Lessons Learned

The Learning Lab learned several lessons in its first three years that will shape and influence the future.

Lesson #1: Large lecture classes can be made personal and satisfying. The Learning Lab's course enhancements proved very successful. Evaluations show that students who spend more time in groups and in project work learn better. Faculty members report a better grasp on students' needs and progress. They also benefit from a wider set of resources and tools at their disposal.

In particular, the Lab's collaboration with professors from across campus created software tools that have proven highly desirable in many contexts. The collaboration and experiments also produced new teaching strategies, suggesting ways that can reconfigure the functions of teachers, assistants, and students. It further opened new ways to use the Web in assignments and projects; and new strategies to integrate sections, lectures, and homework. The Lab learned that the weight of large lecture classes can be shifted from didactic delivery of information to student exploration of new concepts and peer-to-peer interaction. Faculty lecture time can be refocused to address student needs and engage material at deeper levels, resulting in more meaningful learning for students and the faculty. The Learning Lab has developed strategies and tools to facilitate such innovation. These strategies and tools have all been successfully implemented in courses across several disciplines throughout the campus.

Lesson #2: Attempting too many innovations in a single course is expensive and overwhelming.

The Learning Lab's successes were more assured when it focused on specific aspects of a course and incrementally acquired strategies and tools that could be applied more manageably in future courses. Now that it has more clearly identified characteristics of constructivist learning environments, it can more proactively identify specific needs and fit them into a scaffold of innovation.

In the next three to five years the Lab will use the Wallenberg Global Learning Center to explore even more focused, specifically targeted experiments and course innovations in order to enhance learning not only in large lecture classes, but in smaller courses across the campus as well.

Lesson #3: Dissemination can be hampered by the lack of a coordinated delivery system.

As the Learning Lab's knowledge of pedagogy expanded and new software products, services, and space innovations were developed, it became difficult to use existing delivery systems to inform the campus of Lab experiments. Part of the problem is structural. Because the Lab is not linked administratively to other units on campus, the Lab has found it difficult to integrate itself in existing cross-campus relationships. In addition, since the mission and structure of the Lab is primarily innovation-oriented, its vision is more long-term. The Lab's staffing and resources have been best targeted in the areas of applied research and development. While the Lab has always worked with other units on campus (ATS, ITSS, CTL, etc.) to disseminate some of its products, the process is ad hoc one.

In the next three to five years, the Lab hopes to strengthen and formalize these relationships, as well as explore new avenues of dissemination that will enable it to adhere to its primarily innovative mandate.

Lesson #4: Innovations must link firmly with departments and initiatives.

The Learning Lab is at the point where its innovations must link more firmly with campus departments, programs, and initiatives. For example, the longitudinal Learning Careers study showed that students could benefit greatly from personal portfolios. These portfolios could be put profitably to use in a wide variety of settings, such as distance learning, undergraduate advising, and career planning. However, implementing learning portfolios would depend on buy-in from administrators and programs across the campus, including undergraduate advising, academic departments, overseas studies, and others. The development of E-Folio^TM, the portfolio software tool, is a large effort and will take a significant investment in time, money, and research that would be most beneficial as part of a campus-wide initiative. Therefore, the Lab's findings on meaningful learning at Stanford depend, in part, on the willingness and the ability of Stanford programs, organizations, and their administrators to adopt and integrate the innovative pedagogies the tools are designed to support.

Over the next three to five years, the Lab will work with faculty members and administrators to implement university-wide programs that are feasible and aligned with Stanford's teaching mission. The Lab expects to facilitate adoption in such programs by using the Wallenberg Global Learning Center as a forum to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative programs and services.

Lesson #5: Social engagement and informal contact are essential between participants in collaborative and distributed learning environments.

The Learning Lab's work has confirmed the importance of social engagement and informal contact between participants in collaborative and distributed learning environments. The Lab has come to recognize and begun to address (through our tools, services, and space solutions) the challenges of forming communities among geographically dispersed students.

This will remain the focus over the next three to five years, as the Lab refines and deepens its understanding.

Lesson #6: The promise of global learning is being realized by the Wallenberg Global Learning Network (WGLN).

Technology is shaping lives, and it is also shaping the spaces in which people live, work and study. The Lab has learned that the reality of distributed learning makes distinctions between workplaces, living spaces, and study spaces ambiguous and artificial. WGLN lead the way to understand the special needs new paradigms in learning and technology inspire in physical spaces. WGLN is codifying principles of design and construction in workplaces on the Stanford campus.

Find out about our vision and goals for the next three to five years.

Questions or comments about the Stanford Learning Lab?
Contact sll-info@sll.stanford.edu