The Choice Method: A Pedagogy for Optimal Inclusivity in Learning Communities

One major "idea" that came from this course was the need for us as educators and

designers of Virtual Learning Environments need to employ a plethora of diverse teaching

methods to not only account for cultural differences, and learning preferences between

students, but also the intercultural personality and learning style differences which also exist

within a culturally homogeneous student body (If something like this actually exists). Over the

course of this course, I have been inspired to develop the concept of student-centered learning

paths, which are flexible learning curricula which provide students with choice within a

virtual learning environment. This choice can be reflected in a number of activities, based on a

wide variety of differing pedagogical philosophies, from which students may choose to engage

in or ignore to reach the desired learning outcomes for the course. The main idea behind this

design is one of inclusivity, where neither cultural background, identity, personality, previous

knowledge, or learning style act as a hindrance to successful learning. Not only in this course

but throughout the MET there are many allusions to the need for educators to make learning

more learner-centered. Now I always took the term "student-centered" to be synonymous with

"learner-centered", it seems they are not the same. First, from a social constructivist

perspective, student-centered means that course materials and activities revolve around

student-student interactions over teacher-student ones. Second, learner-centered means that a

curriculum can be centered on an individual and would be designed help each individual

achieve an optimum level of learning, also often referred to as personalized learning. I

originally took the meaning of the word student-centered as literally centered on "a" student, a

confusion which led to many misunderstanding. I suggest that social constructivists begin

using the term "students-centered"; the plurality implying the social nature of that pedagogy,

which has also been suggested to not be the best method for students of all cultural

backgrounds (Anderson, 2017).

The roots of this idea began to develop during my critical reading of the Speece (2012)

article where he made the claim that learning style has minimal effect on student outcomes.
My skepticism of this point led me to check his reference, Santo (2006), which was an overview

of many of the frameworks or tools used to measure learning styles. In her conclusions, she

alludes to lack of reliability of these tools in measuring learning styles. Speece (2012) does

mention how Santo (2006) does state that there is a relationship between learning styles and

enjoyment or satisfaction with a course. The way I see it, enjoyment is highly related to

motivation, motivation to increased engagement, and more engagement leads to better

learning outcomes. When he states that people differ in their preferences for learning or

teaching styles, this is where the light turned on in my mind, if people have different

preferences in how they learn and how they want to learn, should we not take a page out of the

business 101 textbook and give the "customer" what they want? This goes directly to what I felt

was the main recommendation from Speece (2012), "To attract students from a range of

cultures, instructional design must accommodate preferences in learning style, which can be

related to cultural dimensions. For broad access to multi-cultural markets, multiple

technologies offer multiple interaction modes which would appeal to students from a range of

cultures." This can be done, by exploiting the multiple technologies available to us when

designing student tasks and activities; I can see no other way to accommodate these

preferences than by offering choice to students, to allow them to participate in and do

assignments that fit with their preferential learning styles.

Jonathan Weber was the one who helped me to expand my idea, and actually

referenced the idea of an assignment "bingo" sheet, as a way to provide different pathways for

students to choose from. He mentioned a professional development experience he participated

in where they were pushing a choice board with one required assignment in the middle of the

board, and the students could choose any of the remaining squares to get bingo, which would

theoretically fulfill the course objectives. I am not 100% sure how a bingo sheet would translate

to an adult class, but I can see it as a series of activities or assignments which hit the key

learning concepts but each assignment has options within it, with these options reflecting the

various theoretical pedagogies which students can choose from to fit with the learning style
they prefer. I can see this taken even further than simple assignment options, the entire course

could be designed with these preferences in mind. Course information could be presented in a

multitude of medias, text based, hyperlinks, audio podcasts, synchronous or asynchronous

video lectures, and/or online seminars. Some students may choose to participate in all of the

above, and some may choose the formats which fit their personal learning style preferences.

The asynchronous discussion board which is seemingly the backbone of VLEs could remain, but

other forms of interaction should be introduced, such as synchronous chat rooms (text, audio,

and video) for optional partner or group interactions, as Speece (2012) mentions that this leads

to a more rapid formation of community, although not appealing to all learners. Simply put, I

do not believe that there is any pedagogical form that is appealing to all learners; if we truly

strive to make education more learner-centered, I believe that the only way to get close to a

one-size-fits all teaching method is through giving students control over their learning by

giving them choice in not only what but how they learn. Focus on only on pedagogical

philosophy, such as social constructivism, is not compatible with all learners (Anderson, 2017),

and so not a recipe for an inclusive learning environment for a group of culturally diverse

learners.

How effective this type of teaching strategy is, has yet to be studied. I propose that we

need to design courses with this "choice method" in mind and study its effectiveness in terms of

both overall student satisfaction and long-term student outcomes. This could easily be done by

modifying an existing course, such as this current one, and teaching two sections. One sections

with the course taught using the existing format, and the other employing the "choice method"

in its design and comparing student satisfaction and outcomes between the two sections. We

must keep in mind that not every learning path is the right fit for every student.
 References:

Anderson, Bodi. (2017). How cultural factors influence the use of social constructivist-based

pedagogical models of distance learning: Examining Japanese online collaborative

behaviors. Chapter 7 in: Benson, A. D., Joseph, R., & Moore, J. L. (Eds.), Culture, learning

and technology: Research and practice. (pp. 91-108). Florence; New York: Routledge.
Retrieved from:

http://www.tandfebooks.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/doi/book/10.4324/9781315681689

Santo, S.A. (2006). Relationships between learning styles and online learning: Myth or reality?

Performance Improvement Quarterly 19(3): 73- 88, 2006. Retrieved from:

https://www.academia.edu/226570/Relationships_between_Learning_Styles_and_Onli

ne_Learning_Myth_or_Reality

Speece, M. (2012). Learning Style, Culture and Delivery Mode in Online Distance Education. US-

China Education Review, A 1, pp. 1-12. Retrieved from:

http://www.elearningap.com/eLAP2010/Proceedings/04_Full_Mark%20Speece_learning%2

0style%20culture.pdf