Design Thinking: Lessons for the Classroom

Much has been written about changing role of the teacher from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side." Design thinking, which is a dynamic, creative and collaborative approach to problem solving, presents a unique model for educators who wish to facilitate from within the class, rather than impart knowledge to it.

The Design Thinking Process

While design thinking has its roots in the innovation/design sector, the process itself can be used anywhere. Indeed, it is a great tool for teaching 21st century skills, as participants must solve problems by finding and sorting through information, collaborating with others, and iterating their solutions based on real world, authentic experience and feedback. (It is also a great tool to develop and run a school, but that's a different post for a different day.)

I had the good fortune to participate in a collaborative workshop at the Big Ideas Fest, where we practiced design thinking with about 12 other educators over a three-day period. The idea was to give us a first-hand experience with design thinking, and to demonstrate how the model could work within the classroom.

Practitioners of design thinking have different steps depending on their needs. At BIF2011, we used these steps:

1) Identify Opportunity
2) Design
3) Prototype
4) Get Feedback
5) Scale and Spread
6) Present

In design thinking, you work through the steps together in small groups (or "Collabs" as they were called at BIF2011). Our task was to explore the question: How might we create ways to assess learning geared to making tangible progress toward meaningful goals?

With driving question in hand, each Collab is led by a trained facilitator. There are basic ground rules for working together (like saying "yes, and" rather than "yes, but" when disagreeing with someone), and using elements from improv comedy to help maintain a culture of positivity, risk-taking, support and flexibility.

This is important, as the goal is to break through the negative thinking that plagues the big, thorny issues, and to come up with one prototype idea for solving one aspect of the problem.

This right here is another novel idea! We're not tasked with fixing the whole system. This is an approach positing that small changes in the right places can have big impacts on outcome.

Six Design Thinking Steps

To solve these problems, we follow this six-step format from design thinking:

Step 1: Identify Opportunity

To deepen our understanding of the issues surrounding inadequate assessment of 21st century skills, our cohort split into two groups, each of which interviewed two educators: a public school teacher who wanted to assess soft skills in addition to state standards; and an independent school teacher who wanted a means of assessing kids that didn't interrupt their learning.

These interviews gave our group a specific goal: What system or product could we come up with to meet the needs of these two educators in assessing 21st century skills?

Step 2: Design Process

Here, we reviewed the stories in Step 1 and brainstormed solutions. We needed to come up with an assessment idea that was accurate and authentic, and it had to provide meaningful data to real world public school educators. With a "no idea is too stupid" mantra, we wrote brainstorms on sticky notes and posted them on a whiteboard. By the end of this process, we began to see themes emerge: it should give students feedback about where they are lacking and where they need to go; it should also be student-centered, longitudinal, with real time feedback. We organized the sticky notes into these bigger themes to prep for tomorrow.

Step 3: Prototype Phase

Next, we review the themes and select one to prototype. This prototype need not solve all of the problems, just one aspect of the problem voiced by one of the speakers in Step 1. (Note the incredible discipline intrinsic in this process. At this point, we are focusing on one solution to one aspect of one problem.)

Our idea is an assessment "dashboard" called iGPS. This device would assess student progress much the same way a GPS in the car works; it pinpoints a student's current skill level, identifying target skill level along with specific waypoints to keep the student on the path to achieving the stated goal/skill level.

We used paper, markers, pipe cleaners and glue to make a prototype of our idea, which looked like a Googlemap from "where I am" to "where I need to be" plotted along a route that intersects specific skills. It was rough, but it communicated the concept.

Step 4: Feedback

Over lunch, all groups shared their prototypes to a panel of experts for feedback. All groups got to see everyone's presentations. Most prototypes were digital software tools, though not all.

Two experts from two different stakeholder groups offered their feedback: A) An educator who was looking for ways to make the idea more useful for a real-world classroom setting, and B) a social investor, who was looking to see if there was a viable market, and if the product would make a viable business.

Step 5: Scale and Spread

Taking the feedback we received, we hone in even further on our prototype. To do this, our team breaks into four subgroups to address the questions raised. How can this assess both individual and group work? How does a student earn points (their quantifiable score)? What does the product itself look like? And finally, assuming our product is successful as an assessment tool for 21st century skills, what's the best way to market it to district administrators who will make the choice to adopt it? We answer these questions and quickly re-prototype to include these points.

Step 6: Present

Most of the time, we go to these conferences and get fired up about all the great ideas there, and then we leave and nothing changes. The Big Ideas Fest culminated with a surprise. Three out of nine projects were selected to participate in the Big Ideas Fest in Beta, a new program which offers support to bringing these ideas to fruition. And furthermore, ISKME, the sponsor of the event, received a $50,000 matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support three groups with additional design workshops, access to ISKME's networks, services and other resources to help incubate their ideas.

So, after a grand total of six hours' total collaboration time, each of the nine groups had come up with some great prototypes, and three were going to get some support to build their prototypes into working products.

Are you using aspects of design thinking now? Or do you feel that design thinking might have a use in your classroom or school? How might it work?