The Agile Teaching/Learning Methodology

ATLM is well-defined and systematic approach to teaching/learning that is based on Agile Methodologies , a collection of popular approaches to software development in the modern world.

A well-defined methodology for software development is of course very important. This is especially true for modern software development, where requirements and technologies are constantly changing. The ability to quickly adapt and respond to changes to satisfy customer needs is what makes agile methodologies interesting.

It turns out the software development process, in many ways, is similar to the teaching process. It involves multiple parties with different objectives (sometimes conflicting), a very tight schedule to get things done, a fixed deadline, limited resources and a lot of expected/unexpected changes along the way. The process requires detailed planning/scheduling, tracking and management with continuous assessment and feedback from all parties. Getting a software project done correctly and on time is not easy. Making a sure a course is taught properly and on schedule can also be a challenge sometimes.

The design of ATLM was inspired in many ways by these modern agile methodologies for software development.

Key Characteristics

• Agility
  By agility, I mean the ability for the teacher to quickly adapt and change course pace and possibly structure to suit the needs and abilities of the students. The main objective for teaching is to help students learn. Each student is unique. Their learning needs are also unique. Not all students in a class will be able to learn at the same rate or in the same manner. A teacher will need to ensure that different learning needs are catered to. Teachers are here to facilitate learning - and just going through the motion of reading a lecture.
  
  Another way to describe this is "in-sync teaching" - making sure the whole class is in-sync with the material being taught. This is particularly important when there is a mixture of students with different academic backgrounds in the class. It is important that we do not confuse learning rate with learning capacity. As educators, we need to be sensitive to and facilitate the needs of students from a diverse academic background. By patiently shepherding and encouraging them, while show equal respect and openness, I believe these efforts will pay off. We need to be flexible with our instruction, but firm on academic standards.
  
  Agility also means making sure the class, both the teaching and learning aspects, are constantly on track from day one. A good teacher is not one who knows the most facts about a subject. A good teacher is one who knows how to nurture talent in ways that is most acceptable by the students. The only way for agility to be achieved is to maintain a high degree of communication and feedback between the student and teacher. Teachers need feedback on student progress. Students also need ways to express their comment on course progress. ATLM encourages the use of technologies to achieve this (I will illustrate how I use technology later in this paper).
  
  
• Extreme
  By extreme, I mean if something is good, we go to the extreme and do it constantly. If giving feedback to students on their learning is good, we should give feedback each class. Conversely, if getting feedback from students is good, we should allow students to give feedback whenever they want. If students learn better by teaching, they should be allowed to teach and share their knowledge constantly.
  
  A note on assessment: In ATLM, I encourage teachers to solicit student feedback on their teaching constantly and from day one. This is to supplement other offical forms of teaching evaluation, as these assessments are usually done at the end of the semester. By the time teachers get results from them, it will be too late to do anything to help improve that class.
  
  
• Independence
  One of the aspects of ATLM is to train students on "learning the learning process" and not just learning the course content. One of the objectives of ATLM is to gradually take the role of the teacher "out of the loop." With each iteration in the ATLM teaching/learning cycle, the student grows more confident of self-learning so that ideally at the end of the course, the students will be confident in continuing the learning process on their own. This is extremely important for disciplines that are constantly changing, such as Computer Science. The technology student learn in school can easily become obsolete, unless the students know how to constantly update themselves and learn on their own.

Iterative Teaching/Learning Cycles

ATLM is an iterative methodology. This means the cycles of the methodology are performed over and over again in iterations; each iteration may progressively have slight variations. For teaching, each iteration is usually one week. In ATLM, since we are dealing with both teaching and learning, there are two cycles that operate in parallel in each iteration - one for the teacher and one for the student:

The Teaching Cycle (on the left of the diagram) is for the teacher to follow, while the Learning Cycle (on the right) is for students. The Teaching Cycle consists of:

• Lectures/Tutorial
  This is the standard lecture and tutorial components of a class. In ATLM, we assume each iteration is the time between two lectures; usually a week. The role of the teacher-centric lecture/tutorial will be greater at the beginning of the course and will gradually diminish towards the end when the students are confident in the course material and can begin to learn independently on their own, using skills learn in the course.
  
  
• Monitor
  As one of the key characteristics of ATLM is agility in meeting student needs, the teacher must constantly monitor student progress as well as feedback from students on their own teaching progress/performance. Student progress can easily be monitored by providing a simple weekly quiz that might or might not be counted as part of the official student assessment. Quiz results should be provided to students immediately after the class/tutorial. Statistics on quiz results will help students understand learning expectations and also identify weaknesses that need more work. Some teachers do not like giving weekly quizzes, even if they are informal quizzes. The result is a less agile class. Teachers will have to wait until the first assignment is collected and graded to see how well students are doing. This may take weeks. In a 13 week semester, this latency is too slow and not efficient.
  
