An Indepth Look into Design Thinking, PBL and the 4C's
An Example
Through this video students are taken on a virtual tour of Australia Zoo. They are shown the lions and polar bears and extra attention has been drawn to each environment and how the specific enclosures meet the needs of the animal. The students are then introduced to the zoo’s latest edition, two red panda’s. Here the narrator falls short in her knowledge and requests the students help to research about the new animals and then follow through with a proposed design for the enclosure. Thus creating a problem the students must take it upon themselves to solve.
This project provides students with a range of learning opportunities. Students are first required to research and gather information about the Red Panda (an animal purposefully chosen as it generally unknown yet quite adorable). The area the Panda’s live in and the environment it is surrounded by will be of extra importance as this links directly to the design solution. As is typical of project based learning, the teacher would take on more of a guiding role, although as these are younger children it is understandable that they would need more guidance than usual. With regards to research the class should be introduce to search engines and together students and teacher would research not only information about the Red Panda’s but explore what other zoos have done to accommodate them. This providing the students with design solutions to compare their own by or to improve upon. Once students judge that enough information has been gathered they need to effectively decide on materials, layout and the structure of their enclosure. This would be presented through various methods so as to take advantage of the technology available to the class. Firstly at the planning stage two labelled drawings would be completed; one of the top view of the enclosure and one from the perspective of a visitor to the zoo. With regards to their planning the teacher should particularly draw the students’ attention to, the safety of the animals and the visitors to the zoo, also the temperament of the Red Panda and what that means for their design of the enclosure. As with all areas of design, at the completion of their planning students should be advised to return to the original problem and assess how well their solution fits the design brief. The next stage would be to get the students to experiment with clay and cardboard, testing which method would best suit a 3D depiction of their design. Finally the students take their own photographs of their clay or cardboard models, label them digitally and then “email” them to the zoo. This complete project involving various processes, technologies and skillsets.
As mentioned this concept of designing a new enclosure works upon the idea of Project Based Learning. Project based learning revolves around the 4C’s: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2010). This allows students to become communicative, creative and develop practical thinking as they are engaged in active inquiry (Solomon, Allen & Resta, 2003). Student communication is evident throughout the project, from the moment they watch the video, they are listening, separating message from medium, processing what the real problem is. The video would actively engage their attention with the catchy tune, followed by real footage of exciting, interesting animals! The voice-over talks to the kids and on their level creating a story for them to follow and hopefully respond to when it appeals for their help.
Collaboratively, the class would work on certain parts together, as mentioned this age is slightly too young to explore and research solely on their own and so some heavy guidance from the teacher is to be expected. Class discussions would also feature prominently as questions about materials and resources are bound to arise. PBL is a constructivist based learning method, students are continually building upon their own and others learning. This is why this collaboration is of vital importance as Westwood (2006) states, students connect new learning to their past experiences and prior knowledge, they increase self-direction and motivation, since students are responsible for their own learning, and they utilise various modes of communication and presentation.
Critical thinking and creativity are actively involved in the product part of this problem. The process of designing the new enclosure involves a lot of aspects for the students to consider, they have to make connections between the information they find and a physical structure that is of their own design. As the solution is open ended, the possibilities are endless and there really is no one right answer. So they are not creatively constricted in any way. The video also provides them with countless clues and ideas to build upon, as it depicts action footage of zoo enclosures and visual examples of how to incorporate animal and visitor needs.
Simultaneously through completing this project students are actively engaging the in the design process. As the Australian Curriculum states, in Design and Technologies students are actively engaged in the processes of creating design solutions for personal, domestic, commercial and global settings for sustainable and preferred futures (ACARA, 2014). This project relates specifically to design thinking: discovery, where upon the students learn about the problem and discuss and research information. Ideation, the generating and comparing of ideas. Production, where the ideas are refines and a solution is agreed upon to produce. Finally, evaluation, a comparison of the final solution to the original problem, so as to assess the success of the outcome. The focus of my “Help Australia Zoo” project within the curriculum is its process and production skills whereby students visualise, generate, develop and communicate design ideas through describing, drawing and modelling (ACTDEP006). The elaborations then involve comparing and contrasting features of existing products to provide new ideas and communicating design ideas by modelling, producing and labelling two-dimensional drawings using a range of technologies to show different views.
