The underground classic that explains how authentic activities help learners explore, discuss, and meaningfully construct new knowledge, GO AUTHENTIC: ACTIVITIES THAT SUPPORT LEARNING is now available for free download.
When Risintha from Sri Lanka told me that he would never be the same again because he had discovered a life beyond PowerPoint, I thought that I had to share our approach to creating transformational value through authentic learning.
The course activities that I share in this book have transformed people into change agents and helped them excel in their performances.
The activities shared in this book work because they are well thought-out and aligned with all other elements of the course. They work because we do not lecture. They work because we believe that every single participant brings a wealth of experiences to our course environment. We respect each and every one of them as a “more knowledgeable other”. This is what makes the collaborative learning so valuable to all of us, including mentors. The activities described in this book work because they are part of a long learning journey, where we believe the end is nothing, but the road is all. They also work in eLearning programmes, because it is never “me and the computer screen”, there is always a human face, a mentor who supports learners whenever they need. They work because instead of shoveling information into learners’ brains and asking them to regurgitate it later, we focus on critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and, most importantly, on conation. They work because we view failures as an opportunity to learn. They work because we understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes. They work because we do not stop the clock and distribute a test. Instead, assessment is embedded in all of our authentic tasks. This is what makes the biggest difference. Nothing is abstract - all activities are based on authentic learning principles, just like how things work in real-life. These activities help learners to explore, discuss, and meaningfully construct concepts and relationships in contexts that involve real-world problems and projects that are relevant to them.
I licensed this work under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) so that it can be reproduced, remixed, tweaked or built upon non-commercially. Through this license, I continue offering a hand in support of open knowledge and free culture as I did with my previous two books.
My dear friend Thomas Reeves in his foreword says that the design and implementation of learning environments must be acts of “authentic creation” more than ever before: “Go Authentic: Activities that Support Learning is, as Camus put it, a “gift to the future.” A future when learning will be active rather than passive, collaborative learning will be commonplace, tasks will be as authentic as possible, and assessment will be cherished rather than dreaded. In that hopefully near future, learning events will be as well-aligned as a precision racecar, and learning outcomes will be personally and professionally empowering. Ultimately, we hope that even participants in online versions of these authentic courses will shed tears when the courses are over just as they do now on the last day of the face-to-face courses.
The need for transformational learning opportunities is evident in many fields beyond public health and pharmaceuticals. Enhancing human performance is absolutely essential if we are to meet the challenges facing humankind with respect to climate change, poverty, war, corruption, and the like. Arguably, we live in a time when education and training opportunities across all disciplines must become as transformative as the courses described in this book. To do this, the design and implementation of learning environments must be acts of “authentic creation” more than ever before. Please join us.”
When it comes to helping learners, you cannot waste their time.
Go authentic!
For free download please visit http://kartoglu.ch/goauthentic/
The book is available both in interactive PDF (38.1 MB) and ePUB3 (13.3 MB) versions.
216 pages, including a detailed review of 44 learning activities and games and 30 icebreakers and warmups..
Happy downloads...
Cheers,
UMIT
Extensio et Progressio