Instilling innovativeness, building character, and enforcing camaraderie through interest-driven challenge-based learning approach

Mas Nida Md Khambari

doi:10.1186/s41039-019-0115-2

Abstract

This study aims to identify how student teachers were impacted by an interest-driven challenge-based instructional design of an Educational Technology course over three semesters. The instructional design of this course was foregrounded by the Interest-Driven Creator Theory, anchoring on the two out of three concepts, namely Interest and Creation. Over the course of 14 weeks, the learning activities in each class meeting started by applying the Interest Loop. This was done by inviting students to participate in bite-sized challenges, at the same time making sure that students can extend the newly constructed knowledge from the activities to their final project. The objective of such design was to let students learn by doing or completing the weekly challenges given to them during class. Then, the students were guided to complete their final project through a series of workshops and personal group consultation with the course instructor. A focus-group discussion was conducted to gather data from the students over the course of three semesters, centering on answering the question of: How does an interest-driven challenge-based framework for learning design of an Educational Technology course impact learners? Interviews were conducted qualitatively, and the findings of the analysis that emerged were (i) instilling innovativeness, (ii) building character, and (iii) enforcing camaraderie. These findings suggests that a mesh-up between the interest-driven creator theory and challenge-based learning framework, then named as InDeC framework for learning design, could furnish learners with skills that are beyond those targeted in the course outcome. Among others, learners’ heutagogical skills can be improved when they are given the opportunity to realize their capacities and stretch their capabilities. Implicitly, this research may benefit instructors in their emerging responsibility of producing and readifying learners for future demands and challenges.

Highlights

The advent of personal computing, especially smartphones, and the Internet, have created new opportunities for the learners to have access to information and turned it into a culture today
The findings that emerged from the analysis found that the challenge-based instructional design of the Educational Technology course for student teachers have augmented in (i) instilling innovativeness, (ii) character building, and (iii) enforced camaraderie among learners
This study suggests that the interestdriven challenge-based learning (InDeC) framework for learning design could enhance the implementation of the Educational Technology coursework

Summary

Introduction

The advent of personal computing, especially smartphones, and the Internet, have created new opportunities for the learners to have access to information and turned it into a culture today. Most of the learners nowadays are better at managing their own acquisition of knowledge through informal learning (Apple Inc. 2010). Their constant interaction with technologies and the Internet has become ordinary to their lives. These learners are more dynamic, adaptive to new things, and most importantly, like challenges and want to be challenged. Modifying the classroom learning environment is crucial to address the needs of today’s learners, as well as preserve a positive classroom climate (Epstein et al 2008). Teaching endeavors have changed exponentially in the past decade—learners are required to have more autonomy over their learning, pedagogical paradigm ensues

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