This project provides students with a range of learning opportunities. Students are first required to research and gather information about the Red Panda (an animal purposefully chosen as it generally unknown yet quite adorable). The area the Panda’s live in and the environment it is surrounded by will be of extra importance as this links directly to the design solution. As is typical of project based learning, the teacher would take on more of a guiding role, although as these are younger children it is understandable that they would need more guidance than usual. With regards to research the class should be introduce to search engines and together students and teacher would research not only information about the Red Panda’s but explore what other zoos have done to accommodate them. This providing the students with design solutions to compare their own by or to improve upon. Once students judge that enough information has been gathered they need to effectively decide on materials, layout and the structure of their enclosure. This would be presented through various methods so as to take advantage of the technology available to the class. Firstly at the planning stage two labelled drawings would be completed; one of the top view of the enclosure and one from the perspective of a visitor to the zoo. With regards to their planning the teacher should particularly draw the students’ attention to, the safety of the animals and the visitors to the zoo, also the temperament of the Red Panda and what that means for their design of the enclosure. As with all areas of design, at the completion of their planning students should be advised to return to the original problem and assess how well their solution fits the design brief. The next stage would be to get the students to experiment with clay and cardboard, testing which method would best suit a 3D depiction of their design. Finally the students take their own photographs of their clay or cardboard models, label them digitally and then “email” them to the zoo. This complete project involving various processes, technologies and skillsets.
As mentioned this concept of designing a new enclosure works upon the idea of Project Based Learning. Project based learning revolves around the 4C’s: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2010). This allows students to become communicative, creative and develop practical thinking as they are engaged in active inquiry (Solomon, Allen & Resta, 2003). Student communication is evident throughout the project, from the moment they watch the video, they are listening, separating message from medium, processing what the real problem is. The video would actively engage their attention with the catchy tune, followed by real footage of exciting, interesting animals! The voice-over talks to the kids and on their level creating a story for them to follow and hopefully respond to when it appeals for their help.
Collaboratively, the class would work on certain parts together, as mentioned this age is slightly too young to explore and research solely on their own and so some heavy guidance from the teacher is to be expected. Class discussions would also feature prominently as questions about materials and resources are bound to arise. PBL is a constructivist based learning method, students are continually building upon their own and others learning. This is why this collaboration is of vital importance as Westwood (2006) states, students connect new learning to their past experiences and prior knowledge, they increase self-direction and motivation, since students are responsible for their own learning, and they utilise various modes of communication and presentation.
Critical thinking and creativity are actively involved in the product part of this problem. The process of designing the new enclosure involves a lot of aspects for the students to consider, they have to make connections between the information they find and a physical structure that is of their own design. As the solution is open ended, the possibilities are endless and there really is no one right answer. So they are not creatively constricted in any way. The video also provides them with countless clues and ideas to build upon, as it depicts action footage of zoo enclosures and visual examples of how to incorporate animal and visitor needs.
Simultaneously through completing this project students are actively engaging the in the design process. As the Australian Curriculum states, in Design and Technologies students are actively engaged in the processes of creating design solutions for personal, domestic, commercial and global settings for sustainable and preferred futures (ACARA, 2014). This project relates specifically to design thinking: discovery, where upon the students learn about the problem and discuss and research information. Ideation, the generating and comparing of ideas. Production, where the ideas are refines and a solution is agreed upon to produce. Finally, evaluation, a comparison of the final solution to the original problem, so as to assess the success of the outcome. The focus of my “Help Australia Zoo” project within the curriculum is its process and production skills whereby students visualise, generate, develop and communicate design ideas through describing, drawing and modelling (ACTDEP006). The elaborations then involve comparing and contrasting features of existing products to provide new ideas and communicating design ideas by modelling, producing and labelling two-dimensional drawings using a range of technologies to show different views.