Student-Centered Learning by Design
Course
Working through the Design Process [5:57]
- Learn how to work your way through the design process
- Learn the importance of building a prototype and having stakeholders provide feedback
- Learn about researching to validate a problem and how that expands mindset
And and in that way, we're bringing not just empathy, but we're also bringing an equity lens to the problem solving. And as we get to know who these stakeholders are, we're able to see in those people and in their communities, different insights, which which are assets that we can leverage in our problem solving. We can begin to see what are the constraints that we're working around. So if we think about the design team working with Thomas Panek and they talked about things like going outside and the fluctuation of the light, shadows on the road, leaves blowing and changing shadows, how thick is the line that we're trying to find with our device? All of those things are, yes, part of the problem, but they're really the constraints that they're trying to problem solve around.
From there, we can get into ideation or brainstorming or starting to come up with ideas for how we might address the problem. And now I've just flipped the wheel for you. And so now what we need to start doing is we start to build prototypes and we start to figure out like, how does this work? We bring them out to a group of people who are actual stakeholders in the problem and get their feedback. We test it with them. What about this is working? What about this isn't working? Like break our prototype for us. So we can rebuild it and make it better. And I think sometimes when we hear prototype, we might think of a thing, a tangible thing. Write a prototype for a vegetable peeler, a prototype for a backpack. But a prototype can also be an experience, perhaps your new plan, a PD event for your school, but you prototype it on representatives of a couple of grade levels or representatives of a couple of departments, and you get their feedback on it before you roll it out to a wider school audience that small test group is prototyping an experience for you. And so you get that feedback, you iterate on that design and you come full circle back to the beginning of reempathizing with these new people and the new state in which they find themselves.
So the beginning of this process, when we're looking at problem solving and we're working with students, when we want to bring this into through a research lens is to think about researching to validate the problem. When I was working in a high school library, the thing that— I used to have long hair then—is the thing that made me tear my hair out on a daily basis were the students who said, I know what I'm researching, I know what I'm trying to prove, and now I'm just going to go about proving what I know is already true. And this framing we're researching to validate the problem helps students who are coming from that kind of a narrow mindset that I know what I want to prove and you're not going to pry my mind open to entertain other possibilities. It gives them a way to see those other possibilities through the lens of the problem rather than through the lens of the solution. So we stay in the problem until we're confident that we have tapped into the hearts and minds of all of the stakeholders.
So we look at who's affected by the problem. How many people is that? What can we figure out about them demographically? How old are they? What's their level of education? Where in the country or where in my community do they do they live? How are their current behaviors a consequence of living with that problem? Maybe that problem is, is poor infrastructure and it's affecting their commuting routes in the morning to work or something like that. And who, when we start to think about solutions who might be impacted by them, who do we need to bring into this conversation and then start to think about how long this problem has been around, right? And have other solutions been tried? And if so, what's been tried and why didn't it work? And if we don't do anything about this, where is this, how is this problem going to evolve? That's something important for them to understand about the problem.
And then finally, to get at that SEL piece that Barb was talking about earlier today and to get at that authentic student investment in the problem. Why does this concern you? What is your stake in this problem and why do you want other people to know about the problem and to participate in problem solving with you and then, of course, provide them space in this document to cite their sources as they begin to find this information.
The design process is a fluid process that leads you through problem solving. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the problem they are researching using these steps.
Using page 10 of the Course Packet included in the Resources above, think of a recent research project that you worked through with your students and write down some ideas of how these 6 steps of the design process would have given them more research power. Are your students investigating? Do they empathize with their problem? How will you use this process to teach them? Brainstorm and come up with 1-2 ideas on how you can incorporate the design process steps into your next research problem.
MLA Citation
Whiting, Jacquelyn. "Student-Centered Learning by Design: Unpacking the Design Process." School Library Connection, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2267093?learningModuleId=2267090&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2267690
When you're looking at problem solving and the design process, you want to teach your students to look at the problem through the research lens and think about researching to validate the problem. It allows them to see other possibilities or layers the problem could have rather than just simply finding a solution.
Jacquelyn Whiting provides a worksheet for validating a problem for your students to use in their research (found in the Resources above). Using one of the problems you identified earlier, take a look at that problem through the research lens and begin to validate it. Test drive the path you will send your students on. What other paths appear when you start to research this problem? How do you stay on track with your findings? Using page 9 of the Course Packet found in the Resources above, brainstorm some ideas about validating problems that you can use with your students.
MLA Citation
Whiting, Jacquelyn. "Student-Centered Learning by Design: Validate the Problem." School Library Connection, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2267093?learningModuleId=2267090&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2267691
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Whiting, Jacquelyn. "Student-Centered Learning by Design. Working through the Design Process [5:57]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2267093?learningModuleId=2267090&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2267093?learningModuleId=2267090&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2267093