  Engaging in Challenge Based Learning Challenge-based learning (CBL) had to grow on me. It wasn’t love at first sight or even a very strong initial attraction. Coming from a firm problem-based learning background, where problems fit neatly into subject area categories, CBL seemed much too open and abstract a pedagogy to assure students would learn. However, the idea of the student products – solutions to challenges they found meaningful in the context of their community and world – was intriguing. And it was obvious that challenges tackled through CBL led to actual creation, whereas PBL activities typically lead to a hypothetical outcome. Last year, I spent nearly 5 months with CBL studying and considering how it might fit in a traditional high school as a driver of learning (not an add-on). The framework, as described by Digital Promise in the Challenge Based Learning Guide is pleasingly constructivist. The three stages of the framework coincide nicely with the learning cycle or 5E structure. But challenges are so long (some take months!) and open-ended. I wondered how teachers cover content at all when students are learning this way? Exactly how was a teacher supposed to move students through these challenges? The details of the pedagogy seemed to be missing. I tried to find a thought partner outside of my school to consider these questions. However, most individuals I engaged found there to be little or no significant difference in CBL and versions of PBL. Most would say, “it doesn’t matter what you called it. It just matters that the kids are solving problems.” As I began introducing the ideas of design thinking to my staff, as a process for school transformation, it was they who became the thought partners. The staff of NRHS, in the end, created the detailed pedagogy we now use as all our 9th and 10th graders work on challenges on a daily basis, which we refer to as Design Thinking CBL. By using design thinking tools to enhance the CBL framework, we discovered an extremely effective method of instruction for building life skills right along with deepening core content knowledge. Investigating Design Thinking CBL There is a great deal of literature about design thinking and a great place to start is the Stanford d.school. Design thinking is a process to aid in thinking through wicked problems–human-centered problems without a single or clear solution. At NRHS, wicked problems became congruent with our challenge topic. Because the design process is not content-specific, it works best with heterogenous teams who possess amongst their members cross-curricular knowledge, also a feature of CBL. The process is shown in this diagram by the Stanford d.school. As we began using resources from design thinking to fill in the details of the CBL framework, the entire process came into sharp focus. The design teachers explain it this way: “CBL is what we do and design thinking is how we do it.” Acting On Our Learning We created a school schedule that allowed students time beyond the core content classroom to engage in real-world problems with the intent to create and implement a real solution. By utilizing a local elective called Design, students were still building the necessary content background in core class to then apply to the challenges in the design lab. The design thinking processes of empathy mapping and defining the problem from the identified user needs, helped our teachers engage students in the challenge and improved students’ ability to be considerate of others. The iterative design thinking process of ideation and prototyping aligns with investigation in the CBL framework and gives us strategies like rapid prototyping and brainstorming to move the process to a very creative space. It’s in the last stages of the Design Thinking CBL process that we move to a level of implementation quite different from the more traditional, content-oriented PBL model. Whereas PBL leads students to create something for the teacher that may be represented hypothetically in a plan, slide deck, poster, or presentation to the class, the Design Thinking CBL act or test/assess stages require that students actually put their products out into the real world for feedback from the people who will actually use the product. At NRHS we use the terms “authentic work” for “authentic audiences” to differentiate this stage from the typical turn-in-your-project-to-the-teacher stage of PBL. Falling in Love Throughout the first year of implementation of Design Thinking CBL our teachers learned many nuances of the pedagogy. They learned how difficult it can be to help teenagers develop an empathetic perspective, how the iterative process is quite foreign in our fast-paced, turn-in-your-work-now educational machine, and how scary putting prototyped work out real audiences can be. However, the teachers continued to hone the details of their instruction by increasing scaffolds around the challenging pieces and removing them as quickly as students could tolerate to build agency and independence in learning. The result was phenomenal as our students began celebrating empathy (example a school-wide pep rally for our Special Olympics students), demanding time to iterate (some students took 6 to 9 weeks to complete their project), and seeking their own opportunities to display work to authentic audiences (our students hosted over a hundred visitors throughout the year). It was a long romance, but I’m in love with challenge based learning. I love the blend with design thinking to make a well-rounded experiential learning opportunity for our students as they work collaboratively to celebrate their individual gifts and talents and the opportunities they see for improvement in our world. I’m in love with the agency I see developing in our students as their confidence grows and their understanding of their role in the community matures. I’m in love with the products I see students produce that show how they’ve learned lessons well beyond the core content. I’m in love with the culture shift direct instruction on empathy has made in our school climate and relationships between peers. I’m also in love with the way the teachers of NRHS, by acting as designers themselves, used the congruent processes of design thinking and challenge based learning to make a cohesive pedagogy that was both flexible and supportive enough to successfully turn our students into designers as well. This is how education should be.
