Over the past year, I have learned about the importance of disruptive innovation in the classroom. Without disruptive innovation, teaching practices stay the same. Dewey said it best, “if we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow”. It is important to implement changes in the classroom that are beneficial to our students’ learning. When I first found out that I would be implementing a disruptive innovation into my program, I instantly thought of my Lifeguarding class. This has been a class that has had some bumps along the way and needed to be improved to get the most out of the program. However, I wasn’t quite sure how to go about implementing a change. After talking this over with my department we decided the best course of action would be to create a Blended Learning Lifeguarding Class. So I decided to focus my innovation plan on transforming traditional lifeguarding instruction by incorporating blended learning into the course, to empower students to take accountability for their personal learning experience.
In order to make that change happen, I first needed to get my plan approved. My Disruptive Innovation Proposal further describes why a blended learning approach is necessary for my Lifeguarding class and how I planned to implement it at the beginning of the following school year. My original timeline had me rolling out the innovation project last May 2020 but unfortunately, we were shut down in March and thrown into virtually teaching for the remainder of the year. For most teachers and their courses, this was a shock to the system and everyone was scrambling to change up how they taught their classes to make them fully virtual. Unfortunately for my lifeguarding class, fully virtual isn’t possible, so it just put a stop to the program and my innovation plan altogether and the students ended up with a study hall instead, which continued into this fall due to restrictions on close contact.
However, as we went through some more of our Lamar classes this year, I was challenged to think of ways to make Lifeguarding fully virtual. As much as I fought this idea in the beginning, I believe in some ways this may have actually improved my innovation plan because it challenged me to find other ways to teach more parts of the curriculum online, and leave more time in-person for practicing and mastering skill sets. Lifeguarding is one class that you have to have some in-person time, so you can experience anything from the feeling of saving a life to potentially drowning yourself, it’s not something you will ever be able to experience if you are fully virtual. I feel that the strongest point in my disruptive innovation proposal is that the students will be able to work at their own pace and review the material anytime or place they want. My plan will allow them to learn the material prior to coming to class and give them more opportunities during the class time to review and practice the skills and ask any questions they may have about the material they learned. This allows for more hands-on learning. I even found some evidence on blended learning in Lifeguarding and completed a Literature Review to show my administration, that proved having the students learn online prior to coming to class helped them better understand the material and get a better grasp on how to perform the skills for when they were in-person practicing.
Throughout this year, since we were not allowed to hold the Lifeguarding course, it opened up a prep period for me to plan out how to improve and incorporate this innovation plan into the course for next year. With my google classroom set up and ready to go, students will have the opportunity to learn at their own pace and take accountability for their own learning experience. They will also have more in-person time to practice what they learned online! I’m excited to see how this innovation plan works out next year but I believe this break, due to the pandemic, may have helped make my program stronger in the long run because it gave me more time to prepare and plan the best lifeguarding class for my students.
References:
Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2014). Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 1118955153
Turkmen, H. (2006). What Technology Plays Supporting Role In Learning Cycle Approach For Science Education. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 5(2), 10th
Innovation Plan Reflection
COVA and CSLE Reflection
Having a Type A personality I like to know exactly what someone wants from me so I can make sure I get it done correctly and on time. No games, no guessing, just the answer! With that being said I struggled with COVA (Choice, Ownership, Voice, and Authentic Assessments) at the start of this program. I still struggle at times but I’ve learned to accept the challenge and try to be more open-minded about this way of learning. At times, I found myself getting really frustrated especially if I got points off for doing something that I believed was in line with the guidelines for an assignment but was done how I thought fit best for my classroom. However, after completing almost a year in this program and being able to experience COVA first hand, I have noticed some changes in my teaching mindset and have now started to included COVA in my classroom. I believe creating significant learning environments (CSLE) actually helped me feel more open and accepting of the COVA learning experience.
When I first started this Digital Learning and Leading (DLL) program, I had initially thought it was going to be all about how to integrate technology into my classroom. To be honest it was in a way, just not the way I had previously thought. With teaching swimming/Lifeguarding, I originally thought it would be pretty impossible to integrate technology into that setting but soon learned all the possibilities and advantages out there that could benefit the class. I also started this DLL program prior to COVID, so when I first started I had very little vision of how I could make a Lifeguarding/Swimming program 100% virtual or how to incorporate COVA into the program. That was until we had no choice and we went into lockdown last March. I was forced to think outside the box and come up with new ways to teach online because I had no other options, which helped since I was being asked to do the same thing for this program.
Originally my innovation plan was just created for this program only. However, as things started to change with COVID regulations and many of our courses becoming virtual, this innovation plan actually turned into something helpful to get my course running and off the ground. Many of my coworkers still fight the thought of trying something new, which I get because we get used to doing things a certain way and get comfortable with the routine. However, they have since been forced to make some changes and they too have seen the benefits these changes have had on our students. Now that things are slowly opening back up and going back to normal(ish), I’ve seen many classes go back to their old ways of teaching. Which, is a shame because some of the changes really were helping and making a difference.
When it comes to incorporating COVA into my classroom I still find this hard in my specific course setting. Only because it is a certification course where specific skills need to be accomplished and performed correctly. Even when I was creating my online course in the last class, I noticed my weeks were very repetitive and there was little room for students to have their own voice or choice when it came to assignments and learning the skill sets. I do, however, think when I teach my Synchronized swimming class that my students have the opportunity to follow COVA and this is a class I will continue to incorporate it into.