Agentive learning in engineering research labs

Abstract

Over the last two years, we have been conducting NSF-funded research on learning in two biomedical engineering research laboratories. Our goal is to understand the mechanisms that support student learning in such innovation communities. We have identified five characteristics of what we call "agentive" learning environments, which seem to account for the rapid membership and robust learning we have chronicled. In using this term, we refer to students both as agents of their own learning but also as assigning agency to the devices and technologies they encounter in the laboratories. In this paper, we present the five principles of an agentive learning environment with examples of how it unfolds day to day life in the labs. Finally we discuss the implications of these principles and our findings for the development of classrooms as sites of learning which better replicate the agentive learning found in the laboratories.

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