Barcelona, June 3rd, 2017

Helping teachers to think about their design problem: a pilot study to stimulate

design thinking

Hernández-Leo D, Agostinho S, Beardsley M, Bennett S, Lockyer L. Helping teachers to think about their design problem: a pilot study to stimulate design thinking. Paper

presented at: 9th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies EDULEARN17; 2017 July 3-5; Barcelona, Spain, pp. 5681-5690. 

Open access: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/32247

Learning design / Design for learning

n  Supporting teachers in defining the best possible conditions for students’ to learn (representations, sharing, interpretation for software systems)

—  Methodologies, languages, tools…

—  Potential for sharing

•  Complex process, many factors to consider •  Observed that teachers work as designers, even if they

don’t consider their work in terms of design

Better support to educators’ design thinking process

http://ilde.upf.edu/about/

Integrated Environment for Learning Design

(Co-)author Implement (instantiate + deploy)

Explore /Investigate / (Co-)conceptualize

Evaluate

Produce  a  detailed,  formal  and  reusable  defini4on  of  a  learning  design  

Apply  an  authored  learning  design  using  a  specific  VLE,  a  par4cular  group  of  students  and  set  of  tools  

Work  on/with  ideas  for  design,  e.g.  crea4on  of  representa4ons  of    design  elements  and  their  interconnec4ons,  understanding  of  the  context  and  expected  users  

Learning design lifecycle

Learning design tools in ILDE

-  Hernández-Leo, D., Asensio-Pérez, J.I., Derntl, M., Prieto, L.P., Chacón, J., (2014) ILDE: Community Environment for Conceptualizing, Authoring and Deploying Learning Activities. In: Proceedings of 9th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2014, Graz, Austria, pp. 490-493.

Need of support for “problem definition”

•  Support to the initial phase of identifying a design problem

•  Problem Generation Tool (20 questions, 3 foci)

Understand the nature of the design problem and your goals (Q1-7):

Sample questions: What kind of problem is this? Why is this design being done? What initial ideas do you have?

Map your context (Q8-15):

Sample questions: Who are the students? How will the course be taught? Who will teach in this course?

Plan your design approach (Q16-20):

Sample questions: What do you need to produce? What preparation do you have to do? What is your initial plan or steps you will follow for your design process?

     

Problem Generation Tool in ILDE

Pilot preliminary evaluation

•  Eight participants, already familiar with ILDE

•  Between 1-5 years of teaching experience

•  A morning workshop:

•  Introduction to the workshop

•  Thinking about a scenario

•  Thinking “openly” about the problem they aim to solve in their scenario (documenting in ILDE – open conceptualization)

•  Thinking using the Problem Generation Tool in ILDE

•  Data: Artifacts produced in ILDE, responses to a questionnaire, observations

     

Results

•  Findings provided as descriptive key themes

•  Marta elaborated on the design problem by focusing on the solution

•  Kenet’s design problem description become somewhat clearer but many questions were not answered

•  Lara elaborated on the design problem, presented a solution, and suggested ideas to evaluate the solution

•  Sia provided little elaboration of the design problem

•  Antonio elaborated on her design problem by providing student details and ideas for a solution

•  Cross analysis identifying the most useful questions, those not clearly understood, additional questions suggested by participants

     

Summary of results

•  Participants found the Problem Generation Tool helpful

•  The level of perceived usefulness by question varied across participants, while a few questions were not sufficiently clear and need to be revised.

•  Overall, there was evident elaboration of the participants’ design problems thus suggesting design thinking was stimulated and identification of the design problems scaffolded.

     

Conclusions

•  Educators’ design thinking: Support to generating the design problem

•  Problem Generation Tool, in the context of ILDE (Integrated Learning Design Environment)

•  Preliminary study,

•  Receptiveness to use this form of design support

•  Deeper investigations needed

     

davinia.hernandez-­‐leo@upf.edu

Hernández-Leo D, Agostinho S, Beardsley M, Bennett S, Lockyer L. Helping teachers to think about their design problem: a pilot study to stimulate design thinking. Paper presented at: 9th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies EDULEARN17; 2017 July 3-5; Barcelona, Spain, pp. 5681-5690.