Design Thinking Compared to Teaching

Today, I learned about Design Thinking for my Springboard Career Track. I was surprised to know how much I already knew about it. Design Thinking is, by all means, how teachers design their classrooms.





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What is Design Thinking



It is a process for building a product. Design Thinking involves five steps:





EmpathizeDefineIdeateProtytypeTest



I’ll explain what each of these mean below, but before I do, I want to emphasize that these steps aren’t linear. Though you generally start with empathizing, you may jump around and return to steps.





Empathize



Ever try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when they were dealing with an issue? That’s the founding principle for designing a product.





To empathize, designers have to take several steps just to discover the problems that users might have.





Often teachers discover the problems with formal assessments (exams/quizzes), but there are other ways to informally assess a student. I can ask questions or hold discussions in class. I personally like to talk about things that seemingly have nothing to do with what we’re learning in class to see how students link the topic back. This helps me see who is capable of higher-level processing or where a student may struggle to do this.





By the way, empathy is a learned behavior. If you want to learn more about it, check out this video:











Define



After finding what users are struggling with, designers need to determine the problem. Once again, after evaluating all potential problems a user may have, designers have to buckle down and identify one major issue. When the problem is defined, they can move forward.





In the scientific method, this is the hypothesis. You use prior knowledge and data to determine the issue. This stage comes before planning a solution. That’s right. It’s important to find what needs to be solved before creating a product.





This can be the scary part of teaching. I often have to assume that I know a student’s strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes they’ll argue, “No, Mr. Ross. I’m good at this,” but my data proves otherwise. Therefore, I have to ignore what a student deems as their target area for growth and push them in the direction that I view best.





During this time, I have to ignore what the school wants from me and how they view student success. The define stage isn’t about the “company.” It’s about the user or (in my case) the student.





Ideate



(Why did they let designers coin a word?) This is the stage where other professionals join in to brainstorm ideas or solutions.





As a teacher, working with grade level team or interdisciplinary teams is a value because you can discuss particular students and share assumptions. If everyone has a positive view of that student, teachers can formulate strategies for the student.





In short, we share ideas!





Prototype



Eventually, something has to be built.





For designers, this means making an attempt to see if the assumptions were correct by putting a prototype in front of a customer and asking, “Did this help their problem?”





For teachers, prototyping involves creating targeted assignments and assessing the student’s progress. Then, asking, “Did this help solve the student’s problem?”





Test



If the prototype does help with the problem, the team can move on. Now, designers can test a more complex program or app. And teachers can test students using formal assessments.





What did I learn?



Nothing. I’ve been implementing Design Thinking all my life. Just kidding.





I learned that as a teacher, I should ask more questions when empathizing with my students. Also, I want to be more comfortable with making mistakes when assessing problems. With children, it’s easy to “panic” and fear that you’ve set them back by not pushing them forward. However, “failure” is a learning opportunity. If a student or design doesn’t improve, it’s back to the drawing board.

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Published on April 17, 2019 19:25
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