IA iWeek 2016: Designing a Better Cohort
What’s iWeek?
The first week of every year in the Innovation Academy, we start off with a warm-up project called iWeek. The objective of this week-long challenge is for the cohort to get to know itself; to see how each person fits into the group, and to get a short preview of what our future projects will look like. This year, the project consisted on finding what we value as a cohort and design systems, behaviors and spaces to embrace these values in the class. It would be a friendly competition between the two IA cohorts.
We started off with each person reading a different text about effective learning and writing down the values that were important in those texts, in addition to our personal ones. Then we wrote them down on the board and erased the repeated ones. We realized that a lot of the values we had were related and fell under the same umbrella. For example, trust and respect could easily be sub-values of cooperation. Thus, the four “umbrella values” (now called “main values”) ended up being self, collaboration, feedback, and purposeful work.
Shortly after, we came to the conclusion that we would scrap behaviors and stick to systems and spaces, because behaviors would be a result of those systems and spaces. Then we divided into four groups (one for each value) and started coming up with ideas.
Purposeful Work: We are devoted to and engaged in our work and motivate ourselves to make it of high quality.
Claudia, Franco and Valeria came together in the group, three totally different mentalities with somewhat clashing personalities. We discussed the values the whole entire class had come up with, strategizing and thinking about what systems could be implemented. We came up with five values within Purposeful work: passion, motivation, depth, direction and quality. Now our only problem was to come up with a system and space we could implement.
After talking for some time we had only come up with one idea based on the article A Solution for Poor Mothers, When Expensive Hospital Incubators Won’t Do; “The team then worked to turn these insights into innovation. They did this by cycling rapidly through four or five rounds of rough prototyping to develop a simple but powerful solution.”, this gave us the idea to have the students share the advances made in any project with peers to not only improve the quality of their work but be able to get feedback from them (as in things that could go wrong, things that we could improve, etc.).
We had ran out of ideas that we could prototype when Franco asked us a question; “Where do you work the best in?”. For many different reasons — comfort, less distractions, fewer people, whatever it was — we all came up with the same answer: home. We decided that we could possibly make the IA room more like home by bringing things that reminded each of us of it. We brought in plants, blankets, in between other things that could possibly make us feel at home. By the second week (either because we were more comfortable in this new environment, because we had a better idea of what was going on with this project and our tasks, or because of the recent slight change in our environment) but it seemed that people had become better accustomed and were in task for longer, thus working better.
Looking up ideas for helping concentration Franco came upon scents, one of them being coffee. We tested this by brewing coffee and placing the cup in the class. Everybody seemed to enjoy the scent — even though it wasn’t exactly long lasting — therefore we couldn’t determine exactly whether or not it helped. Something that did help was taking a break every hour or so, stretching, walking, going on a water break to wake us up for a quick couple minutes and then come back to class refreshed.
Coming back to class we were greeted with “White Noise for Homework & School”, it was what we had changed the background music to. Having this instead of music had definitely increased our concentration, we couldn’t really notice the noise when we were working but once we turned it off there was a huge difference in the ambiance. People seemed really bothered when the noise was turned off, as being suddenly hit by an abnormal wave of complete silence. The sound filled in the silence that was in the classroom but was not as distracting as the music was.
We had also come up with an idea to stop distractions within the class, one of them was to put our phones away in a tray for the rest of the class, which was definitely not successful because of the fact that people would use them to hear music, talk within the IA whatsapp chat, etc.
Most of our prototypes did show positive results or some kind of success when it came to working purposefully, all of them would have to have been carried long term to actually see the effects that they had.
Feedback: We give constructive feedback that challenges ideas and confronts the facts, but also congratulates valuable work.
Allegra, Lucas, and Einar were in charge of feedback. They thought that feedback should be not only verbal, and should not be reserved for IA matters. It should be something easy to receive and give regularly.
This group came up with an idea that involved both a system and space. Every student would have a binder with their nametag located in the back shelf of the classroom, where they can put any work, not necessarily related to IA (blogs, IB homework, college applications, etc.). This way, other students can go to the binders, check the work of their peers, and write feedback on the paper (anonymously or not). Then they take a small flag and put it inside the binder to indicate that they have given feedback for whatever is inside. Students can leave their papers in the binder as longs as they want; the longer they leave it, the more feedback they will receive.
This was prototyped by sending a survey to the group via facebook. Everyone said that they were willing to give feedback to others in the IA and agreed that the space was effective. The responses for how often they plan on requesting feedback ranged from once a week to once a month.
However, we saw that only half of students had responded the questions. This meant that we still needed to work on developing the culture to give feedback without being an obligation or needing feedback in return. We changed the system so that students put their work in the binder of the person they want to get feedback from instead of their own, and after giving feedback, that person will return the paper to the original student’s binder. The binders now also serve for leaving cards, gifts, candy, etc. for someone’s birthday, or as a thank-you to someone who gave you feedback on a paper. Also, Mr. Topf will now have a binder as well, so you can request feedback from him or leave a note giving an idea for an assignments.
For another system the group wanted to do a web page dedicated for giving feedback among the students. The idea was that every person would have to write 2 sentences of feedback to every student once a week, and every week it would be turn for a different student to write.
