NSF Awards: 1923314
Based on the book by Peter Sims, "little bets" represent the idea of small-scale experimentation as key parts of the creative process. Little bets allow teachers to try new ideas/lessons with low costs, but potentially large rewards. This video presents the use of "little bets" over the course of a three-year (2019-22) NSF CSforALL project (#1923314), “Making the Little Bet” follows a group of rural Kentucky Appalachia teachers as they learn about computer science as an academic discipline (and computational thinking as a skill) and make the transition of actually translating such professional development (PD) into their own classroom practice. Central to this translation of PD into classroom implementation is this “middle step” of the “little bet”. Originally conceived by Ms. Aileen Owens of ThroughlinesEdu (and NSF project team member), little bets offer a simple but crucial commitment to teachers’ envisioning of how computing activities (e.g., digital storytelling with Scratch, game-making with AppInventor) translate into one’s own practice. More than simply a commitment to a specific activity, little bets ask teachers to consider the activity in terms of their own classroom space, the subjects they teach, and the students they know. This video follows teachers from PD to implementation and how their own singular little bets result in the production of lesson plans, professional endorsements, and ultimately student learning outcomes.
Quinn Burke
Director of Computational Thinking Research
Hi STEM-for-All Showcase Attendees! - My name's Quinn Burke and this is our team's 2022 submission, related to following up on teacher professional development (PD) and making the crucial next step of translating PD into actual classroom implementation for introductory CS. We look forward to getting your thoughts and particularly welcome any thoughts on how your own work has leveraged teacher PD and what tools/ protocols you have used to ensure such PD effectively enters the classroom.
Andee Rubin
Senior Scientist
The notion of "little bets" is one of those brilliant ideas that is generalizable across a wide variety of contexts and I can see it being used outside of educational innovation as well. I also appreciate your work with rural teachers, who have unique challenges, particularly, I imagine, during the pandemic.
I'm interested in how a series of "little bets" can build into sustainable change in a classroom. Do you have case studies of teachers who pursued multiple "little bets" over time? Are there specific "tipping points" where little bets end up transforming the classroom in bigger ways? Have you looked at Susan Loucks-Horseley's categorization of how teachers change their practice?
Quinn Burke
Quinn Burke
Director of Computational Thinking Research
Hi Andee - Thanks much for your comment; yes, we are currently working on a journal article profiling the range of little bets made by KY teachers, which will include case study profiles of 2-3 instructors. Part of the challenge of computational thinking(CT) is the integrative nature of the skill (i.e., CT is meant to amplify existing subject matter rather than exist as a stand-alone course). So, little bets figure quite prominently in helping teachers make this integrative "jump". While we have not got to the point where we seeing these little bets as leading to broader "tipping points" for teachers, schools, even districts, this may be a consideration for the future. And thanks --no, the name Susan Loucks-Horseley is new to me, so we will look into her research!
Aileen Owens
Education Consultant
I really like your thoughts about how you can build the "little bets" approach into sustainable change in a classroom. The idea of making a "little bet" is really a simple method for continuous improvement. Students might each make a personal goal and then create a "little bet" to track their outcomes. From there they could identify successes and challenges and build new ideas and outcomes to follow. The same for a teacher. It is a method for identifying what works and building from it by gathering the data you need to determine what actions were successful and those that need improvement. I will look forward to looking at Susan Loucks-Horseley's writing on changing practice. Thanks for the suggestion.
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
Good morning everyone!
I want to ask about how you have measured the impact of this innovative project, but before I get to that (probably in a later post), I want to dive into this fascinating idea of “Little Bets.” It’s so impressive that you have taken this book and found ways of translating into curricula. Flannery O’Connor once said that she wrote in order to know what she thought. In his book Peter Sims similarly says that that we should “do things to discover what to do.” Could you offer an example or two of projects you did with teachers in order to help them take in Sims’ idea, to get them to do or try things in order to discover what to do? And then I’d also love to hear an example of how the teachers explained or translated this idea to students. It’s clear from the video that students did a wide variety of projects (invented board games, little robot-like machines, etc.), but again what I’m after is how the students began thinking about the value of little bets and how this abstract idea was translated into concrete making. I’m truly excited to hear more (and now I am inspired to read that book)!
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
Just a follow up or rephrasing of my questions and also building on the discussion above:
Andee asked: "Do you have case studies of teachers who pursued multiple "little bets" over time? Are there specific "tipping points" where little bets end up transforming the classroom in bigger ways?"
My questions also asked for a case study or extended example, so that we could see how these little bets worked for teachers in a particular instance and also transformed the classroom as a whole (or in bigger ways, as Andee puts it).
