TED: Larry Lessig – How Creativity is being strangled by the law
Scaffolding 101
I’ve been talking a lot lately at conferences and consultations about the idea of “scaffolding” content. Scaffolding isn’t new. It’s teacher talk for supporting a resource or learning objective with various structures such as: questioning sequences, introductory discussion, activities or some form of production (an written, oral or multimedia item) connected to the chosen resource. In this way, we don’t just show or share an item, we provide an explicit and directed inquiry to actively engage participation in meaning.
Why scaffolding matters
Whether you’re a magazine editor, media producer or teacher, it’s not enough to simply share something you think is compelling enough to inspire engagement and expect readers, learners or colleagues to have a ready response. You must actively solicit that response via supporting materials (to activate prior or missing knowledge) as well as specific calls for inquiry, learning or repurpose.
Progressive teachers scaffold learning materials through structured activities or self-directed tasks (or better, both – which appeals to more than one style of learning!) that serves the purpose of having the learner do more with the material than passively consuming it. Here’s a story I wrote and produced for the CBC about Canadian author Margaret Laurence. The CBC hired teachers to scaffold selected stories and create curriculum to make use of these materials in Canadian classrooms. This approach transforms content into experiences.
But I have yet to see this kind of approach outside of education. Whether it’s a conference or a lecture. We’re often simply unpacking material and expecting participants to know what to do with it. This is fine for the 3% of the population who do all the talking and participating in most web spaces but not especially inviting for everybody else. And we also know this from decades of study of how people learn. The old “sage on the stage” lecture format is going the way of the dinosaur for this reason.
Instead, we need to guide and support engagement and participation in a way that explicitly invites it. For example, if I tell a client they ought to know about Second Life. I don’t just say: go to second life and get an avatar, I suggest they attend an educational conference and tell them what time I’ll be inworld (or how to go about arranging a visit). Similarly, if I say: check out Twitter, I give examples of industry professionals or peers they should follow and send them a link to my 100 or so collected bookmarks.
Here’s an exemplar of scaffolding web content from Howard Rheingold, who has been using Sprout widgets to create mini-learning units that include video, articles and links around an item of inquiry. In this case, “the public sphere in the internet age.”
ACTIVITY
I would like to issue a call to action to all of you who feel we need to go further than merely sharing cool stuff. To those of you who think we ought not to simply leave it up to those already confident or entitled to participate, and start asking – explicitly and creatively – for some form of response that transforms passive reception into active exploration. Especially those of you who teach.
For most of us, even asking ONE question is going further than traditional media. You’re not just sharing, you’re inviting a discussion, an action or a larger application. That’s what I’m talking about!
Let’s start with the video above. As compelling as it is, it’s even more compelling if we invite people to DO something with it. Using the video above as an example, I’d like you to consider the following approaches. These can be applied to any type of content – whether it’s an article, a web page, a game or multimedia.
STEP ONE: Preparation
1) Bookmark and cue the video above
2) Open up a document – preferably in notepad so you can easily import your final text into a blog post or other interactive format
STEP TWO: The work(s)
The following scaffolding approaches range from simple tasks to a culminating project. You can choose to explore one or all of these depending on your purposes. But for most of you, I’d recommend just starting with the first: 5 – 10 questions.
Inquiry: 5 – 10 questions
While watching the video above, I’d like you to come up with 5-10 questions ranging from basic comprehension and knowledge of Lessig’s presented facts and contexts to calls for critical thinking. You could watch the whole video and then write down a few quick questions (fine for a blog post or sharing among colleagues) or pause and replay as you go (more time consuming but better for classroom purposes).Resources: 3 related links or resources
After viewing the video, find 3 related links or resources that augment or support the content. For example, Lessig’s Wikipedia page, the Creative Commons website or another remix example.Simple activity: An applied task that engages further exploration of the topic
This should be a relatively simple activity. My suggestion? Create a Creative Commons license for a piece of your work – either for your blog or perhaps one of your photos in Flickr. Or, if you haven’t yet started a blog. Go to the Creative Commons site and find a piece of CC licensed work to use in your next presentation (according to the license agreement). But this activity is yours. Maybe it’s a skype conversation, Twitter crowdsource or something else … sky is the limit!Don’t just post a youtube video in your blog and expect everybody to engage it. Support that video with a few questions or calls to action. Preferably a question that yields further material, resources or ideas that support the ideas presented. For example, with this Lessig video, I’d ask people if they can post a link to their favourite remix video. Here’s one of mine.
Culminating project: Your own product and inquiry
This is for instructors or teachers who want to use the material in a context where time and resources are provided. For example, it could be a mashup or remix piece produced to demonstrated the knowledge and understanding of the topic. Here’s what I’d love. I’d love for somebody to not only make a cool remix but teach me and others how to go about doing it!
Remix this post
If you have any other ideas, please leave them in a comment below. Otherwise, feel free to grab all of the above and repost it on your own blog or website (with attribution, of course! all of my stuff here is licensed with a share and share alike creative commons license – see the bottom of the page for more info).
