Dive Brief:

• The traditional education paradigm of knowledge transfer from teacher at the head of the classroom to students in neat rows of desks is outdated and ineffective, as 21st century learning now demands more creative, hands-on, and flexible forms of teaching.  
• Implementation of innovation-based classes with roots in STEM, STEAM, making, and constructivism, is both popular and effective in keeping students interested, writes Mandi Figlioli, Assistant to the Superintendent at Burgettstown School in Pennsylvania, about her class after she incorporated the Inventionland Innovation Course. 
• In a guest post for eSchool News, Figlioli identifies 9 key areas in which innovation-based projects in the classroom enhanced educational attainment among her students; they include: personalization, employable skill development, self-awareness and confidence building, introduction of a hands-on approach to studies, more easily deliverable computer and technical skills, highlighting of new perspectives, learning by doing, overall increased engagement, and easy introduction to new ideas. 

Dive Insight:

Personalized learning and more creative approaches toward teaching are becoming increasingly important, not only in K-12 classrooms, but in higher ed and the workforce, too. As Figlioli notes in her article, interactive learning provides a window into how students may need to apply concepts learned in a hands-on way when they enter the real-world workforce — which requires a much more skilled and creative labor pool.

Already, teachers across the nation who have incorporated interaction into their curriculum and have seen enhanced student attention and interest in topics like science. For example, when it came to teaching data, Bree B. Dreyfuss, a physics teacher at a California school, found that using simulations helped promote critical thinking and more deliverable abstract concepts, which helped students interact with the data more naturally. Similarly, Figlioli sees that innovation in the classroom has been successful, because her students are gaining the types of skills they need to be prepared for the workforce, while also actually genuinely enjoying the learning process and staying invested in it.