Structuring Courses with Agile Research Studio: Five Components and Four Pedagogical Values

Abstract

Structuring Courses with Agile Research Studio:Five Components and Four Pedagogical Values E.B. Hunter (bio) Introduction This essay describes how I adapted a system called Agile Research Studio (ARS) to design courses wherein students create projects, either individually or in groups. Originally developed at Northwestern University to manage a STEM research lab (Delta Lab),1 ARS is an academic research version of the "agile development" approach to project management. This approach, which originated in the software industry, now dominates several sectors (Rigby et al.; Nyce). In essence, ARS is a system of specific technologies (like Google Sheets and Slack) and communication practices (like student-to-student help-giving and –seeking) that train students how to self-direct complex projects. It is therefore well-suited to designing courses that incorporate project-based learning.2 Despite the many differences among my teaching context, the software industry, and ARS's birthplace, I have found the system an excellent cultivator of pedagogical values that transcend disciplinary boundaries: effective planning, community-building, and transferrable skills. To design courses with ARS, I use five components, the implementation of which I describe in a later section: 1) a semester divided into one- or two-week "sprints" of work; 2) theme-based Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that students join to frame their engagement with course content; 3) a collaborative spreadsheet that students use to plan and track their tasks during each sprint; 4) an online journal, where students reflect on their own work from the previous sprint; and 5) an online messaging forum like Slack, where students can plan, ask for help from classmates, give help to classmates, and generally create community around the projects they are making. But why use project-based learning in the first place? When compared to content delivery and exams, project-based learning has long been shown to improve knowledge acquisition, promote more robust critical thinking, and increase affinity for the subject material (McCarthy and Anderson; Flores et al.; Gauci et al.; Watkins et al.). Despite these benefits, obstacles to adopting project-based learning exist for both instructors and students. Instructors often worry that such an approach will require unsustainable mentoring and monitoring (Felder and Brent). Students across disciplines often resist projects that involve group work, citing inequitable labor distribution and an absence of teammate accountability (ibid.). And, confoundingly, new research shows that many students simply feel like they learn more when courses are comprised mostly of entertaining lectures, even though their performance on assessments demonstrates otherwise (Deslauriers et al.). ARS addresses these challenges by training students to take control of their projects' workflows without increasing the time instructors spend on management. Although ARS uses software that is free, the system does assume student access to a smartphone and internet connectivity, at minimum—an assumption shared by much of higher education, as the current circumstances of distance learning have illuminated. Just as important to note is that while many students enjoy screen-based technology, few arrive to university already adept at leveraging it as a learning tool.3 Consequently, ARS works best if an instructor is comfortable using ARS's technolo- gies. [End Page 31] This familiarity is necessary not only to facilitate course design, but also so that the instructor can provide the in-the-moment troubleshooting many students may need to avoid computer-user frustration. With these limitations in mind, this essay is geared toward instructors who already use tools like Slack and Google's online software. Not incidentally, ARS's deep integration of these technologies makes the system a highly effective disaster pedagogy. As I discovered in spring 2020, an on-campus course designed in this way is not hard to transfer online with only a few days' notice, because it relies upon tools, workflows, and communication practices that can exist asynchronously and online. ARS made spring 2020's shift to emergency remote learning less chaotic than I expected, because students had already spent six weeks practicing the fundamentals of project management and learning how to use distance-learning technologies. ARS can also help lessen the anxiety that accompanies a sudden global or personal disruption, because the system gives students concrete steps to follow. As the sections below explain...