Implementing Agile in the Classroom

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Working software over comprehensive documentation.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

Responding to change over following a plan.

Responding to change may be one of the easiest values of Agile to incorporate into your classroom. The first area to look at is curriculum planning. At the beginning of the term, you lay out your curriculum for the semester in a comprehensive, structured and organized plan. Instead of looking at these plans as concrete, Agile teaches us that concretely abiding by your plan is not effective. Evaluate where your students are. Are they ahead of the material? Do we need to perform some review before they can understand this material? A better way to treat the curriculum is to constantly edit it and adapt the material to your student's needs. Generally, the value says to plan, do, act and check. In the classroom, this can be translated to course planning, lesson delivery, student assessment and course valuation and delivery. 

Remember to start small and take on thing on at a time! Games and Agile projects are a great place to begin. Establish an environment of open thinking and support, sustain that throughout the term and students will follow, regardless of initial hesitation. The largest Agile implementation blocker is not understanding it.  

Classroom Tools

In a classroom, there are many free tools available for use to being the implementation of Agile to your class. Below is a list of just a view available tools for students to use to being becoming Agile:

• Trello - Online Agile Story Board. Students can sign up for free with an email and add one another to their story boards for team collaboration.
• Taiga.io - Online Agile and Kanban Story Board. Students can sign up using their Miami University email for a free account.
• Slack.com - Group Communication tool. Ability to have different conversations based on topic within one group chat. Great for team collaboration and communication. Students can sign up with an email for a free account.
• Popplet - Online Mind Mapping tool. Students can sign up for free using their university email.