Joining the Experiment: 20% Time in Class

Ask people to define the purpose of school and most will answer, “to learn.” However, school is not the only place where we learn. As human beings, our lives are consumed with learning, from the time we are born to the end of our lives. Unfortunately, however, many students associate school with a certain kind of learning process. This process can best be described as top-down: content is selected by others, pacing is dictated by others, and the form of assessment, usually tests, is decided by others. In short, every step of the process originates from outside of the learner, who is motivated to succeed extrinsically: follow the directions, master the material, get an “A.” If not, face punishment. As a consequence, many students lose their drive to learn, at least at school.

So here is a question: How can schools make the learning process more personalized and meaningful for all students? One intriguing answer: by adapting 20% time.

20% time is a concept made famous by Google, but its roots reach back to the mid-20th century, when the head of corporate giant 3M decided to give its employees 15% of their time to work on projects they found personally relevant, whether or not those projects related to their specific position. 3M’s reason for such a radical shift was simple: giving workers the autonomy to determine what is meaningful to learn fosters more engaging, motivated, productive and happy employees. Of course, these are the same reasons why Sergey Brin and Larry Page instigated the policy at Google 60 years later. And other companies have begun to pick up on it as well.

Now it is education’s turn to explore the benefits of 20% time. Certainly the goal is to reignite student passion for learning and reacquaint them with the joy it brings. But that is not all. Technology and the easy access to information has disrupted all aspects of our lives, including the way we learn and work. Our kids must be self-starting, creative, perseverant thinkers. These traits cannot be nurtured in an environment that deprives them of choice and agency. The classroom must become more flexible with teachers acting as facilitators and guides, not as the repositories of all knowledge. This is what a colleague and I hope to accomplish as we set out on our 20% time experiment.

Specifically, our students will articulate a question of interest, research the question, and then determine what they can make and do with their discoveries. Along the way, they will be sharing what they learn and create with their peers and others.

By the way, one result of 3M’s experiment with 20% time? The post-it note. For Google: gmail. Two wildly successful products born out of the willingness to give people control over what comes so natural: learning.