What’s possible in schools: A Hopeful experiment in public education

What’s possible in schools: A Hopeful experiment in public education

In this presentation, I will describe a new kind of learning and teaching environment called FUSE Studios. FUSE has grown organically from a pilot in 2011 to be implemented currently in about 275 US public schools and a small number of international schools. Last year more than 50,000 US students, from grades 5 to grades 12, participated in a classroom-based FUSE Studio.

FUSE is organized around activities called challenge sequences in STEAM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts/Design, and Mathematics) that level up like video games. Completing a challenge level and uploading a photograph or video documenting completion of that level opens up the next level. The core principle of FUSE that makes it so different from the conventional socio-material organization of classrooms is choice. Students choose which challenges they work on, whether to work on challenges alone or with others (more typical), and how to approach solutions to the challenges. Choice produces a dynamic peer learning and teaching environment. This presentation will (1) briefly describe the package of design elements that compose the FUSE materials (e.g., website, video trailers, tangible/digital/hybrid challenge materials), (2) the informal learning research that inspired the design of FUSE, (3) highlight key research findings about student learning and experience (e.g., relative expertise) with a focus on how dramatically the FUSE experience differs from traditional classroom experience for students and teachers, and (4) discuss how and why FUSE has scaled as it has.

Reed Stevens • Northwestern University

Reed Stevens is a Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Professor Stevens is an ethnographer of everyday experience, with a focus on understanding learning in the dizzying array of ways it appears in various contexts across society. As a learning scientist, Professor Stevens draws upon his ethnographic research to guide the design of new learning technologies and environments, which includes the focus of this talk, the FUSE Studios project of which he is the founder and principal investigator.