Reflections about using eduScrum in a doctoral program for Educational
Leadership at California State University, Fresno, USA
Learning in a Changing World
In a changing world, the ability to think
critically, innovate, learn independently, collaborate, and lead are crucial.
The expectation is that schools and universities prepare students for changing
careers and a changing world. Best practices to reach these aspirations are
student-centered instruction, collaborative learning, learning communities, project
based learning… And of course, during all of this, students should also learn
the most current technologies.
As a university professor, I teach educational
research methods and statistics. As such I do research on how to support
faculty in the development of their instruction, while I am at the same time
also developing my own teaching practice. In my first year I was mostly
lecturing, with a lot of dialoguing, but realistically I was doing most of the
talking. Then I implemented much more group work during class time and
eventually shifted to a flipped classroom, where students would view lecture
videos as homework and collaborate on assignments and discussions during class.
I strived to develop my pedagogical and technological content knowledge and actively
included my students in trying to further innovate of what it meant to teach
and learn with the current mobile technology.
Open Mindset and Self-management
It is with this open mindset, that I came
across agile learning and eduScrum. Having researched how people develop their
human potential in organizations and the workplace of the future. I always
aspired to create a similar environment in my courses. I have particularly
focused on self-managed organizations, such as the Morning Star Tomato Company,
which has no formal hierarchy. They lamented to me that people often first have
to learn to self-manage, to be self-determined and to be a leader without
formal authority. These skills are all fundamental in order to work well in a
flat organization. So, I immediately saw that eduScrum could help me bridge two
areas in my life, the research about modern workplaces and how to prepare my
students for it, while teaching them research methods.
Implementing eduScrum
After I first spoke with Willy Wijnands I was
really excited, but also a bit concerned. Could I really trust my students to
take control of their learning? And more importantly could I trust myself to be
able to assist them in an effective way? Using the eduScrum approach required
some courage and a growth mindset. Regular coaching by Willy was fundamental.
He did a fabulous job at making the method simple to understand and was always
available to reflect together and discuss the next step. There weren’t any
difficulties that he hadn’t experienced already. He shaved several years of my
learning path. True to his method, his coaching style was to the point,
effective and with a few questions and reflecting on how to improve. My main
initial concern was that I had a lot of material to cover in my course, and I
was not sure how I would check if students had understood the main concepts.
(This actually was already a concern with the flipped classroom.) An important
realization was, that there really is a lot of flexibility in varying the
degree of control. The burn chart and the demo meeting at the end of each
lesson serve as feedback on overall progress and understanding. The multiple
check-ins with the teams during the lesson time provide information about the
degree of understanding. When one realizes that several groups struggle with a
concept, there is time to have the groups stop and provide a mini-lecture for
clarification. I had a lot of content and lecture videos online that I was able
to point teams to.
Development of collaboration and leadership skills
What is particularly important is the constant
reflection at the end of each session. Not just about the content, but about
how they work as teams. Students figure out what works and what doesn’t. The
students develop self-management and leadership skills. They also check if they
built a culture in their team that matches with their definition of fun. Here
some comments from students: “I was anxious at first and had a preference for
just listening to lectures, but then I realized that I was here to become a
leader, and that included taking charge of my learning.” “I loved how we were
able to establish our own plan of action.” “The team became an important part
of my life and working together to get the assignments done was very
effective.” “This was a good set up because each group had their own time with
the professor, opportunities to ask questions and reflect on assignments in
small groups with the professor.“
Room for improvement
Based on student evaluations there were two
concerns that surfaced. One was that they wished a bit more “explicit
instruction on some of the more complicated concepts”. Another was being stuck
in a team that they don’t like. To my knowledge that was only the case for 1
out of 20 people. And this is a challenge that Willy has had before. Here the
facilitation skills of the instructor come into play. It is about perceiving
certain group dynamics and potentially facilitating a discussion around that.
Next steps
I am very happy I implemented eduScrum and
will use it again. But I definitely would recommend to have a coach available,
because it makes the instructors learning easier, faster and helps keep the
confidence and trust. Having materials online available makes it easier too. I
am actually thinking about implementing it in a fully online class. Two things
I will improve is a) plan time for explicit lectures, when they are pulled by
students, and b) in addition to the team based survey on their team
functioning, also have an individual survey, where I offer an opportunity for
students to signal me when they want help with a difficult conversation about
their team functioning.
Overall the engagement and buy in of the
students is what most convinced me to use it again. I had teams send me demo
videos from their meetings on Sunday afternoon. Two teachers started using it
in their own classroom. One student used it to manage her work at the office.
Me personally I started using a scrum board to manage my family’s preparations
for hosting guests over the Christmas break. All these are signs that eduScrum
is a great tool to develop self-management, collaboration and leadership
skills.
Christian A. Wandeler, Ph.D., is an assistant
professor in research methods and statistics at California State University,
Fresno. He got a Ph.D. in personality and positive psychology at the University
of Zurich, Switzerland. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and
studies teacher training, the development of hope and learning achievement, the
equity of the Swiss educational system, and studied the quality of the career
and technical education system in Switzerland. He consults organizations in the
development of human potential, professional development and growing the
workplace of the future.
