Successful design thinking workshop prototyping a new distance learning course

Follow-up to Design thinking workshop to prototype a new distance learning course from Inspires Learning - Robert O'Toole

It worked! It worked just as planned! We now have an initial lo-fi prototype of the distance learning course to show to the rest of the team. The structure was perfect, with the addition of using a long whiteboard in the CAPITAL Rehearsal Room at Warwick, upon which we posted out fictional students. One half of the whiteboard contained profiles of the students before they would start the course. The other end contained statements about how they would change and what they would achieve by doing the course. We then created the prototype course timeline on the floor. This helped to make it tangible, communicable, contentious and testable. A video walkthrough was created (i'll add that when I get the all clear from the various participants). Thanks to all of the participants! Especially Jo, helped to make it fun. I have some good feedback from the students who took part. They were particularly good at working in this way. There's also much to be said about the synergy between design thinking and open-space learning.

Here's the whiteboard with our fictional students (gone a bit sepia because of the strong lighting in the room):

And a detailled image of a profile:

And some images of the timeline:

Robert O'Toole : 19 Feb 2011 21:44 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Design thinking workshop to prototype a new distance learning course

Follow-up to Framework for a learning journey design workshop from Inspires Learning - Robert O'Toole

Tomorrow I will be running a three hour long design thinking workshop as part of the development process for a new distance learning course (involving Warwick and a leading international arts organisation). We will be using a "design thinking" approach, to create a lo-fi prototype of the course and the student experience. This will involve lots of theorising, sharing knowledge, values and ideas, and reflecting upon the epistemic status of facts, assumptions and conjectures. The aim is to get this part of the team to be more explicit about what they think they are creating, so as to start an iterative design and development process with a larger team. It will work like this...

Briefing

Context introduced by the lead academics.

Aims – To model potential students, to model how they will change through the course, to model how the course will change them and how they might change the course, to discover facts and assumptions, to test our models.

Outputs – Model students, ideas for activities, a timeline of events, ideas to be expanded, ideas to be tested. A physical representation of the course as a timeline will be built on the floor of the design workshop. At the beginning, model students will be created. At the end, the same students will appear, having been changed by the course. The models and timelines will be recorded as still images, and as a narrated walkthrough on camera of the timeline and student experience. After more iterations, the timeline should contain this kind of detail:

Methods - Design thinking, lo-fi prototyping, identifying facts (including concerning constraints and affordances or resources) and assumptions, creative, risk taking and questioning, iterative and agile, open-space.

Two colours of pen will be used throughout the session. A black pen indicates a fact or a definite condition. A red pen indicates an assumption, conjecture or wish.

Activity 1 – Introductions and pairings

Aiming to get good combinations of mutually supporting pairs starting from roughly the same position.

Activity 2 – Creating model students

Each pair selects a photo of a person. They must invent facts about the person to turn them into a realistic representation of a student who would do the course. They will have to “pitch” their model student to the rest of the group for evaluation as a candidate for the course. There must be sufficient and relevant detail about the students background, skills, knowledge, experience, professional role, social and personal situation, personality, motivations etc. Some attributes should be classified by being written on coloured post-it notes: cognitive attributes (pink), social attributes (orange) and emotional attributes (yellow).

Each pair will then pitch their model student to the rest of the group. The group will constructively assess the proposed student. Do they sound realistic? Would they be accepted on the course? Is the course right for them?

Activity 3 - What do we know/think already?

What are the key values, constraints and affordances (resources) available? (include dates, institutional limits, resource limits, technology limits etc) – mark them on the timeline where appropriate. The people who are less familiar with the proposed course could act as investigators, questioning the core team.

Activity 4 – How should the student have changed by the end of the course?

Remember the key values. Again the less familiar members of the group could act as investigators. Each pair should take care of their own model student and indicate on the model how they have changed by the end (constructing a second version of their person at the end of the timeline).

Activity 5 –How?

What activities can we add to the timeline to get them from the starting state to the end state? How should they be sequenced? How might the students change over time during the timeline?

Activity 6 – Testing and recording the models.

Narrating a walkthrough that describes the course and the student experience (on camera). This will be shown to other members of the wider team, and used as a starting point for further design workshops.

Robert O'Toole : 17 Feb 2011 21:52 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Positive benefits of teaching film making skills to student advisors (cross faculty)

Last night I did an introductory film making session for a group of (about a dozen) student advisors from the Learning Grid at Warwick. The Grid Advisors are all current students (with the exception of a specialist communications advisor). They work shifts in the Learning Grid, an open-access technology enhanced library and collaborative learning space for students¹. They are all technologically capable, but also have training and experience in supporting the academic work of other students (the main purpose of the team). As part of the recruitment process, each student made a short film using a variety of tools and techniques. They already have strong technical skills, the aim of the session was to hone and extend their creativity. The eventual output will be a series of films (created in groups of two or three), demonstrating the work of the advisors (in a creative and interesting way), to be shown at a showcasing event in March.

