1. Building a Community of
Practice with SPACE &
RemixWorld
Ben Shapiro
Morgridge Institute for Research
Tene' Gray
Akili Lee
Nichole Pinkard
Digital Youth Network, DePaul University
Denise Nacu
Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago

2. Digital Youth Network
Urban youth-centered
Working professionals (poets,
designers, musicians, film-
makers, animators) as mentors
with no prior education training.
Project-focused
In- & Out-of- School

3. Cultural and Teaching Goal
Inculcate students in the critical
culture of the media domains
they are working in:
• How to produce
• How to present
• How to critique
⇒How to thrive in a realm where
media products are capital.

4. Teacher Learning Challenge
Artists-cum-mentors need to
• learn about instructional
design
o identifying goals
o planning instruction
o assessing student thinking
• develop practices for learning
from one another
DYN practices help them to do
that.

5. Today
I will describe a Community of Practice that helps artist
mentors become expert teachers.

6. Communities of Practice
Groups of DYN participants work and learn together in distinct
and carefully crafted ways.
The Communities of Practice framework helps us to
understand how.
CoP describes what makes some specialized groups distinct
from the world at large and highlights organizational
processes that can promote learning.
Delineating questions:
• What is it about? i.e., joint enterprise
• How does it function? i.e., mutual engagement
• What capability does it produce? i.e., shared repertoire
Wenger (1999)

7. Linked Communities of Practice
Curriculum Design
Mentors
and
Coach
Media
Production
Mentors
and
Students
Today's Focus

8. Mutually Engagement in Instructional
Design and Assessment
The literature on school organizations and teacher learning
warns of the perils of creating cultures of independence in
instruction. We do not want to replicate school's egg-crate
culture.
But we can learn schools:
We know that collegiality, common vision, and processes for
sharing knowledge can improve the quality of teaching and
learning.
The Mentor-Coach CoP is intended to support that.
Lortie (1975); Fullan (1990);
Rosenholtz (1991); Roberts (1996, 1997),
Roberts, Sloane, & Wilson (1996), Wilson et al (2000)

9. Mentor Learning Goals for Curriculum
Design CoP
Understanding the connections between curriculum,
instruction, and assessment
• Goals - skills and roles (artist, producer, critic)
• Projects and Units
• Assessment
Sharing lessons learned with one another.

10. Curriculum Design CoP
Joint Enterprise - Developing a curriculum library.
Mutual Engagement – Writing Units. Assessment
Collaboration (evaluating student work and refining criteria
for assessing it); Use of SPACE tool.
Shared Repertoire - Database of goals, lessons, and rubrics;
common understandings.
Common components used and
revised by all mentors.

11. SPACE - Supporting Projects with
Authoring, Critique, and Exemplars
Curriculum Design, Management, and Assessment Tool.
Used by mentors and mentor-coach to collaborate on the
creation and revision of common curriculum library and
formative assessment of student work.

12. SPACE - Curriculum Design,
Management, and Assessment Tool
Project

13. SPACE - Curriculum Design,
Management, and Assessment Tool
Project Goals

14. SPACE - Curriculum Design,
Management, and Assessment Tool
Project Goals
Deliverables

15. SPACE - Curriculum Design,
Management, and Assessment Tool
Project Goals
Deliverables Rubrics

16. SPACE - Curriculum Design,
Management, and Assessment Tool
Project Goals
Deliverables Rubrics
Lessons

17. SPACE User Interface

18. How SPACE is Used
• DYN combines SPACE with strategic
professional development.
o SPACE provides a central place
to share and revise projects,
units, and rubrics.
• Mentors write new units by remixing
content in SPACE (deliverables,
whole projects, lessons, etc.).
o They use rubrics to create
student-friendly instructions that
explain what quality work looks
like.
• They present those units, as well as
applicable student work, to the
mentor-coach and to the team and
revise in accord with feedback.

