![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/educationalscience23.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The call for students to desert from\u00a0AgroParisTech<\/a>\u00a0or the recent\u00a0forum<\/a>\u00a0for students from the \u00c9coles Normales Sup\u00e9rieures demonstrate this forcefully: the new generations are less and less satisfied with current scientific courses.\u00a0They do not necessarily find them up to the challenge.<\/p>\n Young people need to understand why learning science can help them to truly face the crises to come, starting with the ecological crisis.\u00a0It is no longer enough to teach them the art of equations, even if it remains necessary.\u00a0They must also be taught to work in groups, to create, to put formal knowledge into context and, even more difficult, to feel that they are actors in the changes to come, not just observers.<\/p>\n Many colleagues are already developing lessons in this direction.\u00a0But individual initiatives are no longer enough, we have to rethink all of our courses, draw inspiration from innovations that have already been tested, the results of research in educational science, think about the level of establishments and disciplinary departments, in short, community to take up this crucial issue, and quickly.<\/p>\n There remains, however, a technical problem.\u00a0When we meet with colleagues to discuss pedagogical innovation, we paradoxically favor classic formats.\u00a0How many times have I given presentations on the art of teaching in an innovative and active way, while I myself was in front of a PowerPoint on a stage in front of a silent room?<\/p>\n How many working groups called upon to innovate have I taken part in, where we were all seated around a large table, in meeting format, each one discreetly consulting his emails?\u00a0When the form is opposed to this point to the substance, these high masses of innovation generally do not lead to much new.<\/p>\n This is the dilemma we had to face when we wanted, with colleagues from the University of Paris-Saclay, to organize a workshop to rethink our teaching of physics.\u00a0What framework should we offer our participants so that they can imagine other pedagogies together?<\/p>\n To build a device that escapes the defects of the usual conferences, we have chosen to collaborate with designers, as we already do for our\u00a0popularization and teaching activities<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0Design is not just for embellishment.\u00a0It makes it possible to think about the very construction of an event in all its dimensions.\u00a0For this workshop, two designers helped us build the program and imagine the activities.\u00a0They also designed a whole coherent graphic universe for the visuals.\u00a0Then they helped us host and film the event, which they then transformed into a\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0to ensure its sustainability.<\/p>\n To find the right format, we took the opposite view of traditional conferences.\u00a0The American Physical Society’s annual conference<\/a>\u00a0is a good example of what we wanted to escape.\u00a0Each year, it brings together nearly ten thousand physicists for five days in a large congress centre.\u00a0The sessions follow one another at a military pace, 12 minutes per intervention, ten interventions per session, sixty sessions in parallel.\u00a0It has adapted in recent years to hybrid modalities.\u00a0But this format goes against what we were trying to promote.\u00a0So we built its opposite, point by point.<\/p>\n Various modes of restitution make it possible to cross the glances. Here, a small exhibition was designed by the participants from sheets they filled in on their teaching practices. Provided by the author<\/p><\/div>\n Instead of opening the participation to a large number of participants, we limited ourselves to thirty speakers.\u00a0Instead of chaining orals or posters all day, we restricted ourselves to a single presentation per day.\u00a0Instead of choosing a large conference center, we were lucky enough to benefit from the premises of\u00a0the Institut Pascal<\/a>\u00a0, a place specially designed to accommodate researchers in collaborative mode, with work and discussion spaces, rather than a simple series of classrooms and amphitheatres.<\/p>\n Instead of inviting the big names in education to inspire participants during charismatic \u201ckeynotes\u201d, we invited colleagues in the field who innovate on their own scale without necessarily aiming to change the world.\u00a0Denis Terwagne, a researcher from Brussels, imagines for example lessons inspired by fab labs, by bringing together students in physics and architecture.\u00a0Claire M\u00e2che, a researcher from the University of Paris-Saclay, offers a course on climate issues where she has her students take concrete measurements directly on the building.\u00a0Giovanni Organtini, from the University of Rome, uses very low cost tools such as smartphones or Arduino boards to teach experimental physics.