Agile Learning
By Educator & Agile Practitioner
Erin M. Hill, M.Ed., CSM
What? This site is dedicated to sharing knowledge, experience, and resources about implementing agile methods in school, such as Scrum and Kanban.
Agile methods are designed to facilitate fast, flexible, and productive teams. While the earliest agile methods are rooted in manufacturing and have most recently rose to acclaim in software development, agile methods are rapidly being adopted across a variety of disciplines in regards to product and project development.
In schools, agile methods can be used to organize learning and make it visible. Most importantly, agile methods promote student inquiry, innovation, collaboration, self-management, and reflection, especially when used in conjunction with project-based learning.
Why? Using agile methods in school facilitates and provides structure for project-based, student sourced learning while also promoting creativity, innovation, and curiosity.
How? You can use this resource as a starting point or for a total overhaul of your curriculum.
Just want to get your feet wet?
Start by making your agenda more visible, time-boxed, and user friendly.
Create a daily learning backlog.
It looks like this:
Take your agenda you regularly post on the board anyways and add the backlog part. Simply draw a column for "To Do," "Doing," and "Done." Post abbreviated versions of your agenda items on sticky notes. As you go through the class, move the sticky notes accordingly.
Why should I spend the time adding something extra to my board?
Think of it like a progress bar on an application or survey. It's an up-to-date reminder of where you're going and what you've accomplished in any given class. Once this habit is established, you'll find students will remind you to move the sticky notes if you forget because they enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their progress. This also makes it easy for a students with attention issues to glance at the board at any given moment and know exactly what they are doing in class. At the end of class, everyone can marvel at all you have accomplished in a single class block!
Encourage Student Voice & Participation in the Learning Backlog
While it doesn't happen every day, I leave sticky notes at the board and encourage students to use them to ask relevant questions throughout the lesson. They can then post those questions to the "To Do" column. This gives students a chance to organize and create their own learning that can then be shared with the class. If you have a super inquisitive student that asks a ton of questions or is constantly stymieing your momentum, this board can be a parking lot for his/her questions for a more appropriate time.
Teach Students to Create Their Own Backlogs
Ideally, as students learn how the backlog works and the purpose it serves, teams of students begin to create their own. In my experience, Padlet works well for student scrum teams. My Google Sheet version best suits individual learning backlogs. At the end of the day, it's also nice to have a paper/sticky-note version posted for everyone to see, as both students in the class and outsiders may more easily ask questions and, ultimately, further the development of student projects.
A Deeper Dive
In the same way that we expect students to gradually create large projects or in the same way that companies like Facebook make improvements over time, I recommend implementing agile methods incrementally over time. Once you have familiarized yourself and students with a learning and/or product backlog as well as time management strategies, I recommend more wholeheartedly embracing scrum. For instance, begin to:
- model time-boxing using sprints and other scrum ceremonies like daily stand-up.
- ask students to estimate and time box their own work, individually and on small teams.
In order to do this, you will want to front-load the terminology of scrum, as well as explaining the value of using it. Begin to:
- teach scrum through games.
- garner excitement and explain the "why" for scrum through short videos.
- reiterate real, successful groups of people that utilize scrum.
- help students visualize their success with these methods.
- encourage students to marry their own passions with these methods by asking how students might be able to achieve their own personal goals using agile.
Practice Agile during Professional Development
I highly encourage you to experiment with agile methods in department and/or faculty meetings to become more comfortable with the processes. Make meetings about creating something with the team instead of a status update. Let the inquiries of your team members guide the meeting agenda with Lean Coffee! At CodeRVA Regional High School, we used Lean Coffee as a means for conducting our open houses, in which prospective students and their parents guided discussion with their own questions.
Are you interested in learning more about agile applications within education?
Are you interested in having Ms. Hill run a professional development session with your team?
Feel free to reach me at emh0917@gmail.com for more!
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