Design Thinking in the Virtual Classroom
It’s been about a month since schools have moved from business-as-usual to remote learning. The most obvious thing to do? Teach classes the same way except online, which means 7 hours of screen time a day for students. The next alternative? A giant packet of worksheets for students to work through until summertime.
But some bold teachers have been using the cancellation of standardized tests and the move to distance learning as an opportunity to explore innovative ways of teaching & learning. One set of those teachers is Jill Hyatt and Kristy Porter in Meadville, PA. After attending our COVID-19 Design Challenge webinar (find the recording and slides here), Jill implemented design challenges with her high school and middle school students to stoke their creativity in a time when we can all use a little more hope.
Teachers like Jill and Kristy are willing to be bold risk-takers and are pivoting from traditional textbook and worksheet learning to taking this time to grow their students as innovators and changemakers.
In order to bring design thinking opportunities to their students, Jill and Kristy hosted a 90-minute session with a group of 18 high school students to tackle one of the challenges we posed at the COVID-19 Design Challenge webinar.
To start, they chose the challenge of having fun while staying home.
They used Zoom to host the virtual session, and started by using breakout rooms to pair up the students to interview each other about challenges they were experiencing in their transition to distance learning.
After the interviews, Jill & Kristy brought all of the students back together into a single Zoom, and had them use Mural (a digital whiteboard tool) to share creative ideas to tackle the challenges they heard.
Turns out, a lot of the students were sharing similar problems at home, whether that was disruptive siblings, limited technology access, or lack of motivation. This helped the students be more vulnerable with each other by recognizing similarities in their situations. They were eager to share creative ideas to help their classmates out.
After they brainstormed, students were put back into larger breakout rooms of 6 classmates each to sketch or prototype their ideas. They shared ideas like “Lit Cat Videos” an idea for one student to show her love of reading and spend more time with her beloved cats by creating videos of her cats performing key scenes from classic literature (or “lit”) books. The students went nuts and called it “a million-dollar idea.”
The wild ideas kept the group energized and Porter shared: “The students had so much enthusiasm about each others’ ideas that it got me excited, too!” By the end, students were asking for a second session. As homework, Porter tasked the students to interview one family member to find even more needs around the home, a great chance to build in a lesson in empathy.
Design thinking can bring some much needed levity and empowerment to students who might feel like they don’t have much agency at all during a time like this.
When hosting virtual design thinking, some things to consider:
- Remind your students to sign on with their computers not just call in with their phones so they can have the full interactive experience with Mural and face-to-face interviews with their peers.
- Build in chances for students to get up and move! For example, give students 5 minutes to get up and make a prototype using anything they find around the house. Running around the house will get their creative juices flowing!
- Start with a wacky creative thinking exercise to get the students ready to tap into their creative side. Something like the introduction to our COVID-19 Design Challenge webinar might be a good place to start!
- Partner with other teachers to try something new. It will help spark ideas and give you confidence to take more risks with your teaching during this uncertain time. Porter shares: “I encourage teachers to reach out and bounce ideas off of other colleagues. Even just a 30-minute phone call can spark entire units of great learning!”
