Make it
The power of prototyping student learning experiences
Prototyping is a great way to de-risk an instructional choice you may be uncertain about. When you create a working prototype (whether a physical model or a beta version of a learning experience), you create a small experiment to test your theory. As Krista Donaldson, CEO of D-Rev, says, “You’re taking risk out of the process by making something simple first. And you always learn lessons from it.” As a teacher, prototyping student experiences gives you tangible signs of progress toward your learning goals. Designers often storyboard what is known as a “customer journey.” This journey map allows designers to imagine what will happen when a customer “passes from the beginning of a service experience to the end” (Brown & Kātz, 2019). Every moment with a customer is a design opportunity.
Every single day with your students is an opportunity to learn.
Students spend on average about six and a half hours a day in school. Each school year is about 180 days, which calculates to roughly 1,170 hours with their teacher and classmates. With so much time in the classroom, there are ample opportunities to design memorable learning experiences or touchpoints. A touchpoint is any point in an experience when the user interacts with that experience. This is what Tim Brown calls the “fourth dimension, designing with time.” He continues, “when we create multiple touchpoints along a customer journey, we are structuring a sequence of events that build upon one another” (Brown & Kātz, 2019). There are many touchpoints (and design opportunities) throughout a given school day. Prototyping these student touchpoints “gives form to an idea, allowing us to learn from it, evaluate it against others, and improve upon it” (Brown & Kātz, 2019). This is the very definition of continual improvement for the lifelong learners we hope our students become.
With human-centered design thinking, teachers begin to see themselves as doers, tinkerers, crafters, and builders. Instead of passively implementing a prescribed curriculum, teachers experiment and get their ideas out of their heads and into their classroom of students. As Brené Brown says in her book, Rising Strong, “we are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration — it is how we fold our experiences into our being. Creativity embeds knowledge so that it can become practice. We move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands” (Brown, 2015). It doesn’t matter what you use (cardboard and duct tape versus a learning management system and other digital tools), the goal is always to convey an idea for a new learning experience, share it with your students and learn how to make it better.
Prototyping Resources
Stanford’s d.school Design Thinking Bootleg
Check out pages 7-8 for creating and using journey maps in your classroom.
Practice Your Prototyping Skills With These 4 Resources
Make Your Ideas Tangible Through Prototypes
Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit
I hope you all have a great week! Let me know how I can help.
—Adrian