The premise of the 21st century learning space concept is that co-opting software applications and devices that were designed for entertainment, socializing, or commerce is a less-than-perfect model for education. The promise of technology for education is realized when the app design meets the needs of an educational community. Five interrelated characteristics of the 21st century learning space that I propose are:
- Training Wheels
- Guardrails
- Debriefing Kit
- Swiss Army Knife
- Locus of Data Control
Training Wheels
The development of generative AI and lesser algorithmic AI both offer opportunities to aid the instructor in one of the core strategies of teaching: break it down into manageable pieces to master the goal. 21st century learning spaces could include coaching on spelling, grammar, and even content.
Computer software opens the door to more efficient content management. Teachers curating their classroom resources online have organizational tools that exceed old fashioned binders and notebooks. Addressing the needs of students with disabilities is a key efficiency of 21st century learning spaces: presenting modified texts and assignments becomes more manageable.
Training wheels are temporary assistive devices for young people learning new things. They are a modification to the program that is usually temporary; a scaffolding that brings students upward in the zone of proximal development.
Students have the tools they need to manage their own learning experiences.
21st century learning spaces incorporate a system of badges and rewards as well as provide visualization of students’ progress and achievements.
Guardrails
Young people are easily distracted, especially since their main use of digital devices as been entertainment. 21st century learning spaces have guardrails to limit distractions and develop executive functioning. Examples of such features include extensive logging of online activity in the learning space, a system of scoring and accountability, a “proctor” feature that tracks student interaction with the content.
Plagiarism has never been easier than in the digital realm. Guardrail features of educational apps help prevent academic dishonesty by making it harder to go undetected.
Moderated social engagement apps reinforce learning through shared experiences, discussions, and study groups with confidence that inappropriate content is avoided.
Guardrails are there to protect us from error, safety features along the road at dangerous points to avoid a pitfall.
Debriefing Kit
In a learning community, it is helpful to study our errors to learn from them. This is especially useful in teaching writing, but it has applications to all subjects. Anonymity is very important: if we’re going to display student errors for analysis, everyone must be confident and assured that no one will be humiliated.
Learning analytics available to teacher in the 21st century learning spaces provide detailed information about student progress to inform lesson plans and follow up.
Creating debriefing lessons is time consuming. For example, when I taught social studies I would display anonymous passages from student essays to work on form or content in a whole class activity. When I taught French, I found it very useful to display selected sentences from compositions for correction or improvement.
21st century learning spaces lend themselves to debriefing: they are designed such that the anonymous presentation of teacher-selected student work is easily generated for debriefing.
Swiss Army Knife
Saved data exists in database tables in the digital world. 21st century learning spaces should leverage this flexibility to facilitate lesson planning in multiple modes. Multiple-choice questions can be short answer questions, test questions can be Jeopardy review games, notes taken on lecture can inspire questions for discussion, and so forth. All this should be easy and fast.
21st century learning spaces are a Swiss army knife. Such collections of applications serve many functions from the same core.
Locus of Data Control
When you post to FaceBook, Twitter, or any other public commercial platform, where is your data? If you use FaceBook to moderate a class discussion, what control do you, the teacher, have over your students’ contributions?
21st century learning spaces are those where the teacher rules the roost and student privacy protection is a high priority. In this paradigm, student work is licensed to the teacher’s control for a specified period, after which it is auto-deleted. Inappropriate content posted by students can be edited, hidden, retained for investigation by authorities, or deleted per the instructor’s decisions.
In the commercial domain, data is the valuable commodity used by tech companies. Our data. It is important that student work and teacher’s intellectual property are in safe digital locations and under the teacher’s control.