In this two-part podcast, Vicki Brannock, senior director of programing for Brandman University School of Extended Education, talks with Dr. Kimberly Greene, associate professor in the Brandman School of Education, about the paper Brannock asked Greene to write about teaching the 21st century learner. That topic is the focus of a certificate program designed by Greene for the School of Extended Education. The second half of the podcast can be found here or on iTunes.

To get a copy of "The 21st Century Learning Landscape for Elementary and Secondary Students in the United States: The Current State of Blended and Online Learning Opportunity" upon publication, email brannock@brandman.edu.

Transcript

Welcome to Brandman Speaks. In this two part podcast from Brandman University, Vicki Brannock, senior director of programs for the School of Extended Education talks with Associate Professor Kimberly Greene from the School of Education about the 21st century learner. There's a lot to say about a topic that touches on everything from Common Core to how we learn, so we've divided the podcast into two segments.

Vicki Brannock: [00:00:28] So Dr. Greene it's really good to see you again. I think the last time we met was back in the fall when we were talking in a faculty meeting. And I was wondering about any research that been done on 21st century learning. And you had said that there was a lot of studies done but there wasn't much independent research. And so I ask if you undertake this research task and here we are today. So tell me a little bit about what happened between then and now.

Kimberly Greene: [00:00:59] Well, when we first started talking and you asked me the question all I kept thinking about were little individual piecemeal studies. And that's when I came to the realization that there really wasn't a big umbrella study -- at least not a recent one that I was aware of -- that would enable me to give you a straight answer. There really was this recognition of somebody needs to put the time and effort into looking at this from a bigger picture so that we can have a more informed discussion about making decisions. We didn't even know what questions to ask back when we first started this conversation.

Brannock: [00:01:46] And it's my understanding that you also have someone who coauthored this with you.

Greene: [00:01:50] Yes. Dr. William Hale.

Brannock: [00:01:52] Well I'm sure as you guys started that there was a lot that you could have said about this topic. Could you talk a little bit about that? Like what did you discover? How do you define 21st century learner?

Greene: [00:02:03] That's a great place to start because it's one of those terms that gets bandied about so much but everybody tends to have a different vision in their mind what it means. Basically after looking at ideas and definitions and concepts from tons of groups, and I do mean tons because there's so much out there, it really boiled down to active critical thinking. Which if you look at what so much of what 19th and 20th century learning was, it really wasn't focused on that active critical thinking, It was more about gathering knowledge that existed and being able to replicate or reproduce it. Active critical thinking, 21st century learning, is based upon verbs. It's being able to use knowledge to do things to create new understandings to be able to solve problems in a creative fashion. So the easiest way to boil this down is to think about 20th century learning is all about nouns. It's about a canon of knowledge to be memorized. Twenty-first century learning is about engagement, in doing things with all of that information. It's about the verbs.

Brannock: [00:03:41] And it's I think that's very ... correlates very well to how we're how we're tasked to work in the workplace nowadays.