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Devon Wilson is a Research Assistant at Project Zero, where he works on the Out of Eden Learn project and the ID Global project. This blog post reflects work that Devon undertook in collaboration with Carrie James.

Author’s note: In this piece, I describe insights from a series of interviews with educators who creatively utilize the Dialogue Toolkit to support thoughtful dialogue amongst students. I identify six powerful teacher moves and provide more details about how these moves are enacted in these teachers’ classrooms and contexts. For a distilled version of the six powerful teacher moves, click here.

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It can be easy for students to like something on social media or digital learning platforms, but how can we encourage students to expand their repertoire of skills for online commenting and exchange?

The Dialogue Toolkit (DTK) was designed to promote thoughtful commenting and meaningful discussions in online learning communities (including Out of Eden Learn (OOEL), the digital exchange program for which the DTK was originally designed). By highlighting specific moves that students can use in their comments, the DTK aims to slow down the process of responding and exchanging ideas with online peers. It also helps direct students’ thinking, and ideas for comments, in different directions in order to support a higher quality of exchange and mutual understanding between students.

Even with the Dialogue Toolkit as a resource, without teacher support, many students may still rely primarily on “liking” an online post or providing quick comments that do not move the conversation forward. The following strategies for enhancing student dialogue, using and extending the Dialogue Toolkit, emerged from a series of interviews with educators. In these teacher’s classrooms, we observed students using the Dialogue Toolkit effectively and seeing the value of using the Toolkit’s moves to support thoughtful dialogue. Specifically, in these teacher’s classrooms, we observed one or more of the following moves:

1. Model and Practice Different Dialogue Toolkit Moves 
2. Reinforce Physical & Electronic Presence of the Toolkit
3. Coach and Provide Feedback on an Individual Basis
4. Connect to In-Person Communication Strategies
5. Use DTK Moves in Delivering Feedback on Student Work
6. Discuss the Purpose and Value of Thoughtful Dialogue in Digital Exchange and Beyond

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1. Model and Practice Different Dialogue Toolkit Moves 

In Angelia Crouch’s Middle School World History class at St Joseph Catholic School, an emphasis on dialogue moves starts right away, in the initial footsteps (learning experiences) of their OOEL learning journey. After giving students an opportunity to look closely at the Dialogue Toolkit, she guides them in looking together at images and text from a few sample posts, asking them to consider some of the ways they could respond.

Sample Photographs from OOEL students Neighborhood Walk Posts

As she guides students in looking closely at a single post, she asks questions such as:
“What is one thing that we can notice about these pictures that stands out to you?”
“Can you tell from this picture what this student really wanted us to know? Based on how they’re taking the picture?”
“What questions does this raise for you?”

In addition to looking and thinking about a few posts together, students have the opportunity to look back at the Dialogue Toolkit and consider the different moves and ways to engage with other students’ posts. Later on, in the course of digital exchange, we see Angela’s 6^th grade students continuing to comment in ways similar to the shared discussion questions described above. 

Looking closely and sharing details from other students’ posts: 
“I love your map. I like how much color you put into it and all of the trees” (Dog Lord) 
“I noticed all of the foot prints in the snow” (Kathleen) 
“I noticed, when you look out of the window, you can see amazing views. https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/1f..." alt="

I’m a relatively new addition to the Out of Eden Learn (OOEL) team, although I’ve been working at Project Zero for almost a decade.  Part of my background is in museum education, so I’m particularly interested in learning experiences that incorporate objects, whether works of art on a gallery wall, natural history specimens under glass, fish in an aquarium, or commonplace items that surround us.  I’ve thus been especially curious about elements of the OOEL curriculum that invite students to explore objects around them, like the Connecting Everyday Objects to Bigger Systems footstep in the Core Learning Journey 2 curriculum.  I recently set out to see what was happening in that footstep and how students might be exploring systems using objects as inspiration.  In this post, I share a bit about my process and one set of findings, and in the next post, I’ll share a second set of findings as well as some overall questions and implications.

