To put it simply, this course taught me more about who I am as a designer and how the creative design process relates to my life and work. Prior to this class, I had never studied the Stanford Model of Design Thinking (Stanford d.school, n.d.). The five phases of empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test as individual units were not new concepts to me but by learning about the processes as a whole and consciously applying these phases as a series to help me solve a problem was a brand new concept and a useful one at that. In this essay, I will first discuss in depth what I have learned about design in education and how it relates to me as an individual and to my school, staff and students as a whole. Then I will explain what I have learned about myself as a designer and how designing reflects my thinking and who I am as a person. Finally, I will talk about the connections that I’ve made about how the different stages of design make an impact on a larger scale and how it is valuable to our lives in the world today.
I am a designer in education. All educators are. I believe that design is a natural process that happens in every teacher’s classrooms. The concepts of education, teaching, learning and design are all correlated. It is like a cycle that repeats itself. Teachers design lesson plans and learning experiences that are intended to teach students something. Students ideally learn the objectives from the lesson plans. If the students do learn the objectives (testing phase), the design was successful and the teacher can move onto the next learning target. If the students do not learn the objectives, the teacher should revise and redesign the original lesson plan and reteach it. This process should be continued until the objectives are understood by all students. I would argue that this cycle proves that design is incredibly valuable in education. However, I would also like to point out that reflection and revision/editing are equally important, as well. Testing would prove whether or not the students learned the objectives but without the revision and reteach stage, the cycle would simply end with testing and any students who didn’t meet the learning objectives would be left behind. I would like to address a concern that I have in regards to the testing phase in education. An important part of the design process is testing your prototype. In teaching, testing can be found in a variety of formats including formative checks, summative tests, listening to student conversations, visual checks and more. There is incredible value in the notion of testing “early and often” (Duverneay, 2013) in education. There was a part in the online article “When to Test: Incorporating User Testing into Product Design” by Jessica Duverneay that I connected with as an educator who is constantly checking for understanding in the classroom: “Smart teams will begin testing immediately to collect data that can inform road mapping for the next product improvements” (2013). I believe this is something that teachers don’t always have time to do as early and often as we might like. In the race to teach all of the standards and curriculum to students by the end of the year, I believe one of two things typically happen: 1. There are times where teachers don’t test for understanding at all and move on anyway or 2. They do test for understanding, possibly notice some students missed the learning target and perhaps try to reteach but end up moving on quickly anyway. I believe both circumstances are due to timelines teachers must follow, expectations that need to be met and deadlines in general. This leads us to a whole new problem of practice but I do believe teachers should be testing early and often and using that data to help guide their decisions without penalty or fear of falling behind. The things that I design for my classroom vary greatly in how they are designed. Sometimes, I make things up off the top of my head or on the spot. Other times, I design lesson plans over the course of days or a curriculum over the course of years. Although I have been designing since day one of my teaching career, this course taught me another method of changing less preferred situations into more desirable ones within my classroom setting. In the past, I did not have the Stanford Model of Design Thinking as a resource in my toolbox. In my opinion, the method of design is quite extensive. During the times that I design more spontaneously or instinctively, I do not think I would have the time for all of the steps that the Stanford Model entails. On the other hand, I can see an in-depth investigation becoming extremely useful with certain problems of my practice. Ultimately, the complete Stanford Design process would not work for all situations in my art room but it is a great way to find best possible solutions to tricky and/or persistent problems and a great addition to my toolbox. There are times in the past where I naturally used parts of the Stanford Design process without realizing it. For example, the first year that I started teaching, I designed a behavior plan for my classes. I was brand new to teaching so I had nothing to base my behavior plan on other than what other teachers had told me and what I experienced in student teaching (which, let’s be honest is good but not close enough to the real thing). Over the years, this behavior plan has been revised and edited depending on what I thought worked and what didn’t. Each year, it’s like a new prototype of my behavioral plan would be released and the testing phase would go on until I saw another problem with it that I thought I could fix. Although I had naturally applied parts of the Stanford Design process in the past, I now realize that I was lacking some critical design stages that potentially could have solved my problems a lot quicker or at least given me a better possible solution. I now have the knowledge to use whatever phases of the design model feel appropriate to help me in problem solving. The ideate phase of this course proved to be challenging and rewarding. I was lucky enough to get together with the elementary art department from my school. I believe this collaboration was absolutely critical to the success of my experience and is necessary for (or at least extremely helpful) anyone else going through a design process, too. In my opinion, being able to build ideas off of colleagues is essential and can not only help generate ideas but also continue to create a chance for people to empathize with one another. After collaborating with others and brainstorming my own ideas, I had come up with my prototype: a video that I would create of me teaching an important concept that I would show my students in class in order to “buy” myself more time for material management. The ideate and prototype assignments highlighted the importance of collaboration with a team and taught me that, when facing different problems of practice, I should explore