19. Closing the Loop
Planning Teaching
ProductionAssessment
Lesson Plans
Instructions
& Rubrics
Student Work
& Rubrics
Assessed
Student Work

20. Mentor-Coach Talk
Background: Asia has scored a piece of student work lower
than Jennifer did.
Asia [Mentor]: She faded herself out while she was talking. I
think I was there for that lesson; I saw part of that lesson
when you were like, "where should I do this", did I do it to
early or did I do it to soon. So, I know that she knew how to
do this.
Tene' [Facilitator]: What made you [Jennifer] give it a 2
though?
Jennifer [Mentor]: Uhm, because, uhm, I gave it a 2 because
for me understanding like with the background noise. I...when
I graded them I knew they had to record under certain
circumstances. So, it was kind of unavoidable for the
background noise. So, that's why I was like, I'll give it a 2.

21. Mentor-Coach Talk
Tene’: That's true. It did sound like that. It did absolutely
sound like that. I sort of went back and forth between a 1 and
a 2 and I think, I think what just...I said okay this is a 2, uhm,
it wasn't distracting, it was just inconsistent for me. So, I
think that's what just made me, uhm, choose a 2 as opposed
to a 1 or a 1 1/2. Uhm, I do...there was noise present, uhm,
and, again it did sound like the whole NPR cafe type setup.
But I think that was the sort of the deciding factor for me in
giving it a 2. So, if we had to agree, I mean, would we...and
listening to what Asia said, does that change your thinking a
little bit in terms of you [Jennifer] scoring it a 2. Would you...
Jennifer: I think I would still score it a 2. Yeah.

22. Mentor-Coach Talk
Tene’: What about you [Asia]? Would you...you would keep it
a 1 1/2?
Asia: Only because I know that she was taught explicitly not to
fade out. If I hadn't sat in or walked in on that part of the
lesson, maybe I would've given her a 2....she was all over the
place, she could've picked up the volume because she knew
how to edit the volume.

23. Mutual Engagement in Assessment
We just heard mentors discussing contrasting interpretations
of a student's work through the lens of a rubric.
They drew on shared repertoire (rubric, observations of class)
to justify interpretations.
Even if they did not ultimately agree, they are sharpening
their perceptions of what matters.
This kind of talk feeds curriculum redesign for next year.

24. What We Are Finding
SPACE can help facilitate critical conversations about teaching
and learning.
SPACE can help mentors & trainers understand the
connections between curriculum and assessment to help them
to become effective planners.
SPACE enables the strategic planning and enactment of
professional development for new mentors as a way to
understand the DYN model.

25. Linked CoPs
Curriculum Design
Mentors
and
Trainers
Media
Production
Mentors
and
Students

26. Where We Are Headed
Designing tools to more tightly couple the Curriculum Design
CoP to the Media Production CoP.

27. RemixWorld
A complementary tool for student-mentor collaboration.
Social-networking site for creating, sharing, critiquing,
assessing, and revising media.

28. RemixWorld

29. Closing the Loop
Content in RemixWorld is synchronized with SPACE.

30. Closing the Loop
Planning Teaching
ProductionAssessment
SPACE SPACE
Lesson Plans
RemixWorldSPACE &
RemixWorld
Instructions
& Rubrics
Student Work
& Rubrics
Assessed
Student Work

31. Why This Is Important
Creating collaborative routines for planning instruction,
assessing student work, and reflecting on student outcomes
has been exceedingly difficult to implement in schools.
The DYN model, combining strategic professional
development with purpose-built information technology,
demonstrates a sustainable model for continuous instructional
improvement. A model for informal and formal education.

32. Standing on the Shoulders of Pirates
Kurt’s point – Not all learning is going to happen in game. But
play can catalyze in-school conversations.
How can we build processes and tools like this around games
in schools?
e.g., What’s the difference between a 1.5 and a 2 when
playing civ? How should teachers help a student who’s doing a
2 get to a 4 while maintaining play as process?
What do we need to do to capture and represent in-game
interactions in ways that afford teachers helping students?
Tool + Knowledge + Practice + Organizational Challenge.