I HATE HISTORY! WHY THE HUMANITIES NEED IBL TO SURVIVE

FINAL VISION PROJECT PART 1

For my final vision project for LIBE477C, I have decided to focus on the importance of inquiry based learning for the 21st century learner.  I have always been interested in this topic and this year, I implemented for the first time a year long inquiry using the Genius Hour framework in a Sciences humaines 11 (SS11) class.  The experience was challenging yet rewarding in the end for both my students and for me.  For this reason, and in the spirit of sharing (Richardson, 2012), I have decided to apply to be a workshop presenter at this year's BCSSTA PSA Conference.  I would like to share my experience and expertise (albeit minimal) with other social studies teachers and in particular, help out other French Immersion teachers who struggle to access resources and/or workshops in French. (NB. Applications are due July 15, 2018 and presenters will be selected shortly after this date!)

I have divided the post in two sections.  The first one will look at defining IBL and showing its relevancy in our current context. The second, will outline my personal experience implementing IBL in my classroom through the Genius Hour framework.

PART A: Why IBL? Why Now?

The theme of the workshop will be: "I hate History! Why the Humanities need IBL to survive".  While doing research for this course and this project, I came across many readings on the lack of engagement students feel towards learning history.  Enrollment in the Humanities at post-secondary is in constant decline in both the US and Canada. (Strauss, 2017), (Chiose, 2017). Students are no longer choosing to study English/Languages, Philosophy, History, the Classics or Religion.  Judith Hertog (2017), of Dartmouth University claims that:"The Humanities are in crisis mode".  There are several reasons that may account for this.  One reason may be that students have a false perception that there are no jobs for people with a liberal arts degree.  They think the future is all about STEM and that is where the job opportunities will be.  Their parents also perceive and value STEM and therefore push them towards Science, Math, Engineering and Technology degrees.  This of course, is not true.  Eric Berridge, a very successful tech entrepreneur, argues eloquently in his TED Talk "Why Tech Needs the Humanities", why it is so important to pursue a liberal arts education as we live in a time where we struggle to communicate and innovate together.

 

(Eric Berridge, TED Talk 2017)

Another reason may be that students just hate learning about History.  Words like, "boring", "useless", "irrelevant" are often used to describe Social Studies by secondary students.   This lack of motivation may in part be our fault as Social Studies teachers.  The previous era had us teaching in an industrial model whereby our students consumed knowledge through the expert teacher and the informative textbook.  Many History teachers led teacher centered lessons, handed out worksheets and tested student's memory of the facts.  History was void of emotion.  The 21st Century however, requires a different set of skills.  The University of Phoenix has identified the top 10 skills of the 21st century worker and they include:  critical thinking, communication, productivity & accountability, accessing, analyzing and synthesizing information, entrepreneurialism, global citizenship, adaptability, collaboration, innovation and leadership.  Several of these skills are not taught in STEM programs but they are taught and developed in the Humanities.

Because of this so called crisis, I feel that Inquiry Based Learning can help shift the mindset of so many about Humanities being boring and useless and increase engagement in Social Studies.  First, IBL provides students with CHOICE.  Students are in charge of choosing what to learn based on personal interest when they participate in an IBL project.  Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post notes in her article "Why So Many Students Hate History", that for the state to be in charge of deciding what is important to learn in world history hints at a "delusion of grandeur".  How can one assume to know what historical events are relevant for a particular person to study? IBL puts the power to decide what is interesting and relevant in the hands of students.  Even if we choose to limit somewhat the scope of an era through geography, for example, students can still be free enough to explore what they are passionate about.  In my class of Sciences humaines 11, the scope was limited to 20th Century Canada.  Students looked at for example,  why Canadian nurses were so important during WW1, whether we are more tolerant today or whether feminism is still relevant to name a few.

(Sir Ken Robinson, 2012 RSAnimate)

Another advantage to undertaking an IBL project is that it promotes SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING.  Now this doesn't mean students are left to their own devices, as many students struggle to self-direct their learning.  This type of project requires teachers to work on productivity and accountability through planning, goal setting, documenting and/or tracking learning and reflecting.  These are skills that will be needed when students enter the real 21st century world.   They need time to practice these skills in school and that requires teachers to "transfer the power" (Richardson, 2012) of learning from teacher to student.  In doing so, students are empowered and engaged in their own learning journey while teachers are there to guide and support.

IBL is also closely linked to BC's New Curriculum.  As of September 2017, we have seen the full implementation of the new K-9 curriculum across BC.  The graduation program is set to be fully in place for September 2019.  In social studies, the curriculum writers logically designed the curricular competencies based on the tenants of historical thinking.  They are the same competencies from K-12.  They focus on skills to develop rather than content. Consequently, IBL meets several outcomes.  For example:

• Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions

• Assess the justification for competing historical accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence  

Lastly, IBL encourages the "talk to strangers" behavior mentioned by Richardson (2012) in Why School?. He notes that:

"...the potential for all of us to learn from, and with, real experts in whatever subject we might be studying has never been greater.  Scientists, journalists, politicians, athletes, authors, historians, other students - they are all out there for the learning."

