Teacher: What is 5Q plus 5Q? Student: 10Q Teacher: You’re welcome. Teacher: How many ants does it take to fill an apartment? Student: 10

Authentic tasks will promote student engagement and motivation An overview of Doctoral thesis: “Investigating how an Authentic Task can Promote Student Engagement when Learning about Australian History” Dr P Morrissey, Dr S Agostinho, Prof B Harvey

A Doctorate of Education (or PhD): Can be completed by distance Can be completed gradually Is a learning journey with benefits to students and educators Commonwealth supported (no HECS or fees) Requires completing subjects (at least Credits) plus a research Thesis Difficulties: I should have learned to touch type Conducting research in State schools. Need: UOW ethics approval State Education Research Applications Process (SERAP) ethics approval Principal’s signed permission Teacher, student and parent signed permission

Authentic Learning: Creates meaning through activities based in actual or simulated real- world situations or environments Is constructivist and student-centred Can improve learning and learning outcomes Engages students Brings history to life The authentic task required history students to use online primary and secondary students to construct the personal story of a local WW1 soldier.

Design-based Research Practical and theoretical outcomes School and teachers benefit Qualitative research – suited to social research Suited to the complexity of the classroom where variables are impossible to control Replicates the processes that teachers use.

Stage 1: Comprehensive literature review; a review of past work, consultation with teachers. Stage 2: The solution was a task which used an inquiry or problem solving process where the students engaged with online digital historical resources to create histories of Anzacs from World War 1. Stage 3: The solution was used by students and the teacher in the classroom. Data was collected and the solution was reviewed after each iteration, refined and retested. Stage 4: The data collected was analysed resulting in the development of design principles to enable other teachers to address similar significant educational problems.

Eleven Design Principles for Authentic Tasks DP1: Authentic activities with real-world relevance, and/or involving personal aspects of real people, lead to student engagement. This principle provided strong motivation, drew students in and engaged them through: 1.The Remembrance Theme: 2.The local connection: 3.The novelty of being possibly one of the few people to look through the personal documents 4.The feeling of ownership of their soldier 5.The fascination with the personal features and attributes of their soldier 6.Authentically working individually as an historian doing original research.

DP2: Authentic activities are complex, ill-defined tasks requiring investigation over a significant period of time. Challenging Steps with choices Each student with a different story DP3: “Authentic activities provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources” (Reeves et al., 2002, p. 564). Range of primary and secondary sources Each soldier with a different story

DP4: Authentic activities provide the opportunity to collaborate with others, even when working on individual tasks. They collaborated with their friends and the rest of the class resulting in a consistently noisy classroom DP5: “Authentic activities provide the opportunity to reflect” (Reeves et al., 2002, p. 564). The students took ownership of their own soldier and were able to empathise with his experiences and that of his family. DP6: Authentic activities require students to employ a range of different skills. An essential part of the complexity of the activity.

DP7: “Authentic activities are seamlessly integrated with assessment” (Reeves et al., 2002, p. 564). A strong motivator - provides a purpose or reason for the activity; verification by the teacher of the work effort and achievement of the student; DP8: Authentic activities create worthwhile, complete products. Gives students a purpose or reason for their effort and an endpoint to aim for. DP9: “Authentic activities allow competing solutions and diversity of outcome” (Reeves et al., 2002, p. 564). Each had a different soldier and used different source material

DP10: Authentic activities require structured and documented support. The structured and documented support gave the students the confidence to work independently in a student-centred research activity. DP11: Authentic activities require teacher support. The teacher should be familiar with the task in order to explain clearly what students needed to do to complete it.