New to Learning Circles
Barry S. Kramer
2019-2020
Supporting Teachers New to Learning Circles
Barry S. Kramer
2019-2020
I value global education and find that when integrated within a school curriculum it provides students with the opportunity to learn about other cultures and develop educational skills with other students. I have also found that online global interactions help students to develop their competency with communication and presentation skills in a real-world setting. The Learning Circle Model has proved to be a reliable educational tool that I have used with students to provide structural guidance for their online interactions to communicate, learn about culture, and work together on project-related tasks with other students in different parts of the world.
I have been involved with the Learning Circles project for over 30 years. Learning Circles has not only been a project with a long track record of success for online learning, but it has also proven to be an effective model for online collaboration. The model has shown itself to be very adaptable to the changing needs of schools and global collaboration in general. The project started in the late 1980s, well before there was a World Wide Web, and has been able to adapt to the widespread use of the Internet as well as to the proliferation of online communication and publishing tools. I would like to see the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) use Learning Circles as the defining model for their online project-based learning.
As Coordinator of iEARN’s Global Learning Circles project, there are two trends that I identified over the last three years which I want to investigate in this action research project.
- First, there was a noticeable drop in the number of participants signing up for each session of the project. It appeared that the greatest decline in participation came from North America, specifically the United States and Canada.
- Second, there was a consistent number of participants who signed up for various Circle projects but discontinued their participation shortly after one opening phase known as the Exchange of Classroom Surveys. It was my observation that many of these participants who dropped out were first time participants to the iEARN Learning Circles project.
My goal was to address both these problems with the development of a new offering that I called a Hello World Learning Circle.
Background - Research Context
For most of the history of Learning Circles, a 16-week long model of collaboration was used to facilitate exchanges between teachers and students in different areas of the world. There were some successful modifications to this model, the most notable one being a 10-week model used by schools in the Netherlands as part of the Global Teenager Project. In 2018, I created a 10-week Learning Circle project for elementary students called My School. There were two successful groups that completed the project. However, I noticed that the schools who did not complete the project were mostly first-time participants in Learning Circles. This suggested that first-time teachers in Learning Circles might benefit from a different format for an introductory activity.
Cycle 1 Research Question: If I use a combination of old and new methods for advertising, how successful will this effort be in getting new teachers to register for the Hello World Learning Circles.
Cycle 2 Research Question: If I facilitate the Hello World Learning Circles, how will this help me understand the learning curve experienced by teachers new to Learning Circles.
Cycle 1: Finding Participants
Cycle 1: Finding Participants
Cycle 2: Facilitation A Hello World Learning Circle
Cycle 2: Facilitation A Hello World Learning Circle
Summary of Findings
My initial reason for creating the Hello World Learning Circle project was to address the problem that beginners to iEARN and the Learning Circle project appeared to struggle to complete the traditional 16-week long projects. It was my belief that participants new to Learning Circles and participants who were veterans would have a better experience if both groups were separated and allowed to pursue tasks that were better matched to their online project skill level. I believe that I did achieve the goal of separating the two groups. The majority of participants in the 16-week project had at least two years of experience with Learning Circles and iEARN. The majority of participants in the Hello World Learning Circle had less than two years of experience with iEARN and Learning Circles.
Completion rates suggested that separating first-time teachers may have provided an easier entry point. The participants who started the Hello World project by submitting a Teacher Introduction message did tend to finish the project to the end (69%). The completion rate for the 16-week sessions was both similar and lower. Two of the circles (My School Elementary/Middle School Circle and the Places and Perspectives Middle/High School Circle) had a higher completion rate compared to the last three years of Learning Circles (68% compared to 45.4%). Both of these Circles were mostly composed of teachers with experience of more than three years (85%). The completion rate for the remaining two 16-week projects (Global Issues: Education and Environment) was lower (36.4% compared to 45.4%). These last two 16-week Circle groups contained a 50/50 mixture of veteran Learning Circle participants along with new participants. It should be noted that I was not able to place every new teacher in a Hello World Learning Circle. There were seven new teachers who wanted to participate in the Global Issues project due to the subject matter. The relationship between the experience of teachers with Learning Circles and their completion rate will need more data.
My other purpose for creating the Hello World Learning Circles was to create a project that was designed for teachers who were new to iEARN and collaborative project work. It was my observation that there were very few projects that catered specifically to a teacher who was looking for a first-time online project for his/her students. I believed that this could potentially be an important asset to the ongoing collection of projects supported by iEARN. The need for this type of project displayed itself when the next session of Learning Circles began in January of 2020. 49 teachers enrolled for the Hello World Learning Circle project that began in March 2020. Almost all the teachers who participated in this 2020 session of Hello World Learning Circles were new to iEARN, new to Learning Circles, had not participated in a prior iEARN project, or had not participated in a project in the last three years. It is my belief that the new Hello World project is addressing an organizational need and has great potential for providing a first time experience for teachers new to iEARN, new to Learning Circles, or new to online student project work.