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“Umm yeah, I want to be on a robotics team.”Through the North Rowan High school’s rookie competitive robotics team participating in the FIRST NC program ,I had an opportunity to recruit students from various backgrounds to come on the journey. In the process of creating this rookie team and mentoring the members, I learned more about authentic engagement and authentic work creation than from any book or workshop. This is mostly because I was engaged with the students myself giving me an opportunity to reflect on our collective experience to see what works, what authentic work is, and why authentic work is the future of education. 
“I don’t belong here.”It’s a sentiment we have all felt and that students often feel daily but do not express aloud. These are still the words that resonate with me the most after an incredible journey this year into challenge-based learning and our goal of authentic engagement at North Rowan High School. On our second trip to Charlotte to visit our robotics team’s mentor team location, where our team members and mentors could work with other veteran teams and make use of their tools, mentors, and team members’ experience, I took a larger group typical to most classes at North Rowan High School with different abilities, experiences, and socioeconomic struggles. The first words of a student as he entered the large bustling warehouse, where other teams’ members and mentors were working diligently and having spirited discussions, were “I don’t belong here.” Students are often reluctant when they enter a new classroom, and feelings of not belonging are not uncommon when the content of the course is outside their comfort zone. 
In the first hours this student ended up in a vacant room lying on the floor, expressing that there were nothing but “nerds” here, that he couldn’t contribute and just wanted to lay down. “We have an idea.”Why do those words and this day resonate with me so much when I reflect on authentic work and authentic work creation? Finding a student lying on the floor of a dark room initially had me wanting to lecture him on how he made a commitment to the team and should help out any way he wanted, but instead I thought maybe he just needed a minute to adjust and accept that were there. I was not planning on letting him sleep away the day in this room though. 
The story doesn’t end with a student napping on the floor of a room in a warehouse in Charlotte. A second student meandered into that room to get some quiet time to think and ended up using his napping peer as someone to bounce ideas off of. Sometime after the two had been together talking, I came back to check on the students and realized they were having a productive discussion on the mechanism for our robot and how it may work. The students, upon my return, expecting me to ask them how much longer they may be in the dark room, said without even a glance in my direction, “Get out. We have an idea.” 
I gave them space with the intention to check on them again later, but I didn’t need to. Shortly after that second visit, they both came out and put their idea to work. In the process of their work they asked for help, got clarification, but also asked for space. This established the new normal for robotics as the napping student suddenly became a leader in the team encouraging discussion, work, and later at events, collaboration and social outreach. 
“What is authentic work creation?”Recently I was told to reflect on the competitive robotics team and my classroom challenges to help define the term Authentic Work Creation. I remember a colleague stopping me in the hall shortly after being given the assignment and asking me “what is authentic work creation?” The answer is very complicated and yet also very simple and since I am often told to “KISS”, Keep It Simple Stupid, I will do just that. Authentic work creation is the process from authentic engagement to the production of some product. It requires research, collaboration, prototyping, analysis, and synthesis within parameters set by the teacher. The product may anything from a presentation to a working competitive robot. In my chemistry classes I used challenges to engage students in authentic work creation by setting up a goal and limitations for them and allowing them freedom within those parameters to create, complete, and report through a lab experiment in a Mythbusters type video.
Analysis and SynthesisThere is no magic bullet, no surefire way to engage students authentically to make sure they all do authentic work all the time. I did learn a few things this first year that I will further refine and take into my next year of teaching.