\u00a0Fun-Man Fung, a Singaporean chemist,\u00a0does not hesitate to film himself with a 360\u00b0 camera to show live from the bench to his students how to conduct an experiment.\u00a0Rebecca Vieyra helps broadcast interactive simulations around the world.<\/p>\n Instead of a conference of a few days in hybrid mode, we asked participants to come for two whole weeks in person.\u00a0This duration can be discouraging and pose practical problems.\u00a0But it allows for active engagement over the duration of the entire workshop.\u00a0Moreover, at the time of the climate crisis, it is becoming more and more difficult to justify express round trips by plane for only one or two days.\u00a0Finally, such a duration allowed us to imagine a program in two stages.<\/p>\n During the first week, a series of creative and intense activities were offered.\u00a0We wanted to help participants get to know each other, show them that they could work and build together in a good mood.<\/p>\n Rapid prototyping makes it possible to produce models in a few minutes to explain a teaching idea other than with a powerpoint. Provided by the author<\/p><\/div>\n To do this, we gave them fun and immersive experiences related to physics.\u00a0For example, they were immersed in a fiction in a world of spies where they had to invent a device that protects an egg and makes the most noise when falling from 5 meters high.\u00a0We also wanted colleagues to discuss their practices.\u00a0Instead of a series of presentations, we offered them new methods of exchange.<\/p>\n For example, in the \u201csnowball\u201d workshop, everyone tells another about their innovation, who takes notes on a dedicated sheet.\u00a0Then each pair meets with another pair to summarize their exchanges.\u00a0Then they get together with two other pairs, and so on.\u00a0Finally, all the files are displayed in the form of a small thematic exhibition, which can be visited freely.\u00a0Ultimately, everyone has heard of all the innovations, and the sheets serve as raw material for other more forward-looking workshops.\u00a0We also tested theatre\/mime, brainstorming that ended in a prospective video, etc.<\/p>\n This very dense first part made it possible to build a form of small human and professional community in confidence, ready to innovate in the rest of the workshop.<\/p>\n The rest, precisely, we had voluntarily decided not to foresee it.\u00a0At the beginning of the second week, the participants built the program themselves.\u00a0Ideas flowed.\u00a0“Let’s imagine together a lesson in the nearby forest”.\u00a0“Let’s have an Alcoholics Anonymous-style session where everyone shares their problems as teachers and asks others for help.”\u00a0“Let’s have a ‘teach me something’ morning where everyone can teach the others a practice.”\u00a0\u201cLet’s imagine an international network to support training and innovation\u201d.<\/p>\n So we all had a wonderfully free and creative week.\u00a0Now confident and uninhibited, we were able to build together, research together, think together, and even have fun together.\u00a0We spent a morning in the forest imagining an immersive education for our first-year students.\u00a0We attended a cello concert linking physics and music.\u00a0We learned to use mime for educational breaks in lecture halls.\u00a0We explored new course modalities.\u00a0All in all, we had the feeling of innovating, or at least of exchanging in a fertile way.<\/p>\n A website brings together all the productions and workshops to disseminate the workshop to those who were unable to attend. Provided by the author<\/p><\/div>\n All in all, we succeeded in giving around thirty teacher-researchers an inspiring and fertile workshop.\u00a0But is this enough to reinvent education?\u00a0Certainly not, because the other colleagues are lacking, the time to test, evaluate, consolidate, the institutions and a more political point of view are lacking.<\/p>\n In the end, this small conference was rather an opportunity to test a new, more participatory workshop format.\u00a0This is why the\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0associated with the event brings together not only the productions but above all all the recipes to animate such a format.\u00a0Even over shorter periods of time, certain ideas or workshops can be taken up and adapted to various contexts.\u00a0In summary, if you expect a collective to innovate in pedagogical matters, do not settle for a meeting or brainstorming with post-its.<\/p>\n Take the time to build the right format.\u00a0Provide a creative framework for your colleagues, and they will be more creative.\u00a0Behind this truism perhaps hides one of the key challenges of the transformations to come.<\/p>\nThe anti-conference<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/smallsheets23.jpg\")
Create a collective<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Prototyping23.jpg\")
Build and invent together<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/idealworkshop23.jpg\")