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Tag Archives: Bloom


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Evaluating Learning Approaches in ‘Cubic’ Space: Engagement & Learning Multipliers…

Measuring

In my preceding posts, I’ve described the dimensional levels of each facet of our “cubic” learning model: content, community, and context. This post (and the next several) will incorporate and build on content from those posts, so if you haven’t yet seen them, you might want to review them before continuing here.

In “cubic” learning, each element’s “dimensionality” increases as the learner becomes more engaged and plays a more central role. The increasing agency, skills, and responsibility learners must demonstrate at each progressive level also means that more and more, they need support rather than direction, individual resources rather than a one-size-fits-all recipe, and companions and partners rather than controllers. More dimensionality means more learner-centered — and learner-driven — learning.

As we’ve seen previously, the dimensional levels of the “cubic” model look like this, with the higher levels increasing the volume of the cube they generate:

Cubic dimensions & values

While “volume” in this model is something of a metaphor, it’s one backed up by research. For example, as both Anderson and Krathwohl’s revision of Bloom’s taxonomy and Webb’s “depth of knowledge” (DOK) argue, creating content not only requires more ability from learners than recalling, it also increases their learning potential: the deeper level of engagement makes learning more likely to take hold. In other words, moving from recall to creation increases the potential “volume” for learning — and therefore makes a bigger cube in this model.

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Dimensions of ‘Cubic’ Learning: Content

Cube sketch blue

In my previous posts about “natural” learning and “formal” learning, I sketched out a multidimensional learning model comprised of three facets: content, community, and context.  In this post and the next several, I’ll move from overall structural considerations (posts on the community and context dimensions) to some of the pragmatics for applying and deploying this multidimensional model. How does this “cubic” learning approach apply systematically to various learning situations? How can we measure particular pedagogical approaches in light of these three constituent dimensions? How does this model integrate with other existing learning models and taxonomies?

For most of us who have worked as teachers — and this is certainly true of those in secondary and higher education — the majority of our training has come in a particular content area: math, language, science, art…. For those of us outside of primary education, it’s far more likely that we’ve been trained to serve as content experts than to serve as creators of learning opportunities. I think this is the reason so many academics are distrustful both of emerging technologies and the emerging collection of more collaborative teaching practices. Their resistance is understandable. In both cases, teachers can feel they’re being forced to embrace elements that they see as undermining or even antithetical to their very existence. As one former colleague put it when we were discussing how mobile technologies and student-led discovery could redefine the learning environment: “you’re trying to put me out of a job.”

It’s true that many emerging learning models challenge some of the learning constructions teachers have traditionally known and used, but the last thing I’m trying to do is get rid of teachers. In fact, if anything, my model requires teachers even more — but also even more from teachers. It necessitates a move up the DIKW pyramid from data and information (where many of us are most comfortable) to knowledge and wisdom. Of course, moving up the pyramid can be intimidating and even disorienting for some. Rather than focusing on the transfer data and information, this move toward wisdom requires teachers whose knowledge of their subject allows them to see (and often to generate) chances for exploration and application and to exercise and demonstrate how wise practitioners evaluate both opportunities and products within a discipline. So teachers are absolutely necessary, but less as “conduits” and more as designers.

But designers of what? How do we design within these three dimensions and what does such a “cubic” learning environment look like? To begin, let’s consider each of the dimensions separately, starting with content. Continue reading →