When working on IBL, the teacher-student relationship can be more intimate and personalized.  I used regular one on one check-ins to monitor progress and encouraged students to get support from other experts in the school and off site but also design surveys that forced them to interact with people in order to learn from them.  It can be daunting when students are researching 26 different projects and that you will have to help each one individually whether you know about the topic or not.  Again, the teacher is no longer the sage in the room but rather a guide that points students in various directions to find the information.  Therefore IBL creates connectedness and helps students work on their communication skills.

 PART B:  GENIUS HOUR - AN IBL FRAMEWORK

As previously mentioned, I did a Genius Hour project in Sciences Humaines 11 this year.  It was messy and there are many things that I learned and will tweak next time around, however, here is the structure that I used to implement Genius Hour (Heure des Génies) in my class.

For your information, my school is linear, so every time the class fell on a Friday, students knew that this was class time set aside for Genius Hour research.  This worked out to being 14 x 75min. classes.  (almost 20 hours!) We have access to laptop carts so I reserved them for those Fridays and also made arrangements with the teacher librarian to accommodate 8 students in the library with no supervision to do research.  Finally, on the Wednesday before a "GH Friday", I had students fill out exit slips to set goals so that I could see how they were going to use their Friday time.

What follows is how laid out my Genius Hour project in my class this past year. 

STEP ONE: INTRODUCING GENIUS HOUR

This year, to introduce the project, I used the following short video by Chris Kessler (2013) who is one of the GH gurus online.

It explains the origin of the idea and what it could look like.  I then followed this with a Ted Talk by Josh Kauffman on "How to learn anything in 20 hours".  This activity backfired as students started coming up with random things they could learn to do in 20 hours instead of creating an historical inquiry which was a requirement of my project.  This upcoming school year, I will choose inspiring videos of real world problems solved by real people.  This one (below) by the company "Lucky Iron Fish" (2014) shows how one doctor solved the problem of anemia in Cambodia with a very simple solution: an iron fish!

STEP TWO:  BRAINSTORM (CREATING THE INQUIRY QUESTION)

I created my own inquiry design template based on the Wiggins & McTighe (2005) UbD framework.  I also made a questionnaire to help students think about their personal interests and the possible connections they could make to the course content.  This was based on a document found in Joy Kirr's Genius Hour LiveBinder.  This was by far the best resource I found to help me design and structure my Genius Hour project.  Students are always meant to answer these three questions when creating their project:

1. What do you want to learn?
2. What do you want to solve?
3. What do you want to create?

Some students struggled to design meaningful questions.  Some questions were "google-able" and that doesn't work in inquiry.  While researching for one of my blog posts for this class, I came across the QFT framework which guides learners through a process to create better inquiry questions.  I will use this strategy this year and see if the questions are better.  One issue that I did not anticipate was students starting with a good question but changing it to an easier and more superficial question by the end of year as they were able to answer that question but were not willing to do the work needed to get to the original, better question.  This will need additional monitoring moving forward.

STEP THREE:  "THE ELEVATOR PITCH"

In order to get their subject approved, students must prepare a one minute pitch that they will present to the teacher and/or class.  In their one minute presentation, students must address the following questions in one minute or less:

1. Why is it important to learn about this topic?
2. How will it make a difference in the world?  How will it inspire others?
3. Do I have access to the necessary resources to complete this project?  
4. Is 20 hours enough time to learn what I need to learn?







5. Is my essential question too narrow or too large?

If they cannot justify their topic, students are sent back to the drawing board to create a new question.  Some of my students went through this process three times before getting approval.  When doing their final reflection, students had to refer back to this pitch to determine if they were still able to show the relevance of their inquiry.

STEP FOUR:  RESEARCH & DOCUMENTING LEARNING

It is very important to emphasize that although IBL/Genius Hour are about self-directed learning, this does not mean that once students have their inquiry question, you never mention or discuss it again until it's time to present the project.  In fact, I feel that the monitoring of student learning is key to a successful IBL experience.

TRACKING LEARNING WITH BLOGGING:
One way to track student learning was to explore blogging with them.  Our district is very strict about student privacy and where student data/work is stored so they have invested in a SharePoint platform called Scholantis that protects student privacy and also ensures that data is stored in Canada and not the US.  In this system, I am able to create a class, and activate the blogging function so each student can design a blog but also see the other student blogs in the class.  Students had to embrace this technology and document all of their learning publicly online.  It was a great idea but did not go well at first.  First, no one knew anything about blogging.  Some were more willing to play with the program but others were just not using it.  So, I realized I needed to teach them how to blog in a mini lesson going over the importance of titles, inserting graphics, documenting sources, requiring a minimal length and adding tags.  I also gave them a list of 15 or so blogging ideas.  This helped a little yet, some finished the year with only 6 minimal posts as evidence of a whole year of research!  I liked how you (Heather) had topics and/or questions for us to answer and I think I would follow this lead next time around.  The following is a screenshot of one of my students who was very successful at blogging.  She designed an inquiry about why languages die.

