*Differentiated Learning and Scaffolding in Ubiquitous Collaborative Workspaces*

Gayatri Devi

One of the many anxieties that beset teachers switching from face to face teaching to remote online education is the fear that they might not be able to give immediate unmediated individual attention to their students. In the traditional didactic classroom, as it were, it is possible to respond immediately and in an unmediated way to a student who appears to be struggling with the content under review. Facial expressions, physical discomfort, twisting and turning around in your seat, talking to people around you—all those gestures that signal confusion--these aspects of the physical-architectural layer (Cope, "From Didactic Pedagogy to New Learning") inform the caring and alert teacher that the student needs individual attention from the teacher. Naturally, this immediate attention to a struggling student is one of the “affordances” of the didactic classroom, to apply Cope’s concept to the older paradigm. When we move to remote learning in a virtual classroom how do we provide the same immediate attention to our struggling students? Here ubiquitous learning, particularly the collaborative workspace, might become an artful solution and an achievable strategy to give individualized attention to struggling students. In particular, this may be achieved through scaffolding of assignments and tasks, starting with low stakes and high stakes work, and graded and ungraded work.

The concept of “scaffolding” involves breaking down a complex assignment or task into smaller units that are within the grasp and capabilities of the student but are at the same time somewhat challenging and bring them out of their comfort zone with the help and encouragement of a teacher or a peer with a higher skill set. As with the literal scaffold, this metaphorical scaffold is removed as the student becomes an independent performer of the task. Scaffolding is a pedagogic application of Vygotsky’s theory of the “zone of proximal development” —“that distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/development/zone-of-proximal-development.html#:~:text=Vygotsky's%20often%2Dquoted%20definition%20of,in%20collaboration%20with%20more%20capable) .

The collaborative workspace that can be accessed anytime anywhere in the e-learning classroom affords students of different skill levels to practice productive collaboration amongst students and between students and the teacher through scaffolding to complete a specific topic. The scaffolding can be behavioral or verbal, and can be positive or neutral. While scaffolding for a specific task may be withdrawn when the struggling students can independently perform that task, new scaffolds may be erected to engage with newer challenges. The scaffolding can be engaged synchronously or asynchronously and ubiquitously as the need arises and in varied contexts of remote engagement. Since scaffolding fundamentally is a helping behavior, in the collaborative workspace, this engagement might be direct helping and indirect helping (file:///Users/gayatri/Downloads/Loparev_rochester_0188E_11195.pdf).

For instance, an expository essay assignment may be completed in multiple stages. In the initial stage, the teacher might build in one direct help line and one indirect help line — conscious and intentional scaffolding — for students to complete the task. Direct helping could be student A assisting student B over a video platform or a chat room by helping to brainstorm or other prewriting strategies or helping to outline the essay. Direct helping could also be the teacher helping student B to complete the task over a video platform or a chat room. Indirect helping could be the teacher/peer offering verbal encouragement, providing external links to the student to learn brainstorming and other prewriting activities, showing examples of good brainstorming or outlining etc. The goal of scaffolding here is to encourage the student, prevent confusion and frustration, and build their confidence. The teacher could schedule a single session with the struggling student for thirty minutes just to focus on the most problem areas for the student. The teacher could intentionally pair peers to work together and interdependently to complete the task by either giving each student specific tasks or letting the students organically select the task best suited for their abilities. The ubiquitous nature of their cooperation affords freedom from time constraints for the students. With creativity, the ubiquitous scaffolding approach may prove to be very beneficial to meet many of the learning objectives of a range of courses in the liberal arts, humanities and the sciences.

References

Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualizing e-learning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-Learning Ecologies. New York: Routledge.

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-lhup.klnpa.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=0f6052a9-9610-432c-be26-567f0e71dec6%40sessionmgr4008

http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/development/zone-of-proximal-development.html#:~:text=Vygotsky's%20often-quoted%20definition%20of,in%

file:///Users/gayatri/Downloads/Loparev_rochester_0188E_11195.pdf