Exploring Student Work in a Footstep of their Learning Journey

The Connecting Everyday Objects to Bigger Systems footstep, like most OOEL activities, is framed quite broadly to allow space for students to explore their own interests. However, as the name of the Core Learning Journey: The Past and the Global suggests, its intent is to help students recognize that everyday objects can be seen as part of a web of larger, often global, connections.  The footstep (which is also available as a stand-alone activity) also engages students in all three of the overarching OOEL learning goals:  students slow down to look closely at an object, they consider the stories it might be a part of, and they make connections between the object and the wider world.  

The footstep invites students “to look closely at an everyday object and then make connections between what you notice and bigger systems that the object might be part of.”  They are prompted to engage in a sequence of activities to explore an object and related systems: they select an object, look closely and slowly at it, write questions they have about it, consider different systems that could relate to it, and draw a diagram of the different parts of one relevant system.  Students are then asked to share their diagram with peers in their walking party, with a picture of their chosen object if possible.  Many students also posted text explaining their diagram, and some only posted a written description, without any visual diagram or object image.

I looked at student discussion board posts from this footstep that were shared on the OOEL online platform from two 2019 walking parties (groups of classrooms with similarly aged students from different countries around the world).  The 2021 posts were still in progress as I began, and the 2020 work was disrupted, like so much else, by COVID-19, so I went back to 2019 posts to get a sense of what might be more typical student work for this particular footstep.  I selected two walking parties with students in diverse geographical locations that had students aged 10-14, although students of other ages also engage with this material.  There were just over 90 students who posted work for this footstep across the two walking parties.  

I started looking through students’ posts, including their written descriptions and diagram images, with some possible questions in mind:

• What kind of objects do students select?
• What systems do students connect objects to?
• Do students discuss their rationale for selecting the object, and, if so, what are the rationales?
• What kinds of questions do students ask about the object?
• What objects/systems seem to spark the most student dialogue?

While the answers to these questions may be interesting and generative, two unexpected patterns really stood out to me as I began investigating students’ work.  These patterns raised questions that I hadn’t gone into the exploration even considering: 1. What did students focus on when diagramming their object-based system? and 2. How were students representing the relationships between system elements in their diagrams? Below, I discuss my observations around the first question, and the next blog post will explore the second question.

What Did Students Focus on When Diagramming Their Object-Based System?

I noticed that the focus of students’ work in their systems diagrams generally fell into one of three categories: parts of an item, a process without human involvement, and people’s involvement in a process.

Parts: Although this was not an especially common area of focus, a few students illustrated the object itself as a system, identifying different parts of the object as the elements of the system.  Students focused on the parts of both natural objects, like this date plant:

as well as human-created objects, like this soccer ball:

Processes: More commonly, students focused on a process in their diagram.  This was most often the process of manufacturing the selected object.  Some of these diagrams illustrated the process without explicitly incorporating people who might be involved in particular elements.  Such diagrams visualized, for example, various parts in the process of transforming raw materials into a finished product, such as this diagram showing steps in the process of transforming sheep’s wool into a sweater:

Other students illustrated the steps in the distribution or sale of their chosen object, like this system of car transport to a dealer:

People: Students who created system diagrams of a process frequently incorporated human contributions to the system, unlike the examples illustrated above.  Some students just identified people as an end user or consumer of the object, like the student below:

Other students identified people involved in the creation, as well as the consumption, of an object, like the bracelet maker and buyer illustrated below:

Although it wasn’t something I went into my preliminary investigation of student work considering, it was interesting to observe students’ focus on the parts of an item, a process without human involvement, or process with people’s contributions in their object-based system diagrams.  In the next post, I’ll discuss the second set of findings from my exploration.

Note: 1. Students select anonymous usernames to represent themselves to peers on the OOEL online platform, and those usernames are provided here when attributing work to students.