(Student Genius Hour Blog 2018 - with permission from Nawal Moustapha)

5 MIN. CHECK-INS:
Another way I monitored student learning was by scheduling 5 min. interviews with each student throughout each semester.  Therefore, by the end of the year, I had met with students 3 times.  Of course, students did not have to wait for these interviews to chat, I was always available at lunch and after school.  During these interviews I looked at blogs with students, answered their questions and helped them find sources.  I was surprised how many times students had nothing to say and no questions to ask.  I'm going to try to encourage more engagement in this process next year.

3 MILESTONE PROJECTS:
I also learned from my research online that students need feedback regularly, therefore I required in each term a "milestone project".  In term 1, it was a written response, in term 2 they presented their midpoint projects to individual members of the community and in term 3, students had to complete their products and lead Pecha-Kucha/Presentation Zen-like seminars to the class (between 15-20min.).

REQUIRED SOURCES & CHICAGO STYLE FORMATTING
From the beginning of the project, I laid out the source requirements for their research.  I demanded that their reference list include a minimum of 10 sources.  I also required a variety of sources like a primary artifact, a novel or biography, a current event, an academic article, a digital source and a podcast.  I noted that most students did not know how to find academic articles nor podcasts so these too required a mini-lesson.

The social sciences, especially history in the majority of Canadian and American post secondary institutions require Chicago style when making reference lists.  Consequently, I chose to teach students how to do Chicago style citations.

STEP FIVE: ASSESSMENT

I won't go into much detail here.  In order to keep this project manageable I formatively assessed the blogs throughout the term when writing comments on their walls and also the 2nd mid-point milestone which was presenting to the community, was also more about formative feedback. 

I summatively assessed: the blog at the end of each term (students also did a self evaluation!), the milestone projects, an annotated bibliography, the final oral presentation and a metacognitive reflection. I purposefully chose not to assess the final product.  Generally, if the research was lacking, so was the final product.

STEP SIX:  FINAL PROJECT

As I mentioned previously, students were required at the end of the year in our "June Celebration of Learning" to share their projects with the class through a seminar-like presentation.  I think the next time, I need to find a way to make these projects more public whether through a Heritage Fair-like structure or something else.  The actual final product was up to them.  Some students made documentaries, some did beautiful artwork and some designed info-graphics.  

FINAL REMARKS...

The 21st century is here.  Technology is here.  The new curriculum is here. Educators need to embrace all these new things and just accept that in this time of great change, some messy learning and unlearning must happen.  As teachers we have a duty to stay current, try new things and meet the needs of our students.  My adventure with Genius Hour was definitely messy, uncomfortable and less than perfect however, I saw how much students can learn, how many skills they can develop, how much their confidence can grow and how some even found some joy in learning about History.  IBL/Genius Hour is for certain a tool that can help turn the Humanities crisis around.  As Social Studies teachers we all need to play an active role in shifting the mindset from "I Hate History" to "History is Awesome!".  So, in the words of the Nike corporation... just do it!

SOURCES:

Berridge, Eric.  2017. "Why tech needs the humanities". TED Talk, 11:13. https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_berridge_why_tech_needs_the_humanities

Centre for Study of Historical Consciousness. n.d. "Historical Thinking Concepts". http://historicalthinking.ca/historical-thinking-concepts

Chiose, Simona. 2017. "As students move away from the humanities, universities adapt". Globe and Mail. March 3, 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/as-students-move-away-from-humanities-programs-universities-adapt/article34207300/

Kaufman, Josh. 2013. "The first 20 hours: How to learn anything". TedXCSU, 19:26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

Kessler, Chris. 2013. "What is Genius Hour?  Introduction to Genius Hour in your Classroom". YouTube, 3:09. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMFQUtHsWhc

Lucky Iron Fish. 2014. "Lucky iron fish: Shape of Health". Youtube, 2:46. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJM7Nj1DCwk&t=50s

Ministry of Education. 2018. "BC's New Curriculum". https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/

Richardson, Will. 2012. Why School? Ted Conferences. https://www.amazon.ca/Why-School-Education-Information-Everywhere-ebook/dp/B00998J5YQ

The Right Question Institute. n.d. "Experiencing the Question Focus Technique (QFT)". http://www.ibmidatlantic.org/Experiencing-the-QFT.pdf

Saira, Naureen and Barry, Mary. 2015. "Top 10 Skills for the 21st Century Worker". University of Phoenix. (infographic) http://www.ucreative.com/biz-features/top-10-skills-for-the-21st-century-worker-infographic/ 

Strauss, Valerie.  2017.  "Why so many students hate history - and what to do about it". Washington Post. May 17, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/17/why-so-many-students-hate-history-and-what-to-do-about-it/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7a9e5beea128