On 8 January 2021, the Institute of Educational Technology of the Open University (OUUK) and the Artificial Intelligence and Human Languages Lab of Beijing Foreign Studies University jointly published the ninth report on innovating pedagogy, namely, Innovating Pedagogy 2021. This year’s report proposes 10 innovations in pedagogy: best learning moments; enriched realities; gratitude as pedagogy; using chatbots in learning; equity-oriented pedagogy; hip-hop based education; student co-created teaching; telecollaboration for language learning; evidence-based teaching; and corpus-based pedagogy.
1. Best learning moments: The idea of best learning moments builds on the psychological concept of cognitive absorption, or ‘flow’, defined as deep involvement of immersion in an activity or task, often accompanied by feelings of enjoyment. Best learning moments can result in deep learning and high levels of satisfaction, and they may also be particularly memorable. They may occur in situations involving hands-on activity and participation, and they fit in well with learner-centred approaches. Teaching tips for creating memorable moments include talking about students’ interests, asking challenging questions and accepting that all students are different. Technology enhanced learning environments can be designed to create opportunities for best learning moments – for example, through use of mobile devices, games-based learning and immersive experiences, and through using data from learning analytics.
2. Enriched realities: It is increasingly common to enrich reality with the use of technology, and several types of reality can be blended. When learners cannot be in the same place at the same time, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can be used to make some exciting and memorable shared experiences possible. When an AR application is used, it overlays information on our surroundings or objects around us, while VR provides a three-dimensional environment with which learners can interact. Such enriched realities extend what is possible in education and training and provide dynamic, new experiences that engage learners immediately. They also open up opportunities that are not available in the classroom, such as exploring places that would be difficult, dangerous or impossible to visit for a learner – the surface of Mars or the inside of a volcano, for example. With AR and VR, students can interact and work together, manipulating virtual objects and moving around the setting together. These ways of engaging can support them in understanding concepts, practising skills and performing various tasks or procedures.
3. Gratitude as a pedagogy: Gratitude involves the acknowledgement of what people have or receive and the conscious action of wanting to give back in some ways. When applied in an academic context, gratitude can help students to improve student–teacher and student–student relationships; it can help them to be more aware of their learning environment and increase understanding and focus on their studies. It can also improve mental health and wellbeing of both students and teachers. One practical approach to implementing gratitude as a pedagogy involves asking teachers and students to examine their attitude before starting their teaching or learning and during learning activities. A more detailed reflection can bring awareness of any negative attitudes towards certain topics or learning activities. These are then analysed and replaced by elements of gratitude. Students have reported being more engaged and less distracted, having great motivation for learning, and having increased confidence and a deeper understanding of concepts. Gratitude as a pedagogy has been increasingly included in the professional development of school teachers, used in early childhood education and explored in medical practice.
4. Using chatbots in learning: Using a text-based or voice-based conversational interface to communicate with the user, chatbots can answer and ask questions, guide learners and assist in problem solving. This means that, when a teacher is not available or cannot help, learners are still able to make some progress. Increasingly, chatbots use artificial intelligence techniques to understand human languages, voices, body language and behaviours, and to make sense of patterns in languages or behaviours. Chatbots bring new opportunities, such as immediate problem diagnosis and interventions. They can provide learners with support tailored to their needs – for example, constructing an immersive learning environment, analysing requirements and initiating supportive conversation. Studies suggest that learners might express themselves more freely with chatbots as they are not interacting with humans who might judge them. Chatbots have brought opportunities when tackling the contradiction between large-scale and high-quality in learning. They enable greater personalisation by collecting data from dialogues and learners’ behaviours to provide support that is specifically tailored to each learner’s requirements, which might also help reduce educators’ workloads.
5. Equity-oriented pedagogy: Developing educational opportunities that are inclusive requires thinking not only about equality in opportunities to access education but also about equity, where by each student can achieve similar positive outcomes, regardless of their background and characteristics such as gender, disability or ethnicity. Finding fairer ways to improve learning for all requires consideration of barriers at many levels, from personal to cultural and societal. Strategies in equity oriented pedagogy include listening to students and adapting teaching, recognising uneven impacts of use of educational technology, awareness of how assessment practices can be unfair and drawing on pedagogical frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL provides principles of curriculum design that focus on offering students multiple means of engagement, representation (e.g. alternative formats) and expression or action. New technology and increased online and hybrid learning provide opportunities for increasing personalisation and cocreation of learning, although possible inequitable effects of technology must be considered.