the option of using different technologies and think outside of the box for my answer. This course taught me more than just ways to apply this design process to the classroom and within education; it taught me more about design in the real world and in my personal life, too. For example, I have gained a deeper understanding of what it means to be empathetic, the importance of it and how I can be more empathetic as an individual. In our empathy unit for this course, I had thought of a problem of practice and simply assumed that all other art teachers were experiencing the same challenges and had similar opinions about that problem. After sending out a survey that asked them for their opinions on this problem, I realized it was quite the opposite. Initially, the survey ended up being more confusing than helpful because I couldn’t understand why others in my same position didn’t feel the same way I did. Well, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? It wasn’t until I took the time to dissect the survey and reflect on it that I found a root to the problem that affected the general population of my users. This unit resonated with me because although I know I want to apply this process to my work life, I have realized that this is something I’d like to be more aware of in my personal life and relationships, too. Of course, this doesn’t mean I’d be sending surveys out to my friends and family but rather actively trying to understand and share their feelings. CEP 817 taught me another valuable lesson about myself as a designer but this was partly because of something that was out of everyone’s control. The coronavirus pandemic had a huge impact on how the semester ended. Some time ago, when we were in the prototype phase of this course, I had everything perfectly planned out. That’s the type of person I am; I like to have a set plan, get things done the way I want them and do it all before the due date so as to relieve pressure and stress. On top of all of this, I thought I had found a reasonable and great solution to my problem and I was so excited to test my prototype in the classroom! However, it was then that school got cancelled for a few days and, eventually, for the rest of the year. Because I had everything planned out exactly how I wanted it, this change was especially tough and caused a lot of stress (not to minimize the huge negative impact this had on other people in much more profound ways). At first, I had no clue what I was going to do. No classroom. No kids. How would I test my prototype in any accurate way? The answer was to get creative and also to do a bit of acting. In order to test my prototype, the furniture in my living room was rearranged, I enlisted the help of my husband to act as my students and I set up strict guidelines that would make the situation as much like the real deal as possible. Because of my hard work, I am proud of how the testing phase went despite the adversity. Although the real classroom setup would have provided extremely beneficial information, I still ended up gaining a lot of insight from the process. This phase, with the uncontrollable events affecting it along the way, demonstrated my dedication and resilience to not only get my work done but to turn in something that I am proud of. Good design is valuable to our thinking because it can help generate new ideas in the world. When creativity, combining existing ideas and the process of design are fused in the right way, we are bound to invent new things and continue to improve upon existing things. Even if a design is not a life-changing invention, it still allows us to be creative and consider how products and ideas can be changed and improved upon which can lead to something profound and significant. The Stanford Model design process makes the act of designing so that it is not just a haphazard manner of creating but rather a well thought out process. Not to say that spontaneous design isn’t important because it certainly is valuable and plays a huge role in creating but, in general, if more people in the world had or were more proficient in the skills of empathizing with others, defining problems appropriately, ideating, prototyping and testing, more of our problems might be solved universally. References Duverneay, J. (2013, March 4). When to Test: Incorporating User Testing into Product Design. Retrieved April 17, 2020, from https://www.usertesting.com/blog/when-to-test-incorporating-usability-testing-into-product-design Stanford d.school. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2020, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/
0 Comments
The problem of practice that I ended with is very different than what I started with. Months ago, at the beginning of this extended assignment, there was some ambiguity going into this process. I thought my users were art educators in general and my problem of practice was extremely vague which makes sense considering I hadn’t even empathized with other users about the general issue I had come up with. My original problem of practice was as follows: “With over 500 students in the school, 24 classes total, 6 different classes a day, 3-5 different preps a day, 45 minute classes and 5 minutes between classes, the biggest problem of practice for me as an elementary Art teacher is material management.”
There was much to discover through each phase. Let’s start from the beginning, running through each part to get a more detailed look. Phase One - EMPATHY
For my empathy report, I needed to find out more about what other art teachers struggled with the most in terms of supply and material management. I created a survey that was sent out to many art educators. A majority were relatively experienced, having between 6-20 years. A solid 93% agreed or strongly agreed that material and supply management require a lot of time and effort on their part to do their job.
I asked many different questions but the clearest difficulty demonstrated through my survey (in the chart below) shows that 64% of those surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed with this statement: there is enough time between classes to get out and arrange necessary materials and supplies for the next class. None of those surveyed strongly agreed that there was sufficient time between classes.
The chart above reads left to right: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.
Furthermore, another chart showed that 72% agreed or strongly agreed that they could use some help getting out, distributing, setting up, cleaning and taking down materials and supplies.
Here, in this phase, it became obvious to me that those 5 or so minutes between classes caused a real issue with a majority of art teachers. Phase Two - DEFINE
I started off this unit by doing a 5 why’s activity and a why-how ladder. My 5 why’s lead to this final question: Why do art educators think it is important for their students to have the chance to experience different content?
