Community Gabfest: Learner Agency

On September 27, 2022 AlphaPlus hosted our first Community Gabfest.

The conversation starter for the first Gabfest was Jim Tysick’s video The Way Forward.

Jim is an experienced and innovative literacy instructor who works at the Sharbot Lake location of the Northern Connections Adult Learning Centres literacy program. In the summer of 2022, he participated in the AlphaPlus Wayfinders Maker Space and created a video about changing his teaching styles to increase learner agency and independence. In The Way Forward, Jim describes how he is changing from a “sage on the stage” approach to become a “guide on the side” teacher.

Here are two quotes that inspire and inform Jim’s work:

• The one who does the work does the learning. – Terry Doyle
• The purpose of adult education is to help them learn, not to teach them all you know and thus stop them from learning. – Carl Rogers

We used a Jamboard to guide our conversation: Wayfinders Gabfest 1 Jamboard.

Resources mentioned in the video

Scott Young

• Practice Made Perfect: The 10 Keys to Optimize Improvement
• See-Do-Feedback: The Right Way To Practice

Google Applied Digital Skills

• Get Started Guide
• The Digital Skills Library indexes Google Applied Digital Skills by topic. In the search box, under name choose Applied Digital Skills to see the list.