The Importance of Learning Conversations
The Importance of Learning Conversations by Mike Rutherford
What is a Learning Conversation?
Learning is complex. It all starts with learning goals and student outcomes. Typically, it starts with a learning engagement (activity) to provide an introduction to a concept. Students participate in a trial and error phase that includes feedback from peers and from their teacher. The student reflects upon this information. The student may implement corrective actions and request additional feedback. Many call this a feedback loop. Re-teaching may may need to occur.
Each of these interactions with students is different. Student learning is individualistic. The teacher works with each student to meet their diverse learning needs. This requires the teacher and the student to remember where the conversation left off from the previous interaction whether face-to-face or asynchronous via an email, message or written feedback on paper.
The sheer number of students and the multiple conversations per student along with the sources of where qualitative learning data may reside (notebook, papers, posters, cloud based applications, videos, emails, EdTech learning tools etc.) is Herculean organizational task for any teacher. On the student side, in the middle school and high school models, they have to manage seven to eight classes and the learning conversations they have with their teachers. Also, quite an organizational task.
In 2016, I had come to the realization that I was spending nearly half of my time searching for elements of these conversations. For example, in a lesson where students were to determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details can be incredibly hard to organizationally manage let alone provide individual feedback to students. In this particular lesson students had already been through a class example and were attempting to determine the theme or central idea on the novel that they were reading. With over 100 students, this is 100 different texts and 100 different sets of feedback. Did the students write their thoughts in their notebooks or in an online document? The feedback that I provided each of them is individualized and incredibly important. Will I remember in a week what that feedback was? Has the student shown growth from that feedback or do I need to reteach?
As John Hattie states in his book Visible Learning, “the act of teaching reaches its epitome of success after the lesson has been structured, after the content has been delivered, and after the classroom has been organized. The art of teaching and major successes relate to ‘what happens next’”.
The “next” referenced above is the learning conversation.
As a classroom teacher, over a couple of school years, I refined what I and my fellow teachers and our students needed for our learning conversations. This is how gotLearning was born and matured. It allowed a teacher to manage individual student learning journeys. During this time a couple of really cool things happened. We realized how much more time we had to focus on student learning instead of searching for where an online word processing document was stored (google Docs, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages) only to realize the student had turned it in hand-written on paper.
The more we used this new tool, the more valuable it became. As a teacher I was able to review feedback that I had previously given to a student. Feedback and reflections were no longer only in one place. I now had a copy of it and so did the student. We both could refer back to it and build upon it. At parent-teacher conferences we were able to show a student’s growth from August to October. We did this by showing qualitative evidence.
View a Learning Conversation in gotLearning.
Cited Works:
Hattie, John. Visible Learning: a Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge, 2010.
The Collaborative Learning System
The Collaborative Learning System: Telling the Story of Learning by Mike Rutherford
teachernotes announces the first Collaborative Learning System (CLS) that is a purpose-built platform for schools that focuses on the most fundamental elements of student learning – feedback and growth over time. teachernotes CLS is structured around the learning conversation and captures the back and forth dialogue between students, teachers and peers about their learning. The learning conversations structure focuses on the qualitative evidence from the student’s own work and mirrors what happens every day in classrooms around the world.
teachernotes was born in the classroom to meet specific pedagogical needs. The importance and amount of qualitative data available to today’s teachers and students is enormous. Teachers world wide know that the daily conversations about learning, the daily work produced and the feedback provided is where the learning occurs. Both the students and teacher now have one place to share student work, give/receive feedback, make revisions all in the service of supporting and demonstrating the student’s growth over time.
The CLS allows teachers and students to hold the many and varied sources of qualitative data all in one place. Before our CLS, teachers had to design their own systems for managing the daily sources of learning evidence and spent a lot of time searching in student notebooks, online folders, video sharing services, EdTech apps as well as many communication platforms to locate and review the qualitative student learning data. No longer do teachers or students need to search for where the learning evidence or feedback is located because the CLS provides a tool for teachers and students to capture and manage this crucially important learning process.
For Students
The teachernotes CLS provides one place for students to capture and communicate about their learning journey empowering students to influence their own path to mastery. teachernotess unconstrained conversation tool provides students voice and choice regarding how to communicate their learning empowering students as partners in the process.
For Teachers
teachernotes enables teachers to easily monitor student progress, provide direct and targeted feedback and make course corrections as needed. A teacher can get a sense of their class as a whole in order to make broad adjustments or to see the experiences of their individual students to provide personalized feedback. Additionally, teachers can see how their students are doing in other classes to seek patterns of performance in order to more holistically support students and their learning.
For Educational Specialists
Using teachernotes Collaborative Learning System, educational specialists are able to develop their own classes in addition to seeing how the individual students they are supporting are doing across all of their classes. Educational Specialists can easily examine the qualitative feedback and learning evidence from all of the teachers for each student they support.
For School Administrators
A school administrator can easily monitor student progress across their whole school as well as examine and/or participate in learning conversations with any of their students They can also follow individual students that may need a little extra attention when needed.
Professional Conversations
Another key element of teachernotes are the professional conversations. Using the same toolset that is used for students and teachers to communicate – professional conversations captures feedback and learning evidence between the teachers, educational specialists and school administrators. These conversations can be through one on one discussions, small group discussions or even the entire school. Professional conversations are perfect for professional learning networks (PLNs) or Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).
