From Teacher-Directed Instruction to Learner Ownership: My COVA, CSLE, and Contemporary Learning Synthesis

Experiencing COVA as a Learner

COVA represents choice, ownership, voice, and authentic learning opportunities. Harapnuik describes COVA as an approach in which learners are given choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities within a significant learning environment (Harapnuik, n.d.). Research examining learners' experiences with the COVA approach has also identified the potential for choice, ownership, and voice to positively influence the learning experience (Thibodeaux et al., 2019).

Understanding COVA conceptually was important, but experiencing it myself had a much greater impact on me. One of the clearest examples was the development of my ePortfolio. I was not simply completing individual assignments for a professor and forgetting about them after receiving a grade. I had control over how I designed my ePortfolio, how I presented information, the types of media I incorporated, and how I connected different pieces of my learning.

That freedom made me feel greater ownership over my work. I became more willing to be creative, explore different tools, revise my ideas, and think about how my work represented me professionally. My ePortfolio became something that belonged to me rather than simply another assignment I had to submit.

That experience made me reconsider what I was asking of my own students. If having meaningful choices made me more invested in my graduate work, then it was reasonable to consider that my students might want some control over their learning as well. I began adding more opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding through different formats, including storytelling, visual products, comics, digital activities, and ePortfolio artifacts. Rather than requiring every student to produce an identical product, I could maintain the same learning outcome while allowing students different pathways to demonstrate mastery.

This is one aspect of COVA that I plan to retain throughout my professional practice. However, I have also learned that choice needs to be intentional. Giving students ten options does not automatically make an activity student-centered. Too many options can create confusion. I now think more carefully about providing meaningful choices aligned with the learning outcome while still giving students enough structure to make productive decisions.

Self-Regulated Learning and the Learner's Mindset

My experience with COVA has also made me think differently about self-regulated learning. Self-regulated learners are active participants in their own learning processes rather than unengaged recipients of instruction (Zimmerman, 1990).

This connects strongly with the Learner's Mindset because students need opportunities to develop the ability to set goals, monitor progress, respond to feedback, reflect, and make adjustments.

The ePortfolio creates an opportunity for this kind of learning. Students are responsible for keeping their work, thinking about their progress, and creating evidence of their understanding. Instead of simply receiving a score and moving forward, students can look back at previous work and recognize their growth.

At the same time, implementing these ideas with seventh graders has led me to reconsider one of my original assumptions. Providing ownership does not automatically mean learners know how to manage ownership.

Some students are ready to work independently almost immediately. Others need significant guidance in managing time, following multi-step directions, staying focused, arranging materials, or making productive choices. If I provide complete independence before students have developed those skills, I may unintentionally create frustration rather than agency.

Because of this, I would adapt my use of COVA by gradually releasing responsibility. Students may initially need examples, timers, chunked directions, frequent teacher check-ins, models of completed work, limited choices, and opportunities to practice reflection. As their ability to self-regulate improves, I can gradually increase the amount of independence they receive.

For me, this is not a rejection of learner agency. It is part of helping students develop it.

UDL and Inclusive Learner-Centered Design

Universal Design for Learning has also helped me think more intentionally about choice and access. CAST's UDL Guidelines 3.0 identify learner agency as a central goal and emphasize designing multiple ways for learners to connect with information, communicate understanding, organize resources, set meaningful goals, and monitor progress (CAST, 2024). This matches closely with the environment I am working to create. My students do not all learn in the same way or require the same level of support. I teach students who may need accommodations, language supports, text-to-speech, visuals, simplified directions, additional processing time, small-group instruction, teacher proximity, examples, or repeated opportunities to demonstrate understanding. Providing multiple pathways does not mean lowering the learning expectation. The outcome can remain consistent while unnecessary barriers are reduced.

For example, if my goal is for students to explain how geography affected the lives of Indigenous peoples in Texas, the learning outcome does not require every student to demonstrate that understanding in exactly the same way. One student may create a written comparison, another may develop a visual representation, and another may create a narrated digital presentation. Each student must still demonstrate the historical relationship between geography and culture.

This is an area I want to continue extending. I want to design for accessibility and learner variability into the lesson from the beginning, rather than waiting until a student struggles and then attempting to modify the activity afterward.

What I Will Retain, Adapt, Extend, and Reconsider

As I move forward professionally, there are specific parts of COVA and CSLE that I want to retain. I will continue using meaningful student choice, ePortfolios, authentic learning opportunities, reflection, station rotation, and blended learning. These approaches support the type of classroom environment I want to create.

I will adjust the amount of choice and independence I provide based on students' readiness. Choice should empower students rather than overwhelm them, and some learners need more scaffolding before they are ready for greater independence.

I want to extend opportunities for students to set goals, reflect on their progress, provide peer feedback and feedforward, communicate with authentic audiences, and take a larger part in evaluating their own growth.

I also want to reconsider the role technology plays in my classroom. The ADL program has not convinced me that I need more technology. Instead, it has shown me how to be more intentional about the technology I use. If a technological tool increases access, improves collaboration, supports creativity, enables meaningful choice, or makes reflection easier, then it may improve the learning environment. If technology simply makes an activity more complicated, it may not belong in the lesson.

Conclusion

My experience with COVA, CSLE, and the Learner's Mindset has changed the way I define effective teaching. Earlier in my career, I often thought about successful instruction in terms of what I was delivering to students: Were my directions clear? Did I explain the content? Did students complete the assignment?

I now think much more intentionally about what the learner is doing.

Are students questioning? Are they making meaningful choices? Are they creating? Are they collaborating? Are they reflecting? Do they understand why they are learning something? Do they have opportunities to improve? Are they beginning to take responsibility for their progress?

The answer is not to eliminate structure or teacher guidance. My seventh-grade students still need clear expectations, modeling, feedback, support, and sometimes direct instruction. Instead, my goal is to create a structured but flexible, significant learning environment in which students can gradually assume greater responsibility for their learning.

The most significant change for me may be the way I now view my role. I do not have to be the source of every answer or control every part of the learning experience. My responsibility is to design an environment in which meaningful learning can happen and then serve as the presenter, facilitator, coach, or mentor students need at different points in that process.

COVA gave me the opportunity to experience ownership as a learner. CSLE helped me understand the importance of intentionally designing the environment surrounding that learner. Contemporary ideas such as agency, co-agency, self-regulation, authentic learning, and UDL have further strengthened them.

Moving forward, I want my students to experience what I experienced in ADL: the realization that their learning belongs to them.