Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE)

Motivate Students to Teach One Another

What if we asked our students questions (straight from our curriculum), and then we let them, in groups and with the internet, find the answers themselves?  That’s what Dr. Sugata Mitra suggests might motivate and inspire students to learn and teach one another on their own, without adult interference.

Winner of the 2013 TED Prize, educational researcher Dr. Sugata Mitra has shown with his ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiments that, “in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they’re motivated by curiosity and peer interest” (http://bit.ly/N0esFy).

The Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) proposed by Dr. Mitra lets students organize themselves in groups and learn using an internet-connected computer with little teacher support. What would that look like in your classroom?

To create a SOLE environment in the classroom, the teacher can build a website of resources and let the students choose what they wanted to learn.  Movie making, 3D architectural design, animation, coding, blogging, infographic design, computer game design: a wealth of online tutorials allowed the students to pursue their own passions and teach themselves (and each other) whatever they wanted to learn.

But what would a SOLE look like in an academic course, like in the English classes? Could we motivate our students to read critically and write effectively on their own?

In November each year, Ms Matt's students are tasked to write their own novels (thanks to the support of the Young Writers Program of NaNoWriMo). In the past she used to spend September and October giving her students assignments to help them prepare for this writing project: plot outlines, character descriptions, setting details, etc. This year, she decided to ask them to research how to write a novel on their own?  The students are encouraged to search for answers to questions such as: how do I write a novel? How do I create complex characters? How do I plot my story?

Ms Matt thinks the answers her students find on their own will be more powerful than the ones she spoon-feeds to them.  What do you think?  What questions could you ask your students to find on their own? How could your students self-organize, with whatever tools they need, to learn the curriculum?