As the school year began, we wanted to not only directly teach specific elements of the Design Thinking process but also intentionally develop associated skills that would allow students to more effectively engage with the our Design Thinking Model here at Parker. Some of those associated skills include: Collaboration and Effective Communication skills along with developing empathy as it is the primary driver of Design Thinking. We intentionally develop these skills because it is those skills that will allow students to more effectively use the design thinking process to solve various problems and challenges presented to them in the variety of disciplines throughout their school year.
The use of mini lessons to teach these skills and concepts can be viewed as building blocks, strengthening the students abilities to apply this knowledge in a variety of ways. One of our first mini lessons involved students practicing collaborative and effective communication skills by working in small groups to solve a problem presented to them with a variety of constraints and boundaries. Students were asked to build bridges from one of our classroom workbenches to another workbench. During this one-hour work period, students were given time limits on brainstorming periods, designing periods, and building periods. To highlight the importance of having a well designed plan and staying focused even in difficult or stressful situations we periodically presented distractions such as playing music or implementing a “no-talking period” which allowed for some very insightful reflections at the conclusion of the design challenge.
We used another mini lesson used to directly teach empathy, which involved students again working in groups, using their newly acquired collaboration and communication skills to build products based on the needs of other students. Each group was first asked to write a short description of a product without specifically naming the product that would help meet a need of the group. The groups were then given 10-15 minutes at each table where they read over other groups descriptions and built a product based on the needs of the other groups. Each group placed their product in a box and moved onto the next groups description. By the end of the work period, each group had three products in their box, made by other groups based on the short description they earlier wrote. As each group opened their box, they noticed that some of products were similar and some were very different. This allowed for students to discuss why they made their product in that specific way based on descriptions provided while also highlighting that people view things in different ways and that to show empathy you must be able to view things from the perspective of others. Each group then selected the product that best met their need and the winning group was able to explain how they came to that design. The biggest take away for the students based on their reflections was that the most successful groups in this mini lesson were those that were able to think like the other groups, viewing the need from anothers perspective and showing empathy.