Challenge-Based Makerspaces
Course
Challenge-Based Learning and Design Challenges [6:25]
- Learn the basics of a design challenge and how they help increase student creativity.
- Learn how a good design prompt reduces questions and focuses students on creating.
- Learn several best practices to help your design challenge run smoothly.
Think of it this way, when a student walks into a makerspace filled with all kinds of supplies, materials, and tools, it can be overwhelming to figure out what project to make and where to start. Some students just give up from frustration. By providing some guidelines, students know where to focus. A good design challenge building engagement, as students are excited to get working on their projects.
A design challenge starts by giving students a design prompt and a problem to solve. Let's look at the different elements that make up a good design prompt. A good design prompt is clear and easy for students to grasp. It helps remove the constant questions that students are likely to come up with and give them more time to focus on creating. Let's take a look at these different elements. A good design challenge prompt starts by sharing the goal. What is the final outcome you want students to achieve? This could be something like build a creature or design a piece of furniture.
Next, you want to define the who. Are students allowed to work with others? By themselves? In designated groups? I generally prefer to allow students to choose their own groups. If I'm working with a class or if I have a shorter time frame, I might have them just work with their table groups in order to save time on picking who they want to work with. After that, you want to clarify the materials. Are there certain materials students have to use, or can they use anything in the makerspace, are they allowed to bring supplies from home? A design challenge focused on a specific material can be a lot of fun, but open-ended ones are great too. A material-specific challenge might be a project where students use Legos to build a house for a character from a book.
The next element is one of the most important, time frame. How long do students have? As a hint, I think it's best to err on the side of shorter. It increases engagement and you can always add on more time as needed. The final element of a design prompt is sharing. I feel like this is probably one of the most important and underutilized elements of a design challenge. When students finish up a project they're proud of, they want to share it with others.
Sure, showing it to their teacher or to their peers is great, but consider ways that you can give students a wider authentic audience. Students could do a Shark Tank style pitch of their projects to another class or hold a video conference with another school. They could write a blog post and share their projects on social media with a common hashtag. Find some way for students to share their projects and let them know upfront in the design prompt what that method will be.
Your design prompt can be finished right there. But if you want, consider adding other guidelines and constraints. Sometimes, there might be one last thing you want to add that doesn't quite fit in elsewhere, that's fine. While this is a sort of template for creating a design prompt, it isn't written in stone that your prompt must neatly fit into these guidelines. Do what works best for you. We'll look at several examples of design challenges and what prompts were used for them later.
Once you have your prompt figured out, there are some additional best practices that can help to make your design challenge activities run smoothly. First of all, I recommend avoiding making your activity into a competition. Competitions can often be popular classroom activities. Whose robot can defeat the other robots? Which dragster is the fastest? Which tower is the tallest? I have found that these sort of competitions tend to take away from the spirit of collaboration that I want to see in my makerspace.
Instead of sharing their ideas with one other, students begin to hide them away and accuse others of copying them. Some will try to sabotage the projects of others. At the end of the competition, the student who wins is on a high but everyone else is disappointed. That is the opposite of what I want to see in my makerspace.
So avoid competitions and focus on an environment of collaboration instead. You want to make sure that you provide a focus, but leave room for creativity. You don't want your design challenges to have a complicated multi-step rubric; otherwise, you'll end up with 20 projects that look exactly alike. If you don't have some focus and your challenge is too broad, you might end up with students feeling overwhelmed by all the choices available. The key is balance.
Unless your design challenge is happening all in one session and students are either taking projects home or taking them apart, you need to provide project storage space. This could be a set of shelves in the back closet of the library, some bins tucked into cabinets, or a mobile cart, whatever works best for you. Storage space can definitely be at a premium in many schools, but think creatively and look for ways you can move things around or eliminate things to create some space.
Finally, remember that a little basic instruction is okay but try to focus more on guiding questions. Really, this applies beyond makerspaces and is just good pedagogy. When working through a design challenge, you might know the perfect solution to a problem a student is facing. Resist the urge to tell the student what to do, or worse, fix the problem for them. Instead, guide and prompt your student in the right direction, but let them figure it out for themselves.
Think about an activity or design challenge that you have held in your makerspace or through a program. Now look at the design challenge prompts template and figure out how you would rephrase your prompts based off of those guidelines.
Imagine walking into a makerspace for the first time and seeing all the supplies and tools and wondering where to even start! Guiding your students with a good design prompt can help fuel their creativity and get them excited about their projects. Providing clear, concise guidelines for your design challenge removes the constant questions that students are likely to have. Use the worksheet on page 7 of the handout found in the resources below and create a good design prompt of a new design challenge. As you complete each step, think about how this will help your students focus on creativity.
In this lesson, the basic steps are laid out for a good design prompt. Once you have finished creating a new design prompt, reflect on how you would change some steps or what you would add that would work best for you. How would you update the template for a design prompt? What are some other steps you think would help your students? See page 11 of the handout in the resources above to jot down your notes.
MLA Citation
"Challenge-Based Makerspaces: Creating a Good Design Prompt." School Library Connection, April 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2263250?learningModuleId=2263194&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2263440
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Rendina, Diana L. "Challenge-Based Makerspaces. Challenge-Based Learning and Design Challenges [6:25]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, April 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2263250?learningModuleId=2263194&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2263250?learningModuleId=2263194&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2263250