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What is the Open Hand Model?
Inside Higher Ed recently reported that "...instructors and the teaching practices they use—or don’t—are more than twice as influential in predicting learning outcomes than students’ prior academic performance."
The article argues that 'With degree completion rates hovering at only 43% nationally, identifying intervention strategies to improve college persistence is an urgent priority.'"
Teaching practices matter, just as the rich soil that we hold in our hands matters. Many dedicated educators, who have persevered in mastering the subject matter of their discipline, haven’t always been exposed to the pioneering advances in the learning sciences. Or some teachers know about "learning experiences," but just don't know how to begin or can't make the time.
The Open Hand offers a unique, effective, and memorable model that gives participants hands-on skills to design holistic learning experiences.
The Open Hand offers solutions to two common issues -- lack of intrinsic motivation and engagement in learning--by inviting the entire body and existential senses of students into the process of learning.
The Open Hand logo connects the visceral feeling of the physical hand to the visual representation to affirm the importance of experiential learning.
More specifically, though, it is not just about hands-on learning. Rather, it is the overall "feeling" of a learning experience that matters, which is produced by holistic design. Concepts alone are not experiences. A feeling is produced by an encounter that is memorable, meaningful, empowering, and mindful.
The Open Hand, if turned vertically, looks like the letter C.
The 5 paired learning categories of the Open Hand model each begin with the letter C.
Thus, the visual-somatic image of the Open Hand acts as a powerful memory aid, helping teachers remember the most effective learning experience categories and strategies.
The Open Hand emphasizes reciprocal relationships.
There are always two hands working together to make learning a whole experience.
Caring is an often overlooked aspect in higher education. And yet, the Open Hand makes it overt and foundational to learning.
The Open Hand encourages intentional relationship-rich interactions, where the emotional and physical environment is transparent, intentional, and caring.
The learning strategies of this category are intended to build holistic relationships between teacher and student through a sense of safety, belonging, and equity.
This C category brings the two hands of Caring and Context together.
It involves some of these skills and strategies:
Equity-Focused Teaching
Socially Responsive Pedagogy
Strategies for Underprepared Students
Social-Emotional Intelligence Skills
Pedagogy of Place & Environment Awareness
Intelligence and creative capacity seem to be exclusive categories in our society. Creativity is typically relegated to the realm of artists, painters, innovators, and social visionaries.
But when a transparent and caring context is opened in the classroom, it allows teachers and students to freely engage with ideas and to organically combine them with the physical senses and concrete objects.
Creativity and cognition are not separate functions in learners, but actively move together like two open hands, generating meaningful, vibrant and useful knowledge in any discipline or field.
The C category combines the two hands of Creativity and Cognition.
Some of the theories, strategies, and attitudes associated with this category are the following:
Curiosity & Intrinsic Motivation
Embodied Cognition
Storytelling
Visual Learning
Project-Based Learning
Problem-Solving
By combining creativity with cognitive abilities, teachers and students are more able to generate insightful connections between ideas, theories, or events. Unless connections are made between content, theory, and application, learners will not remember the information or feel competent.
When students receive timely feedback, evaluate their work, and practice hands-on application, they improve their learning and succeed.
This C stands for two hands making Connections to be Competent.
Some of the skills, theories, and strategies in this category involve the following:
Learning Technology
Memory Retention Strategies
Practice and Feedback
Desirable Difficulty
Grading, Ungrading, Collaborative Grading
Assessments, Self-Assessment, E-portfolios
Practical Application
Cognitive Authenticity & Situated Cognition
In higher ed, we implicitly think that knowledge is passively received or is a product of an isolated individual.
The Open Hand has an alternative view--knowledge is an (inter)action in a relationship-rich context. Empowering experiences can be designed so students discover with each other, the teacher, and in communities, thereby developing cultural awareness.
This C category involves the two hands of Collaboration and Culture.
Strategies and activities include:
Relational pedagogy
Collaborative Exercises
Learning Communities
Life-Wide Learning
Cultural, Environmental and Global Issues
All the categories of the Open Hand move toward making conscious individual and societal change, in small and large ways.
When we develop mindfulness skills or contemplative reflections, our self-awareness increases. Developing coaching skills, which are so pervasive in the business world, help to solve problems, achieve goals, and increase our self-awareness. Such skills can also be used in education as well. When we coach each other to reach our potential, we are increasing our social-emotional intelligence.
When self-awareness and cultural awareness lead to action, conscious transformative change happens in the classroom and beyond, at the individual, collective, and cultural levels.
This C represents how being conscious or self-aware on one hand can lead to collective or cultural change on the other hand.
The skills and strategies associated with this category are the following:
Coaching skills
Mindful Teaching and Learning
Contemplative Pedagogy
Metacognitive Skills
Growth Mindset: Resiliency, Purpose, Values
Self-Awareness and Relationship Building tools, such as DiSC, Strengths Finder, Myers-Brigg, etc.
Activism for Social Justice
Your Own Hand Points the Way to Learning.
"The Open Hand reminds educators of what matters most, not the tests or the information, but the giving and receiving of learning between teacher, students, communities, and cultures."
V. Blue Lemay
Giving is more like transferring something from the left hand to the right hand; there's no concern about reward or acknowledgement, gain or loss. Giving and receiving is the same act. It's a natural function that bubbles forth with no effort, like a tree giving shade. It's not forced on anyone, and it's not rigid.
Hoag Holmgren
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