• Students are more engaged, learning is more authentic and understandings are more enduring because performance tasks are designed with greater recognition of context and connectedness.
• How will teachers benefit as a curriculum designer?
  The Six Learnings framework and its undergirding theory of Disciplinary Intuitions together form a frame to facilitate teachers’ reflective questions on one’s approach to curriculum design and student learning.

• Instead of simply surfacing students’ misconceptions, after going through this programme, teachers will be able to uncover where the roots of the misconceptions lie, namely the intuitions that the students bring with them. In this way, students’ thinking is made more visible to teachers, and teachers are more able to address the students’ misunderstandings.

The Six Learnings curricular framework informs the design of learning environments for students to apply their learning. It can support many subject and co-curricular activities.

The Six Learnings complements the theory of Disciplinary Intuitions. From the premise that tacit intuitions are developed through personal experiences and prior knowledge, the framework supports the design of collaborative and immersive learning environments, which helps surface learners’ pre-conceptions or misunderstandings so that they can be dialogued on.

This framework describes six possible areas of curriculum design.

1) Learning by Exploring

This is learning that results from exploration of installations, communities, and landscapes within the immersive world itself. Depending on the nature of the learning task, such explorations could be scaffolded to varying degrees. For instance, a group of learners in a geography class might collect data on wind patterns at different locations in a virtual environment, so that they could subsequently test their hypotheses on various aspects of meteorology and climatology.

2) Learning by Collaborating

This refers to learning that results from students working in teams, either on problem-solving tasks or other forms of structured inquiry to enhance their metacognitive habits and understanding of the social dynamics of group work.

3) Learning by Being

This is learning that results from exploration of self and identity. Such learning involves the assumptions of identities and dispositions through enculturation. A common learning design would be role-playing in an immersive environment. For example, by engaging in activities within true-to-scale and contextually accurate learning environments designed by the teacher, students’ responses to issues facing community stakeholders in the real world are more thoughtful and deliberate, and a greater sense of empathy is achieved.

4) Learning by Building

This refers to learning that results from tasks that require learners to build objects and /or script them. Such activities could potentially involve the demonstration of mathematical understandings of trigonometry and physics, the learners’ sense of aesthetics, as well as their grasp of the logical algorithmic flows inherent in a scripting language.

5) Learning by Championing

Referring to learning that results from raising awareness of the social needs of various communities, this learning could easily be a focus in the humanities. For example, learners might be tasked to design an installation/exhibit in an immersive learning environment that sought to raise awareness and educate the general public about particular causes that might be meaningful to them.

6) Learning by Expressing

This refers to students’ articulating their learnings from their interactions within the immersive environment using various media. For example, it could encompass the authoring and editing of blogs and podcasts, storyboarding, the technical aspects of audio- and video-editing, as well as the principles of literary critique and creative writing.

Students are given opportunities to,

• surface their emerging conceptual understanding; which make visible their tacit intuition,
• dialogue around the emerged conceptual understanding, and
• appropriate their conceptual disciplinary knowledge. For instance, to think like a scientist or a historian.

• The intervention project significantly sustained the intrinsic motivation of students during lessons.
• In addition, student learning gains from a range of assessment types were found. These gains in assessment scores are directly attributable to the intervention, as well as indirectly through constructs such as motivation, self-directedness and self-efficacy.
• Students were also observed to demonstrate significant improvement in their higher-order thinking skills.

• Teachers should first consider their learning goals and how they wish to engage their students. The lesson resources on this site provide a glimpse of the possible ways of engaging students to learn through the six potential areas.

• Interested educators can approach the Principal Investigator for more classroom resources and any queries regarding the framework and implementation.

Implementation Tips

• It is recommended to target just one or two areas of The Six Learnings framework on the basis of how well they align with the school vision and the intended learning objectives.
• Many of these immersive environments are open-source, which reduces the financial cost for teachers and schools.

• The Six Learnings website
• ReEd Vol 2 2011 “Transforming Research into Popular Practice” [PDF]
• SingTeach Issue 52 Mar 2015 “Bringing Second Life to Geography Lessons”

Further Readings

• Lim, K. Y. T. (2009). The Six Learnings of Second Life: A Framework for Designing Curricular Interventions In-world. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2(1), 3-11.
• Lim, K. Y. T. (2016, June 23). The Spontaneous Emergence of Maker Dispositions in Schools: A Case Example from Singapore. UNESCO Bangkok, ICT in Education.
• Lim, K. Y. T. (ed.). (2015). Disciplinary Intuitions and the design of learning environments. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

Research Projects

The following projects are associated with The Six Learnings research:

• The Starling Project
• Extending The Six Learnings Framework for Curricular Design in Virtual Worlds

Research Team

To learn more about The Six Learnings, please contact the Principal Investigator Dr Kenneth Lim at kenneth.lim@nie.edu.sg..

Principal Investigator

• Dr Kenneth LIM, Office of Research Education (OER), NIE

Research Assistants

• Mr YUEN Ming De, OER, NIE
• Mr Ahmed Hazyl HILMY, OER, NIE
• Mr Derek CHUA
• Mr Richard LEE