Problem of Practice 4/5: Prototyping Report

Thinking like a designer can transform the solutions we develop. Design thinking involves creating choices before choosing one solution as an iterative process for creative problem-solving. This is the 4th mode in my design thinking Problem of Practice (PoP).

In the previous report, I conducted a collaborative brainstorming session followed by an incubation session. The result was to generate a diverse pool of ideas that can address my PoP. Ideating has helped me initiate the 4th stage in the design process, which is building a rough draft of my design solution, or what is also known as a prototype. Take a look below to read my report.

Language is an essential medium to teaching and learning, therefore English Language Learners (ELL) find difficulty understanding theoretical concepts and making connections with real-life applications. My PoP is that teachers are using instructional materials that impose a language barrier for ELLs, which encourages them to memorize rather than understand scientific concepts.

My prototype is a result of thoughtful planning after meaningful rounds of generating ideas. The brainstorming and incubating sessions from mode 3 helped me visualize novel connections between my ideas by being able to jot them down and organize them into themes by color-coding them. After analyzing my ideas, I believed an effective solution to my PoP depended on creating differentiated learning materials catered to the language levels of the class, but still meeting the standards of the curriculum. In parallel, I wanted to motivate students to deepen their cognitive thinking and build connections with the content they are required to learn. Therefore, the ideas I focused on to develop into a solution for my PoP was to develop a playful experiential lesson that engages students to look beyond their language barriers and increase their curiosity to understand scientific concepts by exploring authentic real-life problems.

I chose to create a prototype using unit 5, lesson 1 which focuses on scientific concepts of one-dimensional motion. I created this experiential lesson so that students can experience the laws of physics and design to calculate the speed of moving objects. I thought that this activity provides students with the opportunity to apply scientific concepts first hand and learn from any challenges they might face. I believe that this would be more effective than solving lengthy word problems in their textbooks and I wanted students to learn by doing rather than reading. The instruction sheet includes pictorial representations of science concepts along with short sentences that meet the Lexile level of students in the class in order to help eliminate any language barriers. In addition, I wanted to incorporate the 'social media language' consisting of symbols and emoticons that students are familiar with to reduce the word count and help students visualize the text.

In order to motivate students, I added a gamification component that incorporates rules of play and a star/badge system to reduce the fear of grades and a wrong or right mindset. The introduction that would be given to the students would be:

Badges can only be collected once you complete a mission which shows that you have understood the lesson. Each lesson will have a specific badge according to the science concepts you are learning. The Badgedex shows the full collection. Along the way, you will also be able to collect stars that can be used for special gifts.

Below is a prototype of an experiential lesson that I created to address my PoP.

Instruction Sheet

Badgedex

My biggest takeaway from completing mode 4 of my PoP is that learning is truly effective when you start doing. Initially, I spent a long time passively staring at my ideation boards trying to come up with the perfect solution. Once I started building a prototype, I realized that my ideas evolved and had more meaning when they were brought to life. I also started to believe that design thinking is not a linear process because I did not only use insights from my ideation sessions but also referred back to my empathy report.