Project Overview

Authors: Miaojun Xu, with Yu Zhao, GyuEun Park, and AnnaB

Problem Statement

Project-based learning has always been the value of Kentucky Avenue School. Documentation and reflection are two central topics when it comes to project-based learning. Addressing the problem of reflection and documentation in this context can make the school visible to the public and help students gain metacognitive learning skills.

In our discovery research phase, we identified two main problems facing the key stakeholders — teachers and students. We found that teachers struggle to integrate documentation into the workflow of the classroom due to time and attention constraints. Additionally, students’ approach to reflection is cursory and lacks intrinsic motivation. They perceive reflection and writing as stressful and just another school work.

Consequently, we propose our problem statement as the following:

How might we align students intrinsic motivations with the learning goals in the context of problem-based learning?

Concept Vision Statement

Based on our research, we want to focus on students’ reflection and create the following concept vision:

By tapping students’ intrinsic motivation to reflect through scaffolding, visualization, and customization, students find documentation and reflection rewarding, integrated, and natural.

Through this experience, students will be able to better practice their metacognitive thinking, deepen their understanding of what and how they learnt in previous projects, and transfer related knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

Learning Outcome Indicators

Students motivation can be measured through interviews, discussions, or formative assessments.

There are 5 intended learning outcomes that can be supported by our solution:

• Lifelong learning
• Knowledge integration
• Greater understanding
• Revision and iteration
• Soliciting explanations

They can be measured through interviews or assessing reflections in terms of 4 aspects:

• Knowledge integration
• Understanding
• Revision and iteration
• Quality of explanation

A sample rubric for assessing knowledge integration is: “The reflection articulates multiple connections between this learning experience and content from other courses, past learning, life experiences and/or future goals.”

The success of user experience can be measured in terms of time spent on each step and the retention rate.

Process Overview

We adopted a human-centered design process in tackling the design problem. Our approach can be synthesized into the double-diamond diagram.