Further reading/viewing:
1. Activating prior knowledge
2. Blooms taxonomy
3. Constructivism – learning theory
4. Open Source Cinema – Create and remix media (tools and content)
5. Marzano: Nine instructional approaches that work
Twitter Comment
RT @mdash RT @melaniemcbride New post: How to scaffold your content: Activating engagement v. passive consumption [link to post]
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Twitter Comment
RT @melaniemcbride New post: How to scaffold your content: Activating engagement v. passive consumption [link to post]
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This is excellent advise – thanks Melanie
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RT @melaniemcbride: New post: How to scaffold your content: Activating engagement v. passive consumption [link to post]
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the notion of scaffolding always scared me, and now I know why. Thanks! Scaffolding is about ordered and linear thinking… and it is done based on the hegemonic and reductionist notion that all people and processes are and should be linear. That’s like monocrop farming. Try unpacking the assumptions on which the scaffolds are built… if some of the support members are faulty, the whole thing falls down… and in the end, what does scaffolding do? It creates a large space full of dead air. :)
[...] has a great post and link to video on: How to scaffold your content: Activating engagement v. passive consumption at melanie mcbride online. I left the following comment, and it is really interesting, because I’d never been able to [...]
Jason,
Welcome and thanks for stopping by. The approach of scaffolding above is intended to challenge those content producers who simply dump text, video or other media into a webpage with no supporting context or explicit invitation to participate.
My suggested strategies were intended as guides – with the reader developing their OWN approaches. To that end, it would be helpful if you could:
A) Identify the specific nature of your own experience of content (text, video, etc) and how that impacts your interest (i.e., how long you are able to engage that content and what that experience is like for you – pleasurable, challenging, disengaging). and
B) identify some strategies for content producers to better engage different styles of learner. Especially the learners who are not linear. If you have a problem with scaffolding (as i framed it so generally – and I made a point to say that it was very general), then please feel free to suggest an alternative that is more inclusive. The intention of my post was inclusivity.
Additionally, I didn’t write my post with, specifically, classroom or educational use in mind. I actually directed it largely at content producers – editors and writers – who are still creating works for a “read only” culture model that is not at all inclusive, top down and assumes the most heteronormative, high functioning, linear sort of reader in mind. That’s actually where you should take aim …
Traditional writers and editors *still* have little to no thought of learning issues or styles. It’s not their job – it’s a component of how they are trained (they’re not trained as educators or even made aware of these issues in any explicit way – I know, I’ve taught in content production programs). They are not versed in these ideas nor are they particularly inclined to care. I know from experience that our “deliverables” are very limited. We’re not expected to create content that anyone or everyone can access or understand. That’s just my problem with it.
What I’m suggesting is a radical idea that content creators start thinking more like educators. Start *caring* about the variety of learning styles and purposes and cognitive responses to information that are out there. Right now, that’s not really on the table. And that’s why I wrote the post.
Furthermore, I’m trying to inspire a movement away from a read-only content model that leaves engagement to those who are already oriented to do so – those who are entitled to do so. This is inequitable and accounts for the reason why only 3% of participants in any form take part. Why? because the rest of the people are not particularly inspired to participate – because their styles of participating and engaging are not EXPLICITLY activated. That’s … what I’m trying to get at.
Again, if you can add to what I’ve written and provide some further context, go right ahead. I welcome it.
My apologies. I should have withheld comment, if I wasn’t going to give suggestions, and I’d not planned on it, as I’m not ready to take on the whole scaffolding notion and lessig to boot. Your post just helped me to clarify in my mind what bothered me about it. And it has been haunting me for over a decade. I do not want to suggest something better, because, as you say, you’re working to improve the present case. And you are dealing with ‘industry’ which in and of itself does have a certain social model that is designed to not be inclusive. This is a good thing from an organizational perspective, as institutions/corporations are designed for the efficiencies that come from standardization of roles and duties. It is not a community model, or, I’d suggest a social constructivist model, but an institutionalist/corporatist model. And you have to work with the things as they are.
I do this in my teaching, but I don’t take up that perspective in my personal blogging/comments.
What you’re suggesting, moving the notion of scaffolding from the educational institutional setting to a business setting. I think you’re right, this would improve how things get done in business.
You know me… I shy away from the instutionalization of lived experience. You’re getting people to become aware of the diversity of lived experience, “Start *caring* about the variety of learning styles and purposes and cognitive responses to information that are out there.” while I’m trying to get people to embrace the diversities themselves in their own practice, a notion I don’t think industry is ready for. Perhaps institutions would cease to be if they actually embraced the diversities of the lived experiences of their members, and at this point in our culture(s), I think people still want their industries, institutions and corporate models because that structure and standardization they provide is consistent with the present western world view.
Didn’t mean to jump the gun… as I said, you’re the one in the field trying to improve the functioning of organization, and I’d agree that that will do much to improve how people interact in and with institutions, and encourage people to reflect on their personal and professional practice.