Which brings us back to…
 Meredith Williams, Principal NRHS
Ninth and tenth graders at North Rowan High School spend 25% of their school year solving real-world challenges through challenge-based learning (CBL) pedagogy in our design labs. Concerning this school design, we typically hear two questions: Question 1: How do you select which students get to take design class? Answer: We don’t select. Every student in the 9th and 10th grade takes design as part of their curriculum because we believe the essential skills of communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking are essential to EVERYONE! Question 2: Don’t students eventually get bored or tired of doing this kind of work? Answer: At first we weren’t sure. But the truth is students come to us in high school already bored and tired of school in general. The typical factory model – forcing every student to receive a standardized education that prepares them for jobs we know are being eliminated by technology – is less than inspiring. Happily, we have found that our students’ engagement in challenge-based learning has increased as we have moved through the year. We attribute this to several factors. First, our design students solve problems that are meaningful to the real world. Our ninth graders just finished prototyping actual schools that could be sent anywhere in the world in shipping containers. Before they prototyped, they researched needs and talked with expats and nationals in schools abroad to design the schools specifically for that country or location. The tenth grade is currently prototyping designs to improve efficiency and ease of work for various individuals around our school such as custodians, cafeteria workers, and administrative assistants, following the example of the highly successful company IDEO. Secondly, our design students present their work to an authentic audience. Consider your daily work. How often do you complete work simply to turn in to a single person for their one-time feedback, only to move to the next task? You don’t. In the “real world” your work is evaluated by an audience (employer, committee, or team) whose feedback dictates changes and modifications you must make. The world of social media alone speaks to the wide audiences our students access on a daily basis to share their work and ideas. We find that the more authentic and wide the audience our students are responsible for sharing their products with, the more engaged they become. Our ninth graders are currently working on products that will become the basis of our school’s marketing campaign. We have seen with this group our most engaged and productive work sessions yet, as students know their work is meaningful and will be shared with the entire Rowan County community. Lastly, our design students can approach challenges through their unique gifts and talentswithout concern for one “right answer”. When our students had an opportunity to reflect with executives from Apple recently, they explained that the open-ended nature of the challenges made the work harder, but also more rewarding. One student commented, “Before, my thinking was limited by my classes, but in design class my thinking is encouraged.” What would your dream school look like? If you could design your most perfect learning experience, what would it look, feel, and sound like?
These are the kinds of questions the North Rowan High School community pondered as we prepared for the implementation of our Restart transformation. Restart, which gave NRHS flexibility around some NC State rules, allowed us to dream and create outside the confines of the traditional test-driven, bureaucracy-laden system. When we explored all the dreams of an ideal school, one essential component was clearly evident throughout: engagement in authentic learning. In our dream school, students were engaged in the learning not because they were told to, or because they "had to" for a grade or test. Rather, students were engaged because they wanted to know more, wanted to master more, wanted to experience more. Authentic learning aligns with our statement of purpose, which is to nurture and encourage students to develop their gifts and passions for academics, careers, and life. In the Journal of Authentic Learning, Audrey Rule cites four characteristics common to authentic learning: 1. Real-world problems that engage learners in the work of professionals 2. Inquiry activities that practice thinking skills and metacognition 3. Discourse among a community of learners 4. Student empowerment through choice. At NRHS we are leveraging challenge based learning (CBL) as an instructional tool for engaging students authentically in real-world problems. Challenge-based learning, as outlined in the iBook Challenge Based Learning Guide by Digital Promise, "empowers learners (students, teachers, administrators and community members) to address local and global challenges while acquiring content knowledge." We have established design classes (see a syllabus here) where lower school 9th and 10th grade students spend 3 hours daily for 15 day periods engaging in their CBL challenges. Design classes rotate with the core content classes, providing opportunities for cross-curricular connections as challenges require students to utilize content knowledge as they learn about the “real world”. Additionally, core content and elective classes across the school have begun implementing their own mini-challenges. Here is just a sample of the CBL opportunities provided in August and September at NRHS this year:
“Editorial: The Components of Authentic Learning” by Audrey Rule, Journal of Authentic Learning Volume 3, Number 1, August 2006, Pp. 1-10. Mark H. Nichols, Karen Cator & Marco Torres. “Challenge Based Learning Guide.” Digital Promise, 2016. iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/challenge-based-learning-guide/id1145036840?mt=11 |
AuthorMeredith Williams served as principal at NRHS from 2016 - 2022. Mrs. Williams now serves as Assistant Professor of Instructional Design at Catawba College. Archives
June 2019
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