Aileen Owens
Education Consultant
Greetings Amy,
Thank you for connecting and for your kind words. Here is an example of how a K-12 CS/STEAM Pathway was built using "Little Bets" the emerging innovation approach: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DlXVuc2-cTVUj9k6IBjMM6f2v1JZwbt9PkfG8JpsEKc/edit?usp=sharing I am happy to provide additional information as needed. Within this NSF grant, we began by bringing a cohort of teachers to a briefing at South Fayette School District where they spent the day visiting K-12 CS classrooms during the day to see CS in action. At the end of the day we provided a workshop on the concepts in the book "Little Bets" and then teachers and administrators worked together to create their first Little Bet to begin in their classroom or district. The participants were given the following prompts: What is your Little Bet?; How does this fit into your larger “big idea”?; Who are the key stakeholders you are designing for?; How might this work as a catalyst for achieving a greater impact? and include an illustration or description of the project and process; List the connections and vertical alignment; How will you measure success year one? Over the next four years?; What are some key milestones? From there the district purchased the book and followed up with professional development. Two of the "Little Bets" that teachers implemented included bringing Habits of Mind into their classroom and beginning a project in Scratch programming. As to your second question regarding how students began thinking about the value of "Little Bets" I believe the universal take-away was to fail fast and not to be afraid of making mistakes. I hope this was helpful to you!
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
Aileen - thank you so much for these fantastic links. I particularly enjoyed looking through this one (that was linked inside the above doc). Anyone wanting to go deeper should follow these links too - lots of great photos, examples of the Little Bets process, etc.
Quinn Burke
Brian Smith
Professor/Associate Dean of Research
I wasn't familiar with the idea of little bets, thanks for the introduction to it and the ways you've had teachers implement them in their classrooms. It's impressive that teachers have developed >90 little bets, especially during the chaos of the pandemic. It seems like a great way to help teachers make incremental steps towards introducing larger CS/CT ideas into their classrooms.
I saw a template here that appears to scaffold teachers through the process of creating their little bets. The prompts on the template look helpful. I have a question about the one that asks teachers to describe how they'll measure success. Do you have any examples of the things teachers talk about in this section? I imagine their success measures are tied to the big ideas they also describe in the template (?). How easy/hard was it for the teachers to think about long-term successes from their initial little bets?
Aileen Owens
Education Consultant
Hi Brian. Thank you for connecting. Here is an example from one of the teacher's completed forms. I added all information so you can have context. I hope this helps:
What is your Little Bet? Students will create an interactive animal adaptation and external parts report using hummingbirds.
What is your Big Idea?To introduce students to creative coding so they can understand the joy of making. They will learn that developing code is really about creating and designing a new product and not so much about the technology skills. They will learn that they are capable of success when challenged with something that seems difficult and will learn to be resilient, persistent, comfortable with ambiguity and gain other computational thinking skills & dispositions.
Who are your stakeholders? My first grade students.
How might your idea work as a catalyst for achieving a greater impact? This project will allow exposure to the Hummmingbird kit, the parts of the kit, and will allow for a transition to more complex building and software processes. They will learn computational thinking competencies, skills and practices while having an opportunity for creative expression and student agency. We can expand the competencies gained in this unit to other lessons. As students find their passion for creativity their self-efficacy will increase. With each new exposure and experience in computer science some students will develop a stronger interest in pursuing CS/STEAM careers. This will allow my students to realize how complex our technology is, hopefully learning to appreciate the structure and processes.
What connections do you see as a vertical alignment? The first lessons will utilize sequence, directions, and steps using pseudo code. Students will practice this during daily procedures, routines, and activities. As we develop our speaking and writing skills in order to create our reports, we will transfer knowledge of basic coding into the parts and pieces for our hummingbirds.
How will we measure success year-one? Students self-efficacy in coding and as a maker will grow. Students will complete their interactive animal report and show interest for learning and doing more in the future.
How will we measure success four years from now? From my instruction with coding, and implementation of projects within my classroom, are teachers at higher grade levels able to implement the same designs more easily?
What are your key milestones?
Sean Justice
Hi Quinn and Aileen — echoing many others here, I too am excited with the notion of "little bets". A couple of clarifying notes, if possible: what grade range are your teaching partners from? And, like Brian, I'd love to know more about the 90+ activities those teachers came up with. Such an interesting proposition and process here! Thanks!
Aileen Owens
Education Consultant
Hi Sean,
So nice to hear from you. On this grant we focused on grades K-8 but we have used this approach for many years on grades K-12. The beauty of connecting the book Little Bets to K-12 is that it's a great way to provide concrete examples of how the innovation process can occur in education. Through this approach, we are able to introduce the concept of agile thinking, used in the innovation process, versus procedural thinking, which is practiced in traditional education. During the introduction to the pathway teachers learn conceptually how to develop new ideas through an emergent process not necessarily a linear process and become familiar with the value of continuous experimentation and discovery, failing forward to learn fast by tracking and utilizing successes along the way.
Here are some examples from PK-2:
Examples grades 3-5:
These are just a few ideas teachers came up with after completing a week of the CS/STEAM Summer Institute where they were immersed in ideas and lessons and then invited to create their own unique ideas as a result of their growing confidence and skill set.
I hope this was helpful to you.