Overall Reflections
There were some advantages that I realized through the creation and execution of the Hello World Learning Circles. One major benefit that occurred was due to the need to create or adapt new materials for the Hello World Learning Circles, I was forced to re-examine the materials I have been using for Learning Circles over the past few years. As I was planning the Hello World process, I realized that some of my traditional materials would not work for the Hello World Learning Circles mainly because the original materials were designed for a longer time period. As an example, I revised some parts of the Class Survey Template to shorten the completion time for the students and teachers. Also, I wanted the Learning Circle participants to take more ownership of the process, and see the survey as an opportunity to share what they thought was special about themselves, their school, and their community. After I redesigned parts of the survey, I realized that the new version was a better fit for my goals for all the Learning Circle groups. Based on my experience with the class survey phase of the Hello World Learning Circles, I decided to use the revised template with all the Learning Circles groups beginning in 2020. I re-messaged my directions to the participants in the new 2020 Learning Circle groups and shared my new goals for the class survey. I also encouraged them to include their own unique categories of favorites and to include extra information that would highlight their culture.
Throughout the entire Hello World project process I discovered that comfort with English as a second language was a major factor that directed how teachers and students used video. This caused me to reflect that this might also be a major factor that affected student input into project creation. During the Student Question phase of the process, I initially began to think that the level of questions proposed by students was very closed. In some instances, their questions seemed like they could be answered by an easy Internet search. Eventually, I began to see that their level of questioning probably reflected their developmental inquiry level. This was one phase of the Hello World process that I need to rethink in the future. Ideally, I wanted this phase to be an extension of cultural learning and I wanted the students to become excited at the prospect of being able to ask students in other parts of the world questions about their lives, school, community, and country. What I found was a similar problem that I have often encountered in the 16-week long Learning Circle project. When teachers were asked to develop a project idea with their students, one of the greatest difficulties they encountered was that they often confessed that they didn’t know what to ask. In a smaller way, I found that students faced the same problem when given a similar task on a smaller scale. Even though I gave them examples to follow and even encouraged them to borrow and adapt my questions, they made only minimal use of the material I offered.
I believe that some of the strongest results of the Hello World project were displayed during the Student Response phase of the project. It appeared that students and teachers did turn this phase over to the students and the students used their communication and social networking skills to feature themselves and display their communication abilities. The actual content of the responses seemed secondary to the act of creating and presenting the responses. The joke I shared with the teachers was that I thought most of the students were models because they were so good at photographing and highlighting information about themselves. Since Hello World was primarily an exchange of cultural information, I felt that this phase did live up to my expectations and produced the type of results I was looking for. Ideally, I wanted multiple rounds of questions and answers, but delays in the timeline did not allow for more than one round. Possibly I could extend the project to six-weeks and allow two weeks for the class survey, but I liked the format of one task for each week of the project. I also worry that given extra time; the participants would simply put the task off to the end of the phase and still deliver their work late. Another possibility would be to simplify the class survey even further so that it could be completed in a shorter amount of time, and thereby allow the participants to get to the question-asking task sooner.
During Week 5, two high teachers in Honduras and Brazil attempted to hold a Skype Conference between their students. Since they were in time zones that were only differed by one-hour, it was my hope that this could be accomplished. Teachers asked about real-time conferences at the beginning of the project, and I encouraged them to pursue them by sharing time zone information and school schedules. Real-time online conferences can be very exciting for students when they happen, but in reality, they are difficult to accomplish because of school schedules and time zone differences. The two teachers attempted their conference but there was some confusion with their school schedules, so it was not successful. It is possible that some new Web tools such a Flip Grid, Voice Threads, or some new tool could be used to facilitate more opportunities for real-time or student-to-student social actions. I will need to do more inquiry with participating teachers to see what they currently use or would be able to use in a school setting.
One major result that I took from the Hello World experience was that it caused me to make some changes to the 10- and 16-week long Learning Circle projects. One of the major changes I made was that I re-examined my messaging. Since the Hello World Learning Circles project was a very task-oriented experience, I felt there was a need to always keep the participants informed about weekly assignments and where each task fit into the overall process. I did this through the use of clear instructions, examples, models, and a listing of group task achievements. I also gave the participants information about the next goal they would be pursuing and how it fits into the process. Near the end of the process, I gave the participants a clear list of what they had to finish in order to receive a completion certificate. I realized that this focus on task achievement would also be very valuable for the 10- and 16-week long Learning Circle projects. I included it in the remainder of the Sep 2019-Jan 2020 session of Learning Circles as well as the Jan-May 2020 session.
Another example of a change I made to 10- and 16-week long Learning Circle projects, was to create Student Completion Certificates that contained more detailed information about the exact projects the students completed. Since I had to create a specific certificate for the Hello World project, I realized that I could also create unique certificates for all the projects. The new certificates were well received, and one teacher from Belarus who completed a 16-week long project actually videoed a ceremony she held whereby she acknowledged the achievements of her students by handing out the certificates. I saw that the new certificates were treated seriously and appreciated by her middle school students.
My concept of offering Hello World to non-EARN teachers at no cost was tested during the January to May 2020 session of Learning Circles. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, iEARN attempted to reach out and provide resources to teachers who were working online and in-person with students as a service to the community of educators throughout the world. A special session of two Hello World: Global Educators Circles were offered to both iEARN and non-iEARN teachers. Non-EARN teachers were given a 60-day free membership to iEARN to participate in the project. Details of that project will be reported in my next round of Action Research.
The Hello World Learning Circles project will be offered again during the January to May 2020 session of Learning Circles. My new goals will be to see if the success of the previous Circles can be replicated and to investigate changes I can implement to my current procedures to produce higher levels of participation and completion among the participants.