From Personal Action to Collaborative Play: Creating a Personal Engagement Plan for Adults that Creates an Enjoyable Group Learning Experience

Jeremy Szteiter

Notes on Research and Planning

Current Evaluation Clock

Current KAQF

Early notes on Project Scope
(this was originally developed for the cohort project with the U. of Exeter in partnership with the spring 08 synthesis class)

Current Paragraph Overview Statement

I would like to continue my ongoing exploration of adult learning and what it means for learners to include a greater sense of fun and play throughout the process. An emerging goal of this examination is to more clearly understand how actions that I take contribute to making a group learning opportunity more enjoyable and engaging others in play along with me. For an action research plan, I would like to consider the way that I approach my own behavior around personal learning opportunities with respect to the following “Core Actions”:

1) what actions I take to prepare myself for the upcoming learning opportunity: how can I use play to prepare for the learning opportunity?
2) what actions I take during the learning opportunity: how can I play while I’m actually involved in learning discussion and activities?
3) what actions I take to build upon the learning opportunity after it is over: how can I play during my reflection of the recent learning experience?

Although I am involved in a number of adult learning situations, I have found that one may be particularly useful as a reference point in thinking about collaborative play. In my work at a youth center, my role is to assist lead teachers by developing educational materials and activities for preschool (ages 3-5) and afterschool (ages 6-12) students. Specifically, I help the teachers to integrate multimedia and information technology into their lessons, since I am knowledgeable in that area, and the teachers are knowledgeable of the learning topics and goals of the students, and we must share and combine our knowledge to create activities that utilize both. I would like to explore in what ways I might define the Core Actions such that our planning interactions are improved, as these do not typically involve collaborative play.

Evaluation might include comparing a number of variables observed between the planning interactions that do and do not use collaborative play. These include the level of enjoyment experienced by myself and the teachers, whether or not humor is embraced into the planning process in a new way, whether or not teachers agree to engage in collaborative play, whether or not planned actions for collaborative play actually happened and why, whether or not the later learning experiences of the students were enhanced by through activities that were conceived through planning that used collaborative play, and whether or not my own and the teachers’ understandings of each others’ areas of expertise were deepened through the experience of collaborative play. Iterations through the action research process should then shape my “Personal Engagement Plan” - a practical recipe that I could use to guide myself into the actions that make the learning opportunity more playful for myself and others before, during, and after it takes place. Developing my constituency would then include the other teachers with whom I was working, administrators/directors of the center, the students who would eventually be influenced by the results of the lesson planning, and other educational supporters who might suggest ways of play that would enhance the process.