Agavi: Offline Digital Learning for Ukraine

Greetings friends,

I wanted to pass along a quick update on our work in Ukraine.  I have been in contact with our colleagues at Lviv Polytechnic and the University of Lviv, who remain safe.  Our work is in Lviv, which is in far western Ukraine and thus far mostly shielded from the unjustifiable violence that has been inflicted on Ukraine.  We will continue to keep track of the situation and make necessary adjustments to our work.  The work on developing the Agavi learning system is remote and global and will continue regardless.  The curriculum development and teacher traing work with our faculty colleagues is likewise remote and we will make adjustments based on their needs in the coming weeks and months.

With resilience,

Lev

Greeting all,

I hope the new year finds you well.  We are happy to report the completion of our first Greenworks: Ukraine experience.  Greenworks is a program that we pioneered with our Indonesian colleagues that we are adapting to achieve our objectives in Ukraine while we await for conditions to become more conducive to on-location work.

In October and November, a cohort of Ukrainian Earth science teachers and students studying to teach Earth science in Ukraine worked with a cohort of Brazilian students to complete a 6-week course on experiential learning through role-playing and cross-cultural communication.  This type of learning is called "active learning" as it engages students in activities that help them internalize important concepts.  This is compared to "passive learning", where students sit and listen to lecture and are expected to internalize concepts without ever engaging with them or practicing them.  Passive learning is very common in many science classrooms around the world.  A critical part of modernizing science classrooms is to teach teachers how to teach using modern approaches.

Our Ukrainian learning cohort had their first hands-on experience with active learning through our Greenworks curriculum.  For six-weeks, they role-played as national leaders making decisions that required a working knowledge of Earth science (important for determining trade routes, climate change action, and responses to natural disasters).  Afterwards, we had a breakdown of how the experience was constructed and the components that are necessary for building active learning classrooms.  Response was positive, with a desire to formalize the teacher-training component.

We're continuing to work on Agavi to meet the needs of our science teachers.  We'll have more updates on that later in the year.  In the meantime, we are also incorporating the lessons and feedback from our recent Greenworks experience to develop a strong teacher-training curriculum that we will test again later in the spring.

As always, thank you for your support and interest in our work.

With gratitude,

Lev

Links:

• Insights from Greenworks Late 2021