The Man Who Does it All
Aaron Doering is an educator, explorer, and software engineer of unique quality. To put him into context one has to consider the life of earlier high profile explorers, Jaque Cousteau, or Ernest Shackleton, for example. Transport Shackelton to a modern era, and offer him the opportunity to share his explorations with the public via social media and it puts Doering’s work into perspective. Follow Doering’s body of work and one quickly becomes entangled in his narrative as he studies and advocates for people who too often go unheard, their stories, and the stories of a rapidly changing planet.
University of Minnesota (2017) describes Dr. Doering’s academic research as focused on the pedagogy he pioneered, adventure-learning (AL), which is an integrative approach to teaching geography, environmental science, cultural competency, and digital storytelling. He defines adventure learning as a “hybrid online educational environment that provides students with opportunities to explore real-world issues through authentic learning experiences within collaborative online learning environments” (Doering, 2006a, p. 200). Doering’s (2006) article discussed the ways in which teachers utilized an interactive online experience, Arctic Transect 2004: An Educational Exploration of Nunavut. The program was designed to to engage students in the fields of geography and environmental education through real-time interactions with Doering as he traveled on a 3,000 mile dog-sled expedition across Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic (Doering, 2006). While AL uses the expedition, with its thrilling sense of adventure as a catalyst for students engagement, the AL curricula plays out as problem-based learning centered around an question that needs to be solved by interacting with the AL online environment. Students interact with their peers, experts, and teachers, to solve the problems that are driving the curriculum modules (Doering, 2006).
As a full professor at the University of Minnesota, Doering is the director of their Learning Technologies Media Lab (LTML) where he teaches his students to design online learning environments (UMN, 2017). Doering himself has created more than 15 online learning environments that have reached over 15 million learners worldwide. In the years following his professorship at University of Minnesota, Doering was nothing short of prolific, publishing over 15 research papers from the years 2002 to 2008.
More recently Doering began collaborating with National Geographic to develop another online learning program, “GeoThentic”. Doering, Veletsianos, Scharber, and Miller (2009) describe GeoThentic as a technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge framework (TPACK) that places students in the role of a geographer, working toward solving a geographic problem. It employs a scaffolded program, developed from his earlier research, wherein educators choose the level of scaffolding appropriate for their students. Geothentic software creates opportunities for students to solve authentic complex problems within an online environment, while concurrently providing teachers with the necessary TPACK foundation necessary for teaching modules available within the digital learning environment (Doering, 2017, February 23).
Additionally, teachers or students visiting Doering’s website chasingseals.com will find WeExplore, a platform where individuals plan and share their own personal expeditions in nature, Raptor Lab, another online learning environment where students engage in scientific investigations by role-playing various scientific careers involved in wildlife rehabilitation. Earth Explorers, and the Changing Earth, are both programs where Doering and his team travel to communities around the globe and engage with local communities as members of those communities describe the ways climate change is impacting their lives.
In researching Aaron Doering, I am humbled by the breadth of his work, the scope of his projects, and the grandness through which they are implemented. Here is a man, who while teaching in a classroom, believed there was a better way to reach students. Over the past 15 years, Doering has brought that belief into being. But more importantly, Doering is motivating students to become responsible citizens of the planet earth. Furthermore, he makes room for those who are most often silenced to be heard, to become empowered and to support each other through digital medium. As a researcher, I am passionate about deepening student’s ecological literacy and sense of engagement around environmental issues. Additionally, I firmly believe that today’s children will be tasked with addressing environmental issues on a scale humans have never encountered. Educators and educational communities must dedicate significant mental and physical resources to develop programs of study that instill in today’s children the cognitive and cultural capabilities for mitigating the effects of climate change through creative, innovative design and planning. Doering, by engaging students and motivating them to learn about both technology and Earth, is doing the hard work of preparing the future so that they may solve problems where we have failed.