The group decided to not use these system because everyone said it was to structured , which turned out to be right. And the group did not want feedback to be that structured, it should be more free to give and receive at anytime.
Collaboration: We respect and trust one another, have organized systems of communication and work as a whole to solve problems bigger than ourselves.
For collaboration, Inés suggested a system of communication that has been in place in the 10th grade cohort last year: a small meeting at the start of the day where each group would update the class on where they were at and say if they needed any help. Frances and Chiara, meanwhile, both suggested similar systems that also encompassed another value: having a designated space in the class to discuss feedback.
We decided to combine both ideas: we moved the tables to have more space in the back and center of the room, where we put three feedback circles: coffee tables surrounded by puffs. At the start of the day, each group will give an update to the class, saying where they’re at and if they need any feedback on anything. Then groups that need feedback can arrange a time to meet at one of the feedback circles and help each other; this way, they can get fresh insight from someone from a different group that hasn’t been involved in their project. Of course, the feedback circles don’t have to be used exclusively for this system; their are useful any time a small group needs to meet.
Secondly, it was suggested that we take out one of the whiteboards and paint the wall with chalkboard paint (paint that allows you to draw on the board like a chalkboard) or idea paint (the whiteboard equivalent). We also pasted the values on the wall so we would always keep them in mind. The idea of rearranging the tables to be closer together (we don’t have that many students and it would be easier to have class discussions if we weren’t so spread out) was scrapped since we share this classroom with a class that has 18 people, and the tables have to fit all of them.
Finally, there were a few partly recreational systems that the cohort was particularly enthusiastic about. Since a big part of collaboration is trust, and trust involves getting to know each other, we decided we would have a monthly lunch or dinner outside of school as a class. We also wanted to celebrate each person’s individuality, so we came up with a birthday system: you have to buy a cake for whoever’s birthday comes before yours, and we would have everyone’s pictures on the wall so you can see whose is coming up. Lastly, having someone different every day be in charge of bringing food to the class would symbolize that we each have a role and count on each other to fulfill it.
We prototyped these feedback circles by asking the groups to work in them. Then we asked them how they felt working there; if they were comfortable, if they were useful, if they preferred this over the old arrangement of the classroom. We made small posters for collaboration and self and pasted them on the wall. Since they were near the corner, though, almost no one noticed them, which meant that we would have to change their location. And we prototyped the birthday idea by putting a small card and a cupcake in Allegra’s binder and she was very happy when she found them, proving this to be a success.
Self: We understand and trust ourselves in order to achieve success and accomplish personal goals, as well as to contribute positively to the cohort
Ariana, Mathias and Belen started brainstorming different ways of implementing a system that would help improve the learning environment by defining what “self” really was. When we are talking about “self” we mean a person’s honesty, awareness of themselves and others, a person who is aware of their personal goals, someone who is self- accountable, humble, knows when to take a break and is a person of integrity.
We all had the same words to try to integrate into a sentence that defined what they really meant; yet, on Friday, we all showed up with completely different approaches, some referring to self as a way to treat others respectfully in order to have a healthier work environment, whilst some saw it as a way to improve oneself by following the traits mentioned above. Consequently, when all of our cards were laid out on the table, we were determined to merge all of our ideas thus coming up with a system that integrates all of our ideas.
We have decided that in order to have a successful system each individual must first: develop a personal goal to develop his/her learning and improve the environment as a whole, for example: “Give constructive feedback that helps others improve.”
Once the goal is created, it will be printed out and placed bellow the person’s picture. This will serve the purpose of being a constant reminder to everyone of their goals, and their classmates goals to help them succeed. Then, once a month, each person will create a survey asking others how they feel the person completed their goal; the evaluator will then answer with a small paragraph and a 1–10 rating. Each person (student a) will assess someone else’s survey (student b) at random, yet that person (student a) can choose to evaluate someone else as well.
The system of the bell originated because the classroom felt there should be a way to be able to share our accomplishments in or out the class.The bell consists in a very simple task,ring the bell when things go well.The bell will be located on the table next to the entrance.Ringing the bell unpurposefully will make you have time to cool off and stop the nonsense.This system is going to help the environment of the class since it helps build up unity and trust by letting students share their positive situations.
Window of opportunity, a system we created to show our merits to the people from the cohort and even outside the IA community. The plan is basically to post pictures of our accomplishments on the window facing the outside of the IA room. Let’s say “Student A” is working on an internship at the Westin, that is most definitely an accomplishment that he/she is proud of, thus a picture of westins symbol will be posted on the wall to accentuate on that person’s success. The goal is to fill out the whole window with pictures of accomplishments by the end of the year.
Being a part of a community where we are constantly judged by naysayers that believe that we don’t work well and we are labeled as “lazy” it is important to prove them otherwise, not by telling them what we accomplish, but by showing them instead.
Now what?
We are confident that the values we set, the systems we designed, and the spaces we created will help us work better as a cohort and also at an individual level. We have emphasized what IA really means to us through this project, and we also got to know each other’s strengths. Now, we are excited to see how it turns out when we implement our ideas in our future projects.
