Reboot: latest Meetup, idea definition and experimenting with teacher-led

Notes from our recent virtual Meetup and developments in our thinking on how we might deliver Design Club remotely, enabling us to incorporate video and web monetisation.

The completed Miro board we worked on during the Meetup

It was great to see so many familiar faces at our Reboot Meetup on 28 October. The aim of the Meetup was to explore initial ideas for remote delivery of Design Club.

We kicked off with some background on Design Club (for newcomers) and moved on to an overview of Grant for the Web — a new fund to create better business models for the web (using open standards and built-in monetisation through an innovative technology called Coil).

Here are the slides.

Delivery ideas we explored

We’ve been funded by Grant for the Web to explore ways to develop content using video and web monetisation. We’ve had some ideas about how best to deliver this content, and we wanted to interrogate these with mentors.

We set up a Miro board for the Meetup. We split everyone into smaller groups and asked an experienced mentor to lead each group.

There were five ideas to explore:

1. Library of video tutorials — to guide people through activities
2. Remote facilitation (e.g. Zoom) — to get mentors to dial into a classroom
3. Livestream (e.g. YouTube) — to allow mentors to run scheduled clubs
4. Book a mentor — to allow teachers to call on mentors when needed
5. Digital design activities (e.g. Miro) — to let students collaborate online

Zoom Gallery view for the Meetup. It was great to see many familiar faces!

Breakout discussions

To start with, we asked groups to:

1. Share examples they’d seen of online creative projects
2. Share any progress they might have made in running a club remotely
3. General thoughts on running remote activities with children

This exercise revisited the central themes of our April Meetup.

Groups moved on to exploring their assigned remote delivery idea in more detail by answering two simple questions:

1. What might stop this from working?
2. What will help make this a success?

See what we did on the Miro board. We’re super grateful to Chris, Anne, Mina, Don, Geri and Daniel for facilitating the breakouts, and providing feedback to the main room afterwards.

High-level observations

Ideas that stood out:

• Offline — keep using printed activities, offline working and pen and paper.
• Balance — balance online with offline — “offline is creative, need to keep that vibe.”
• Tutorials — use tutorials combined with other delivery methods.
• Training teachers — train teachers to run sessions, build partnerships between teacher and mentor.
• Parent involvement — have parents in room with kids, guide parents to run activities.
• Testing — start small, try things out first, find something that works and build on it.

Concerns that stood out:

• Tech — internet connectivity, bandwidth issues, lack of hardware, call lag and harder to connect with younger kids.
• Video quality — lack of consistency, tone of voice, mixed production values and poor scripting.
• Interactions— harder to manage the class / group, build strong relationships and safeguard online.

Why mentors do Design Club:

• Working with kids — mentors like to be in the room with kids, building relationships, guiding and helping them with activities.
• Hands-on — Design Club offers a way for kids and mentors to use their hands to create physical things.

Research

Don has kindly offered to synthesise the conversation, and do some further research into what children, teachers and mentors need. He’ll share findings in January, when we’ll run another Meeup. (Sign up for an invite!)

Facilitators give feedback (clockwise from top left): Anne (remote facilitation), Don (livestream), Daniel (digital design activities) and Geri (book a mentor)

What happens next

The funding from Grant for the Web creates a brilliant opportunity. But it’s limited. In an ideal world, we’d like to run a few experiments and see what delivery methods work best. But these are outside the scope of our current funded project.

So, our challenge is to deliver design thinking projects to children and young people in a way that:

• Builds on existing strengths and resources
• Minimises behaviour change
• Still involves our brilliant mentors
• Stays true to our values

Delivery experiments

We do have a couple of experiments running.

• Our lovely Founding Supporters, Elsewhen, are running an adapted version of Design Club with students at School 21, remotely, using a mix of Zoom and Miro.
• Our fabulous mentor Mina and her weekend squad are looking into hosting a Saturday livestream event, possibly on YouTube.

It will be awesome to see how these go, and what we can learn.

Changes to resources

We plan to make some video tutorials. These will be scripted and designed to educate teachers about Design Club activities. They’ll introduce Design Club and the five stages of a design thinking project. We’ll be inviting mentors to contribute to these — sharing their own experience and examples (e.g. creating user personas for a specific project).

Changes to mentor involvement in schools

In addition to the tutorials, we’ll experiment with ways for teachers to “Book a mentor” via our website. Mentors would provide a photo and a few details (role, experience, interests, location, availability), and sessions could take place either online (via Zoom, Skype, etc) or in person (post lockdown). Teachers would be in control of the relationship, and the nature and depth of engagement. For example, they might want full support from one regular mentor throughout a project, or mix different mentors for diverse perspectives.

Changing to a teacher-led model

This means teachers will be initiating Design Club activities. Given the current situation, we feel this is the best way forward, for now.

Updating the website

We’ll be starting work on the website to communicate and bring together all these changes. We’ll also integrate web monetisation (Coil) messaging as part of this work.

Keeping the essence of Design Club

This plan retains what’s special about the learner experience: building relationships, creating and crafting. Classrooms are a ready-made environment for kids to work together and collaborate in person. Schools can buy workbooks from our shop, or print out worksheets from our resource hub, so children can continue to do most of their projects offline.

Mentors can still interact directly with children and young people (via a screen initially), but hopefully — once Covid restrictions ease — they’ll have established a relationship which means they’re welcome in the physical classroom. The option of shorter, dial-in sessions will also make it possible for weekend mentors to experience school-based activities.

Let us know what you think!