6. Hip-hop based education: Hip-hop based education focuses on the use of hip-hop as a musical genre, culture and art movement, both inside and outside a traditional school setting. It uses elements such as rap music texts, videos, graffiti and breakdancing in curricula and in teaching and learning to provide a culturally appropriate approach that can empower marginalised groups of learners. Educators, scholars and students involved in hip-hop education challenge traditional educational systems and structures and attach particular value to the power of youth voice, culture and agency. Hip-hop based education requires critical reflection to ensure that both teachers and students maintain an authentic learning experience and a critical perspective. As well as incorporating elements of hip-hop into teaching and learning, it is important that teachers involve students in critically examining negative aspects of hiphop that may reinforce or encourage sexism or violence. Hip-hop based education has been shown to bring benefits that include greater student engagement, motivation and social and emotional learning; increased literacy development and critical thinking; and improvement in teacher and student relationships.
7. Student co-created teaching and learning: The co-creation of teaching and learning materials by teachers and students can lead to greater empowerment of students and better relationships. Students can share responsibility with teachers for designing materials and activities as well as assessments. They can co-create new content and experiences or amend existing ones. The approach resembles‘communities of practice’, whereby a group of people come together, linked by a common interest, and meet regularly in order to find ways of improving their practice. As students participate in the co-creation activities, they negotiate with others and form and evolve their identities. Examples of co-creation range from small group activities, often relating to specific courses, to larger scale involvements such as surveys, interviews, consultations, testing of materials, workshops and critical reading of course content. When co-creation works well, students often report positive feelings of enthusiasm and involvement and they can acquire new skills. Cocreated materials may also save them having to buy expensive textbooks.
8. Telecollaboration for language learning: Learning a second language can bring many advantages, such as an increased likelihood of attaining further education, work and professional collaboration. The availability of free-to-use online communication tools has created new opportunities for authentic contexts for language learning and cultural learning, in the form of telecollaboration projects that connect learners in different locations. Telecollaboration enables a student to tutor another in their first language, while also learning their collaboration partner’s language as part of the same exchange. Such projects may be formally supported within an educational institution or informal. Telecollaboration has been found to improve learners’ communication skills, expand their vocabulary and grammar knowledge, and help them to appreciate other cultures and to use their second language accurately and appropriately. Records of telecollaboration may be useful for follow-up tuition or task improvement. Overall, telecollaboration can contribute to building a student-centred learning environment characterised by peer teaching, autonomous learning and tailored learning based on learners’ personal interests and needs.
9. Evidence-based teaching: Evidence-based teaching is about using research evidence to inform decisions about the best pedagogical approach to apply in a given domain. Evidence-based teaching examines evidence from research to determine whether there are proven benefits from a given pedagogical approach, or the conditions under which an approach will work. These decisions may relate to which teaching strategy to adopt to be able to teach a specific topic, capturing the progress students make over time, or assessing the effectiveness of one’s teaching.
10. Corpus-based pedagogy: A large collection of texts or other samples of naturally occurring language – for example, a collection of newspaper articles across several decades or a collection of informal conversations – is known as a corpus. Language teachers, students and developers of teaching materials may access a corpus to obtain authentic linguistic data and devise corpus-based tasks for teaching and learning. Corpus-based pedagogy has received attention in recent years as a result of advances in computing science that facilitate extraction of information from a corpus – for example, to find out how certain words are used. Learners can access online corpora with or without the help of their teachers, and they can analyse their own use of language by comparing their linguistic choices with the patterns and structures retrieved from a corpus. The retrieval and analysis of language use in context thus provides learners with a research-based understanding of language forms and functions.
The OUUK has published an annual report on “innovating pedagogy” since 2012. The report focuses on the theme of innovation and prospects and presents the ‘top 10’ pedagogies that have been put into practice to a certain extent but have not yet had a profound influence. The report aims to explore cutting-edge innovations in teaching, learning, and assessment in the modern world and offer a reference for educators and policy makers. The Open University of China (OUC) is in an era of transformation and development, and it is important for the university to keep up with the latest technology progress in order to promote the in-depth integration of information technology with education and teaching. To this end, the OUC Engineering Research Centre for Technology Integration and Application of E-Learning, Ministry of Education will pay close attention to the “Innovating Pedagogy” report series published by the OUUK and continue to explore the application of new technology in education and teaching.
By Song Lizhe, Wei Shunping, OUC