Response (my root cause): Whether an art educator takes on more preps by choice or is simply assigned them by an administrator, most choose to use a wide range of materials and supplies in order to provide a well-rounded art curriculum to their students but feel like there is not enough time to get out, distribute, set up, clean up and take down materials and supplies. My why-how ladder was valuable in initiating the thought of using other technologies to help “buy” more time for setup and clean up between classes. You can see this thought in the bottom right hand corner in the picture below.
At this point in the process, I was starting to understand that high school and middle school art teachers weren’t really experiencing the same problem of practice as I was. They typically have less students than an elementary art teacher and their older students are able to be more independent with supplies. Because of this, I finalized the definition of my user as a person who works full time as an art educator at an elementary school. She/He teaches art to the entire school which, depending on the school, can be 500+ students. All of these students mean numerous classes/preps which require a significant amount of time planning and preparing for.
Furthermore, it was here, in the second stage of the creative design process, that I began to realize the true cause of my problem of practice. In my opinion, based on my research, the single most important difficulty in managing materials and supplies is the unbelievably small amount of time between classes where an art educator must completely switch materials from one class to another, multiple times a day. The goal at this point was to find different ways to maximize the use of this small amount of time in order to minimize stress and make the overwhelming task of material management way more manageable for an individual. Phase Three - Ideate
In this stage, I was able to brainstorm with colleagues. I met with all of the other elementary art educators within my district. I started by asking the question: What can we do to make swapping materials easier with the five minute time period between classes? My colleagues and I talked about it and wrote our answers down on post-it notes. Each idea has its pros and cons and I already implement some of the ideas into practice. You can see our ideas below.
After brainstorming with colleagues, I took the knowledge that my colleagues shared and did more thinking on my own. I wrote down a list of more ideas that branched off of other people’s ideas. Below, you will see a photo of the list I created that is a representation of my stream of consciousness on my problem of practice.
Over the course of a couple of days, I continued to brainstorm on my problem of practice. I used my cell phone 'Notes' application as a journal to keep track of any other ideas that struck me.
Phase Four - PROTOTYPE
At this point, I had finally chosen how I was going to help art educators "buy" more time for set up, clean up, and everything in between. What I have come up with is not a brand new concept but I think the idea of teaching other educators how to incorporate my idea is innovative and could potentially create a positive impact for teachers in all subject areas.
My idea is to create videos of an educator instructing a lesson, teaching an objective, or doing a demonstration which is meant to be played for students to watch in class. While the video is playing, the teacher has a couple of extra minutes to manage supplies and do whatever is necessary for the specific class at that time. The videos are not meant to be a replacement but rather an aide when a teacher is short on time. Watch the prototype video below.
This video is a screencast that I made using my laptop. This is an example of a video that I could play when one of my classes is beginning a self-portrait project. While the introductory video is playing, I would be able to swap out any materials I might need, clean up a mess from the previous class, send an urgent email, get out demonstration materials, etc. This video reviews a powerpoint that I would plan on showing students anyway so, in a way, I believe this is simply working smarter, not harder. When the video is over, I can continue teaching, do a demonstration, address any specific individual's needs, answer any questions and clarify as needed.
Phase Five - TEST
In order to test my prototype, I set up a version of my art classroom in my living room. I had my husband act as my students. I was testing to see if an educational video that I created can teach my students something specific, that I would be teaching them anyway, while simultaneously "buying" me more time for setup and cleanup of necessary materials from the previous and for the next class. I decided to do the observation method where I was the user. The video below is an example of how my prototype would work in a classroom setting. In the video, you will see two run throughs:
1. In the first, I have exactly 5 minutes (which is what I actually have between classes on a real school day) to get my to-do list done before my students walk in the door and I am expected to be ready to instruct. 2. In the second run through, I have the same 5 minutes but when students walk in, I gain an additional 4 minutes from my prototype video to get my to-do list done. Interestingly enough, in the second run through, I actually had time to add things to my to-do list! Prior to students coming in, I had a moment to check email, take a drink of water and mentally prepare myself for my next class. Even simply doing this testing in my living room proved to me that my prototype was relatively successful. Of course, that doesn't mean it was perfect; there are definitely things I would change and do differently next time. The prototype video seemed too long and probably would be a bit boring to some students. In my opinion, it wasn't that hard to create the video but it did take some time, energy, knowledge and resources that my users might not have or be interested in expending. However, as long as I am happy with how the video turned out, and if I am reusing the same or a similar lesson in the future, I can reuse these videos next year! Most importantly, I learned that although there are a few disadvantages to this process, I believe the time, energy and resources spent to make videos like this would be worth it in the end. |
AuthorArtist Archives
April 2020
Categories |