Supporting Student Agency Through Intentional Design: Moving from Understanding Agency to Building It in the Online Classroom

Introductory Note to the Reader      I write this paper first as a teacher speaking to other teachers. One question has increasingly stayed with me as I have explored online learning: How much ownership do my students actually have over their learning?      For a long time, I thought giving students choices was enough. However, my experience with the ISTE+ASCD course Designing Online Learning Experiences – U.S. Department of State helped me see a more important distinction. Student agency is not simply about offering different options within a lesson. It is about creating genuine opportunities for students to make meaningful decisions about how they learn and how they demonstrate what they have learned (Acuña Solano, 2026).      This distinction has made me look differently at my own teaching. I began asking myself where agency already exists in my lessons and, perhaps more importantly, where I could intentionally create more space for it.      The purpose of this paper is therefore not to suggest that teachers should surrender control of their classrooms. Rather, it is an invitation to rethink how we design learning experiences. Through the ideas of agency avenues and structures for agency, I explore how teachers can provide meaningful ownership while maintaining clear learning goals and expectations.      Perhaps the most important question is a simple one: What might happen if we designed our lessons not only for students, but also with their ownership in mind? Jonathan Acuña Solano

Supporting Student Agency Through Intentional Design: Moving from Understanding Agency to Building It in the Online Classroom

Student Voice and Shared Ownership of Learning

Redesigning my Unit 12 lesson from a corporate group of students I was teaching led me to think more deeply about student voice. While the ISTE+ASCD course I took with the US State Department through the American Embassy in San José, Costa Rica focuses primarily on agency, my reflections naturally connected with the work of Dana Mitra, whose Student Voice Framework illustrates how students gradually move from simply expressing opinions to becoming partners in educational improvement.

Mitra (2004, 2024) describes this progression through three interconnected levels: a) being heard, b) collaboration with adults, and c) building capacity for leadership. Initially, I interpreted student voice as collecting students' opinions through surveys or end-of-course evaluations. Although these practices remain valuable, I now recognize that they represent only the beginning of a broader process. The redesigned role-play activities I now have as part of my lesson plan demonstrates this progression. Students are no longer limited to responding to a scenario selected entirely by the teacher. Instead, they participate in choosing the professional context that best matches their interests, experiences, or career aspirations. Their voices influence the learning process before the activity even begins. This seemingly small design decision changes the classroom dynamic considerably. Students are not simply completing an assignment; they are participating in shaping how they will achieve the learning objective.

Looking ahead, I can also envision extending this idea beyond the lesson itself. At the conclusion of the unit, students could evaluate which innovation challenge contributed most to their learning and propose additional scenarios for future classes. These suggestions could then become part of subsequent versions of the course. In this way, students move beyond participating in learning activities toward contributing to the continuous improvement of the curriculum itself.

For me, this is perhaps one of the most powerful ideas emerging from both the ISTE+ASCD course and Mitra's work: agency is not about giving away instructional responsibility. Rather, it is about inviting students to share responsibility in meaningful and purposeful ways.

Why Structured Agency Matters

Another important lesson from the ISTE+ASCD course is that meaningful agency requires structure. The course materials emphasize that educators often understand the importance of student ownership but struggle to translate that belief into practical lesson design. As the module explains,

"The gap between believing in student agency and actually building it into a lesson is where most educators get stuck. Choice boards, checklists, and playlists are not just organizational tools; they are design structures that make it possible to open specific avenues of agency in a controlled, intentional way." (ISTE+ASCD Learning Academy, 2026)

This statement resonated with my own experience.

Like many teachers, I have occasionally worried that increasing student choice might reduce academic rigor or make classroom management more complicated. The course helped me understand that this concern often arises because agency is mistakenly associated with unlimited freedom. Instead, structured agency provides carefully designed boundaries within which students make authentic decisions.

This perspective is consistent with Toshalis and Nakkula (2024), who argue that students benefit most when they exercise meaningful ownership within a clearly defined framework. Too much teacher control limits autonomy, while unlimited choice can overwhelm learners and reduce instructional coherence. The challenge for educators is to design experiences that balance flexibility with purposeful guidance.

Reflecting on my own lesson redesign, I realize that the Choice Board accomplishes precisely this balance. Students do not choose whether to meet the learning outcomes. They choose how they will demonstrate them. Every pathway requires the same linguistic objectives, similar cognitive demands, and identical assessment criteria. The learning goal remains constant. And the learning journey becomes personalized.

Student Agency and Adult Online Learners

Teaching college young adults and corporate working adults has also influenced the way I interpret student agency. Much of the literature on student voice originates in elementary and secondary education. Although the underlying principles certainly apply across educational contexts, adult learners bring characteristics that deserve special consideration.

