Blog Post created by Lisa Gates and Caroline Monsell
In Activity Two we participated in the Stanford d.School design process (2016) in partners.This experience led us to the development of a prototype for a blended online course consisting of three modules, one of which we developed into a set of lessons. Our partnership, consisting of Caroline Monsell and Lisa Gates, worked through each of the steps, learning about the individual parts of the process and each other’s student groups.
The first steps of the design process asked us to focus on the problem, which took learning about each other’s student population and their needs through the process of empathetic design (Mattelmäki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014). Caroline works in an Ontario municipality with a client group that spans working positions in a variety of locations, in disparate jobs (everything from public works workers to highly educated engineering staff). Her student base brought challenges in terms of use of technology; within that group are confident users and virtually non-users. Lisa’s students are all in Human Services Programs at a BC Community College. The courses that these students participate in are blended delivery or online delivery. Students come to college with different backgrounds, including students for whom English is an additional language. These students all have at least an emergent level of computer use.
Through the exercise, strong commonalities were discovered which led to the development of three separate problem statements in Step 4 (d.School, 2016):
- Students are new to technology and sharing information with others for the purpose of learning or self benefit.
- Students are feeling overwhelmed by workload and in need of both stress management and time management skills and strategies to feel positive about their workplace, ensure attendance and take fewer sick days.
- Students are in need of strong interpersonal skills and conflict resolution for the purpose of collaboration and workplace competency.
We saw that each of the three problem statements could be its own module in a course, and settled on developing the second problem statement into a module to help our student groups to cope with work stress and time management.
Through Step 5, Ideate (d.School, 2016), we determined that students would need to understand time and stress management strategies before delving deeper into interpersonal communication skills. The lesson plan of the module is here (please click on the link): (CANVA). Activity sequencing in the module reflects the five design principles as discussed by Merrill (2002). Utilizing Crichton & Carter’s (2017) suggestions, meaningful play and exploration through time mapping and self assessment strategies were built in, encouraging intellectual risk taking while working autonomously and in a team to find and solve problems related to work life balance.
Through these activities, students were encouraged to take intellectual risks. Given the different student populations, our partnership added pieces to the earlier module to focus on peer-to-peer mentoring, fostering connection and the creation of a sense of safety so that students could take risks that create engagement . This reflects the early stages of Tuckman and Jensen’s model for group development, forming and norming (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977).
Our partnership is interested in learning ways that we can:
- Ensure that our students are taking appropriate levels of intellectual risk and are engaged throughout the process.
- Understand and apply other lenses/theories to the work we are developing so that we are sure to make the work relevant to the students.
- Apply this course to understand and prevent burnout at work with other audiences, in other fields.
Our partnership is interested in your thoughts moving forward. We will respond to feedback until Wednesday, December 4, 2019. Thank you for your time.
References:
Crichton, S. & Carter, D. (2017). Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit. Open School/ITA
Mattelmäki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What Happened to Empathic Design? Design Issues, 30(1), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI
Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02505024
Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419–427. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960117700200404
Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). A Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking — Stanford d.school [Website]. Retrieved from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/a-virtual-crash-course-in-design-thinking
December 2, 2019 at 7:58 pm
I enjoyed reading through your process of discovering the needs of your target audience. Employing Stanford’s d.school design thinking process was well articulated through your use of the steps outlined in the Stanford approach. In your explanation of working together on Stanford’s first step in the design thinking process I hear your team speak about “learning about each other’s student population and their needs through the process of empathetic (sic) design”; this implies the listening of each team member to the other, and using this information gathering to capture the students’ needs. Mattelmäki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen(2014) point out that the prevailing cognitive models that were being employed by other designers at the time they entered into the process of designing their empathic design approach were not focusing on defining the problem – the heart of the solution – but rather on problem solving itself. Your strong understanding of this is clearly evidenced by your process that you have undertaken to understand your target audience’s needs. This will serve you well in your further detailed paper that will flow from this post.
I understand your high level approach to your problem that you developed to a succinct idea, but I thought that your initial view could have been further focused; the scope seems too large to attempt.
The outcome your team did come to is defined, but I was not able to understand the resulting piece to come out of this design process. I would have liked to have been given a more concrete explanation of the end piece.
Your link to your lesson plan was hard to find (CANVA). I am unsure of how the lesson plan should be implemented or in what context. In your post you refer to it as a “module”, I inferred that it was to be used as a piece of a larger context, but I’m unsure how or where. Some clarification would be helpful.
Given these, I believe your process was excellent in capturing your students requirements – your team shows a good understanding of a Design Thinking process.
December 5, 2019 at 7:07 am
Hi Earl
Thank you for your comments. They were well thought out and Lisa and I appreciated the time you spent acknowledging our strengths and areas for enhancement.
We attempted to show our thinking by providing three problem statements and choosing the one that resonated with us the most for the prototype. We can see how this could have created some confusion. One clear and concise problem statement should have been provided rather than three.
Our mandate was to create a specific module on time management and stress management that could be facilitated to both municipal employees and college students. We did not clarify that the learning environment was constructed to provide students with the conditions (assignments, risk taking activities, blogs, etc.) that supported the desired learning processes (Thomas 2010). As per your comments, the resulting piece of the design process should have been clearly defined. We explained the process, however, we did expand on the importance of understanding how lack of time management skills has the potential to create stress and anxiety in an individual’s life.
As noted by Crichton & Carter (2017) students should problem find rather than problem solve. We should have clearly identified that the exercises focused students on identifying any concerns with their time management skills and acknowledging how this can directly impact stress levels.
We appreciate your comments to help us reflect on design process and enhance our abilities going forward.
Lisa and Caroline