I had four objectives for the session:

1. Convincing the students that there is sufficient support and facilities available to complete their film project (they will be able to use the cameras that are available from the IATL Media Suite).

2. Show them how they can (and must) analyse the feasibility of a proposed film. I played a series of films from the Media Suite show reel, demonstrating a variety of techniques and film making tricks. The complexity, required skills and required amount of work for each was explained. I also made them aware of the skill of spotting the small details that can make a big difference - for example, techniques that can alleviate or avoid the problem of getting good quality sound.

3. I introduced the basic technique of storyboarding in Powerpoint (or Keynote). I recommended that they construct their film as a storyboard built from a series of slides, with each slide representing a sequence (or sometimes with more granularity a shot) in the movie. The slides might initially contain lots of text information, outling what the scene will achieve. The text then gets progressively replaced by or shifted into scripts and images. This can be used as a lo-fi prototype² for the film. Scripts can be written and rehearsed using the slideshow. The movie can be analysed for sound construction, creative effect and feasibility, and turned into a workable project (for example with a schedule). I recommended that they try to get on location, take representative still images, and add them to the slides in the storyboard. From having a good storyboard in Powerpoint, they could export this into iMovie or Screenflow and start replacing slides with editied footage and voice overs (they may even wish to keep some of the slides).

4. Finally, after a short break, we did a pitching and catching session. I began by (rather dramatically) pitching my own idea:

Warwick University, March 2011.
Desperate students with no one to turn to, no hope of salvation, no
way in which they can get their essays written.
They drink coffee, they read Facebook, they break down in tears.
Who can help? Enter the Grid Advisor sent from heaven (special effect
with grid advisor as angelic descending stairs).
Series of shots showing angel grid advisor helping students.
Shot of happy students handing in essays.

I then asked the students to for into small groups and come up with their own pitches. The framing of this task is essential. Following the findings of Kimberley Elsbach in her classic HBR article "How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea"³, I always advise pitchers to engage the catchers as collaborators in the creative process, to appear competent and with a strong idea and artistic vision, to give a well thought-out and understandable presentation, but also to welcome and value contributions from the audience (a combination of the best aspects of what Elsbach calls the "artist, showrunner and neophyte" stereotypes). The pitching session worked well, with the whole group supporting and contributing to each pitch after it was presented, but also suggesting issues that need to be thought through and problems to be solved. We finished with a feeling that some good movies will be produced.

This is all good fun, and perhaps developed the social-professional bonds within the Grid Advisor team further, but I also think it provides some very significant benefits to the capabilities of the advisors (as advisors and as students). The film making discipline (as described above, as well as further elements) provides an excellent and reliable framework in which we can manage risky, challenging and relatively unpredictable activities.⁴ Both storyboarding and pitching provide effective means for generating ideas, testing them, and reflecting upon the process. For example, during the presentation of the pitches (itself a highly entertaining activity), at several points participants questioned the seriousness and appropriateness of their responses to the brief. This was a matter of contention to which the whole group achieved a delicate consensus. The storyboards will go on to provide a tangible and testable point of reference in many ways (including the reality checks of feasibility, progress and individual commitment). This kind of tangible object for collaboration, contention and reflection is, I believe, the most valuable use to which we can put a learning technology.

In this particular case, there is a second level of benefit. Each of these students will advise many other students during their work at the Learning Grid. They will be able to cascade these skills and approaches. At two points during the session, I paused to encourage the advisors to reflect upon how these film making techniques may be of use in different creative activities, such as essay writing and seminar presentations. I referenced work that I have done with Nicoleta Cinpoes of Worcester University, using similar techniques to help English Department undergraduates to write and improve presentations (using a similar iterative Powerpoint storyboarding technique, but with the aim of creating a Powerpoint presentation). Hopefully, we will start to see these ideas spreading.

I will report further on the progress of the movie makers.

_____________________

¹For a good overview of the Learning Grid approach to collaboration, see: Conaghan and Watts, "5 Steps to Great Collaboration", Knowledge Centre web site, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/alumni/knowledge/themes/01/collaboration/ [accessed 16/01/2011]

²Kelley, David "Prototyping is the Shorthand of Design" in Design Management Journal, Vol 12, No. 3, Summer 2001.

³Elsbach, Kimberley "How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea" in Harvard Business Review, October 2003.

⁴Morley, E & Silver, A "A Film Director's Approach to Managing Creativity" in Harvard Business Review, March 1977.

Robert O'Toole : 16 Feb 2011 10:08 |  Tags: Inspiration |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem