From transmitting knowledge to engaging it

Today's students have come of age in a digital, media-saturated world. Surprisingly, as Andy Buchenot has found, these students often learn most actively when we empower them as knowledge producers using established technologies like writing.

That last phrase may have given you pause: writing as technology? Yes, Buchenot uses an expanded definition of technology as any cultural or material object that mediates activity – and thinking of writing itself as a mediating technology has helped him find ways to engage students in active learning processes, rather than having them show they can reiterate information.

In a recent business writing class, that meant Buchenot had each student bring in examples of their professional communications to inform a discussion about rules laid out by that day's reading: How do the rules apply to these examples? How do the rules contradict these examples? How do the rules augment or enhance business writing? What relationships can we see between content and application?

For Buchenot, active learning is based on a belief that knowledge is constructed socially and students are key contributors. One of his favorite active learning activities is to assign a reading, then have students submit a reflection on it before class. He then anonymizes and distributes a couple of submissions to spur discussion. Using these student texts leads to a discussion that is primarily student-led and encourages close consideration of the forces that shape our thinking. It's broader than agree or disagree – it's about developing a sensitivity to how interpreting the world works.

Unexpected combinations – for example, using students' Instagram stories to shed light on more formal class texts – have been especially fruitful for getting students to see things from new perspectives. And, while he's careful not to design activities around the technology itself, Buchenot finds active learning classrooms facilitate the intersection of new and traditional instructional approaches in a really exciting way.

Ultimately, when he's in a space designed for active learning, Buchenot finds that his options expand to include more colors in his teaching palette. He can try new things and do some things he might not otherwise have been able to do. At the same time, he can have his students think about a literate activity that they're doing in online spaces but in a school frame, with a more critical eye.