Top Ten Myths About Iterative Design in Education

1. Iterative design stages are fixed and if they skip one, students should go back do it again.
2. Iterative design means that teachers should specify how many “drafts” a student should complete, and have specific milestones for each draft or prototype.
3. Iterative design is essentially a skill review. It is a good way to find out if students actually learned skills that were taught on previous assignments by seeing if they can use them together in a larger project.
4. The process and steps of iterative design should be taught before any design actually begins. Students should be able to name and use the correct vocabulary before being allowed to do any design or construction.
5. Teachers should require documentation from students that shows the steps and thinking they went through at each stage of a project.
6. Iterative design takes a lot of time, so a good way to shortcut it is to tell the students how each step should look and what the intermediate products should be.
7. Iterative design means that you can’t assess student work, so should be combined with “real” assessment, like a multiple choice test.
8. Iterative design is something to do only after students complete real classroom work on the topic.
9. Students will just goof off if I don’t tell them exactly what to do at every stage.
10. Student won’t understand and will just beg me to tell them what to do next.