The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Preparing students to undertake tomorrow’s challenges

As we adapt and improve teaching and learning in our schools, questions arise about preparing students to undertake tomorrow’s challenges. How do we teach students not only to acquire knowledge but also to connect ideas and be innovative? Can we teach a digital fluency that is valuable for learning? What can this 21st-century teaching and learning look like?

One answer is InSight Education, a course created at Edmonton’s Jasper Place High School that combines curricula, technology and student-centred learning. The course explores Social Studies 20 and Biology 20 in a whole morning block, which allows for adapting and arranging the timetable to meet students’ learning needs. The course idea originated from participating in the partnership between Finland and Alberta through the Alberta Teachers’ Association and from reflecting on the flexibility students had in creating their timetables and exploring curriculum. The course design centres on project-based learning; students use the learning outcomes from the program of studies to guide their projects and as the main form of assessment for their projects. Students and teachers identify outcomes for all project work and identify what will show mastery of each outcome.

Outcome-based assessment, rather than project-based assessment, began at Jasper Place High School in the art program and has been adapted to provide more flexibility within the core courses through InSight. This way of working allows students to devise their own projects that demonstrate learning and to find innovative solutions to complex problems. Working this way supports students in making connections across curricula. For example, a student may show his or her learning of a biology outcome on how to use a dichotomous key by creating one that defines different First Nations groups in Canada (social studies), or art history movements (art), or the results from correct and incorrect methods in baking (culinary arts). This approach empowers students by giving them the opportunity to show understanding in other courses and express their interests and passions.

InSight Education is a web-based course that builds digital and technological competencies. Students create blog posts of their notes, research and project work at http://jpinsight.blogspot.com. They receive direct and ongoing feedback from teachers, and they adjust their assignments until they’ve demonstrated an appropriate level of understanding. Working from a digital platform not only ensures digital fluency; it also creates connections—students view each other’s work on the blog and learn from it. By working with programs such as Google Docs, students collaborate on research and group projects, and instantly share their files with other students and their teachers. The digital platform facilitates the creation of a rich resource of student learning that evolves constantly. One example of a resource is “tagging.” When a blog post is created, students and teachers tag it with a particular outcome from the curriculum. Other students can search the tags for a particular outcome and find student and teacher resources to support their project work.

Just like the blog, InSight Education is evolving to meet the needs of today’s students. Although the program is a work in progress, it offers a view of teaching and learning that is adapting to develop the competencies students need in order to be competitive today and in the future.

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Britt Petracek is the fine arts department head, Jasper Place High School, in Edmonton.