Give your students the freedom to learn

Google and 3M give their employees sizeable chunks of time to work on their own projects with intriguing results... could the same idea work in schools? Yes says Matthew Bebbington and here's how
Energy efficient Compact fluorescent lightbulb
Students and teachers can have lightbulb (even energy efficient ones) moments if they are allowed large chunks of time to work on their ideas and projects. Photograph: Alamy

What do the companies 3M and Google have in common? They all give their employees pockets of time to work on what they are curious about. In this time, they have complete autonomy over how they work, who they work with and what they experiment with. Ironically, given this freedom, they tend to work on creative solutions that will benefit their company – a win-win situation if ever there was one.

This is not a recent development: 3M employees have had 15% time every week since the 1930s and if you have ever used a Post-it note you have been the beneficiary of this 15% time. Remarkably, Google's famed 20% time, the equivalent of one working day per week, has been responsible for 50% of Google's products including Gmail and Google News.

With these inspirations in mind I organised a school "Innovation Day". The day was based around students having freedom to decide what to learn, how to learn and who to learn with for an entire school day. The day was solely focused on learning for learning's sake with no grading used as assessment. It was very much a team effort with over 15 staff giving up their time to be "guides from the side" on individual projects. Basically this meant they only helped if the students asked for it, which by all accounts, they did not!

The 80 students involved (aged 11-15) were captivated by the experience of controlling their own learning and creating their own projects for the day. They worked solidly for six hours, cross-pollinating across different projects, ages and abilities where students organised their own breaks, without having to respond to the bells which normally signify the end of a lesson.

The students created some real high quality work including album covers, Manga art work, Jubilee cupcakes, a bird stand, a remote control car, designing a rocket, a video of the school's extra-curricular opportunities for prospective Year six students and finally a video of Innovation Day highlights.

A question I have since been asked is "were students engaged throughout the day?" Honestly, 100% yes. They were fully immersed in their projects, their learning was evident and the students enjoyed what they were doing. I think there were two major factors behind this:

1. Students designed their own learning experience. This meant they had autonomy over the project and their learning was authentic and closely connected to their interests.

2. We had a public "presentation of learning" in the school hall at the end of the day with peers, teachers and the senior leadership team in attendance. I think this gave the students a "we must make this brilliant" attitude.

Students were then asked for their open and honest feedback on their Innovation Day experience and one question in particular provided some real food for thought:

Has Innovation Day changed your opinion of how your learning should happen? Here are some unedited responses from the students:

"I prefer longer time periods of project-based learning because it means you can spend longer planning it, thinking about it and concentrating on it so you can produce a better piece of work at the end of it all"

"I prefer to spend a long time on one project rather than 50 minutes on the same thing so that you can really concentrate on making it perfect"

"Yes, because, when you have more time, you don't rush, so you make less mistakes and your finished product is neater"

The challenge now of course is how do we make this type of learning an integral and sustainable part of the school's curriculum? Or as the New York-based School of One intriguingly puts it, how do we create the "mass customisation of student learning?"

One potential solution is that on one school day a week students and teachers could drop their text books and whiteboard pens to collaborate with each other on projects that excite and create deep and passionate learning on a grand scale. Or, over the academic year, give your students 20% of their lesson time to create meaningful and authentic projects linked to your subject or a number of subjects?

With teachers under increasing pressure to cover and deliver content heavy syllabus to their students I think building in time for such learning would only enhance examination results, with students developing a genuine enthusiasm for learning which would transfer into their studies.

A worthwhile link here is to High Tech High and the Learning Futures joint creation of a project based learning guide to help any school or educator introduce such work into their classrooms. This is not the sole answer to transforming the student learning experience but I think it could be, along with other authentic learning practices, a vital tool in engaging young people in their education.

Matthew Bebbington is a PE teacher at Wilmslow High School in Cheshire. He is in his fifth year of teaching and is also a keen rugby coach who is in charge of the school's first XV rugby team and is also the first team backs coach at Stockport RUFC in National Two North. Follow Matthew at @BebbPEteach or read more about the Innovation Day, student reflections and an Innovation Day gallery on his blog.


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