  To receive student feedback on my own teaching performance, I have open and anonymous feedback forms, surveys as well as forums that I encourage students to participate on an on-going basis. As you can see, feedback is taken to the "extreme" in ATLM and is done constantly at each iteration.
  
  
• Adjust
  Once student and teaching performance are both understood, we should immediately make any necessary adjustments to the course plan, schedule or content as well as coursework to help ensure students are "in-sync" with their learning. Changes are necessary for agility.

All these three steps are done during each Teaching Cycle. For the Learning Cycle, we have in addition:

• Practice
  This is the standard coursework component of a class. I encourage giving students open-ended assignments that give students room for creativity and adds an element of competition among the students to create more interesting problems to solve.
  
  
• Independent Study
  One of the aspects of ATLM is to promote learning skills and prepare students for lifelong learning. Tasks should be given to guide students in learning the learning process and understanding where to find resources to support their learning. Many students are still not used to doing research and studying on the Web. Some might not be familiar with advanced search techniques. The independent study component is an important part of helping students prepare for lifelong learning.
  
  
• Knowledge Sharing
  Sharing knowledge is an important part of learning! Each week I allocate some time for students to talk and share what they have learned. Students are asked to simply find anything interesting from the Web that is related to what is being taught in class and to share that with other students. It is not a formal presentation and there is no PowerPoint to prepare for. Instead, the student opens the Website and explains what he thought was interesting and how it relates to the course.
  
  Letting students "teach" greatly enhances their learning experience. Firstly, they learn from others. Secondly, they learn when they prepare for their own presentations. But, most importantly, through the whole process they get to learn one of the most important skills of their life - how to learn on their own!
  
  The classic Learning Pyramid confirms this approach. It charts the average retention rate for various methods of teaching. These retention percentages represent the results of research conducted by National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine in 1994. According to the chart, lecture, the top of the pyramid, achieves an average retention rate of only 5%. On the opposite end of the scale, the "teach others/immediate use" method achieves an average retention rate of 90%! I believe knowledge sharing or "teaching others" is a critical tool in helping students understand the learning process and helps prepare them for lifelong learning.
  
  In a large class, students may only have 1 or 2 chances of giving presentations; therefore I supplement presentations with other forms of knowledge sharing. I make use of advanced tools such as blog and wiki to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration. (I will explain more on these tools in the technology section of this paper).

Teaching/Learning Best Practices

There are numerous teaching/learning best practices that should be practiced within a class. However, ATLM particularly promotes and emphasizes the following best practices as part of the methodology:

• Teach How to Learn ATLM emphasizes that, in addition to course content, it is important to also teach the learning process. ATLM does this through targeted Independent Study tasks and Knowledge Sharing exercises.
  
  
• Learn by Sharing ATLM makes use of the fact that students learn over an order of magnitude better if they also participate in the teaching process. ATLM facilitates this through Knowledge Sharing exercises.
  
  
• Feedback is Good Feedback is what makes ATLM agile. Without feedback, the teacher will not be able to improve the course delivery. He/she will also not be able to improve his/her teaching. ATLM facilitates feedback through weekly quizzes and anonymous feedback forms/surveys.

Use of Technology

Since I teach Computer Science, I leverage on some of the newest software technologies to help streamline the teaching and learning processes. Besides the traditional forums and blackboards, I use:

• Blogging Blogging is the newest trend on the Internet. It is like an online diary but a lot more. It is tightly linked to other web pages. It allows others to comment entries as well as subscribe to diaries. And there are specialized search engines to support blog. Blogging is simple and can even be done with a mobile phone! I encourage students to use blogs to share what they have learned by writing a small entry for each "cool" thing they found about the topic the class is covering.
  
  
• Wiki Wiki is a more technical tool used mostly by Computer Scientists for Web-based collaborative work. I use Wiki to allow students to share information related to the course. This can be a FAQ or a set of resource links.
  
  
• Commenting/Rating Many of my entries in my course Website are "commentable." What that means is that any student can attach a comment to any statement that I have made. This greatly improves communication and reduces misunderstanding. In addition, I allow students to comment and "rate" other students work online. This is similar to book ratings used in Amazon.com.

Download Paper:

• Chun, H.W., "The Agile Teaching/Learning Methodology and its e-Learning Platform," In Lecture Notes in Computer Science - Advances in Web-Based Learning, Volume 3143/2004, Springer-Verlag Heidelberg, pp. 11-18.
  
• (other recent publications from Dr. Andy Chun).

Trackbacks:

• Peter Sefton - Agile Teaching (and Learning)

Last modified: Thursday, 28-Apr-2005 16:54:27 HKT

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