My students enter the virtual classroom with extensive professional and personal experience. Many manage projects, coordinate teams, negotiate with clients, analyze data, or make important decisions as part of their daily work. Consequently, learning environments that restrict every instructional decision may unintentionally overlook the expertise students already possess. Allowing learners to exercise meaningful agency acknowledges these experiences while maintaining academic expectations.

This perspective also aligns with Self-Determination Theory developed by Deci and Ryan (2000). Their research identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as three essential psychological needs that support intrinsic motivation. 1) Student agency directly addresses autonomy by allowing learners to make authentic decisions. 2) Competence develops as students demonstrate learning through meaningful tasks connected to their strengths and professional experiences. 3) Relatedness is strengthened when students collaborate, negotiate ideas, and learn from one another rather than relying exclusively on teacher-directed instruction. Taken together, these principles suggest that agency contributes much more than engagement. It encourages learners to become increasingly self-directed, reflective, and responsible for their own learning.

For adult learners studying online, these qualities are particularly valuable because independent learning plays such an important role in their academic success.

Reflection as a Tool for Continuous Improvement

One unexpected outcome of this course has been recognizing the close relationship between student agency and reflective practice. Throughout my career, I have considered reflection an essential component of effective teaching. Donald Schön (1983) argues that professionals improve their practice by systematically examining their decisions and using those reflections to guide future action.

The ISTE+ASCD course encouraged me to apply this same principle to instructional design. Rather than simply evaluating whether a lesson was successful, I now find myself asking additional questions:

·	At what moment during this lesson did students make a meaningful learning decision?
·	Which avenue of agency was open?
·	Which avenue remained closed?
·	What small design change could increase student ownership without changing the learning objective?

These questions represent a subtle but important shift in my professional thinking. Previously, I often reflected on whether students appeared engaged. Now, I also reflect on whether they experienced genuine ownership. This distinction has transformed the way I analyze my lessons. Engagement remains important, but I now recognize that meaningful engagement often grows from opportunities to participate actively in shaping one's own learning.

Implications for My Teaching and Curriculum Design

As both an online instructor and a curriculum designer, I believe the ideas presented in this course extend beyond individual lesson planning. They encourage educators to reconsider the purpose of instructional design itself. Rather than asking,

"How can I make this lesson more engaging?"

I now ask,

"Where can students meaningfully influence their own learning while still achieving the intended learning outcomes?"

Although the wording appears similar, the two questions lead to different design decisions. The first focuses primarily on increasing motivation. The second focuses on distributing ownership. This distinction has already influenced the way I think about assessment, collaborative learning, project design, and classroom interaction. More importantly, it has reinforced my belief that teachers remain essential, not because they make every decision, but because they intentionally design environments where students can make meaningful ones.

Conclusion

Completing the ISTE+ASCD course Designing Online Learning Experiences has prompted me to rethink one of the most fundamental questions in education: Who owns the learning? My reflections have shown that authentic student agency is not synonymous with differentiation, unlimited choice, or reduced instructional structure. Instead, it emerges when teachers intentionally create opportunities for students to exercise meaningful ownership while maintaining clear learning goals.

Redesigning my Unit 12 innovation lesson illustrated this principle in a practical way. By replacing a single teacher-directed role-play with a Choice Board, I preserved every linguistic objective while allowing students to select professional contexts that reflected their interests and experiences. A relatively small design change transformed students from participants following identical instructions into learners making authentic educational decisions. This experience has also reminded me that agency is not a destination but a continuous design process. Every lesson offers opportunities to ask where ownership can be expanded, how student voice can be strengthened, and which instructional structures best support meaningful learning.

Ultimately, I now see my role not simply as someone who delivers carefully designed lessons, but as someone who intentionally designs opportunities for students to become increasingly reflective, autonomous, and responsible learners. In my context of teaching college young adults and corporate working adults online, that may be one of the most meaningful contributions I can make, not only to their language development but also to their lifelong capacity to learn.

San José, Costa Rica

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Blog Post #587 

📚 References

Acuña Solano, J. (2026). Reflective journal: Supporting student agency through intentional design [Unpublished course reflection]. ISTE+ASCD Learning Academy, Designing Online Learning Experiences – U.S. Department of State course.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

ISTE+ASCD Learning Academy. (2026). Designing Online Learning Experiences – U.S. Department of State [Professional learning course].

Mitra, D. L. (2004). The significance of students: Can increasing "student voice" in schools lead to gains in youth development? Teachers College Record, 106(4), 651–688. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.

Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2024). Student agency and structured ownership in digital learning. In ISTE+ASCD Learning Academy, Designing Online Learning Experiences course materials.

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