Time To Reflect
The journey to create the ultimate learning experience is getting close to the end. The student DILo project teams have demonstrated a tremendous amount of grit and vigor as they begin the final phase of their designs. While planning some funding opportunities and Mr. Jahns was given an opportunity to reflect on the entire project through while being interviewed. Here are some snippets from the conversation:
Q: Please tell us which departments were involved in this project.
A: Library Media, Educational Technology (Instructional Technology in our district), Student Innovation Leadership Committee (SILC) and student design teams, TCU School of Interior Design Huckabee Architects, Inc.
Q: Please provide an overview of your project, including overall education vision.
A: This project is a student-led design challenge to re-design our campus library space, incorporating innovative design thinking and facilities to support future-ready teaching and learning. Teams of 8-10 students are led by members of our campus Student Innovation Leadership Committee (SILC). Texas Christian University School of Interior Design students and Huckabee Architecture, Inc. interns are collaborating by pairing with teams to mentor our students through the 15 week design challenge, culminating in a showcase event where professionals from the community will select a judge’s choice winner. Students at South Hills High School will vote and choose the winning design to be implemented. Through the redesign, our vision is to create a space where students can find opportunities to engage in their interests and enhance their skills in communication, collaboration, creative thinking, and creativity. Our vision also includes providing a space where our community can participate, both in utilizing the resources available and in providing their own expertise for students. Long-term, we envision this space modeling a future-ready change in teaching and learning, predicated on student ownership and innovation, that spreads to classrooms and to the district.
Q: Describe the overall strategy for your project and how goals were executed.
A: Two current movements in education are being employed in this project: work had already begun on transitioning to a learning commons and the Student Innovation Leadership Committee (SILC) was formed to give our students a voice in their educational experience. Those two initiatives led us to create the design challenge and student teams. In doing so, we understood the need to facilitate thinking processes, organization and communication for the students. We kicked off the challenge with guest speakers on design thinking and gave students parameters for the design and a timeline for guidance. For communication and collaboration we’re using OneNote, Trello, Google Hangouts, Youtube, and Sketchup. Teams and their mentors are collaborating through Slack. Team Captains are tasked with organizing weekly meetings, physical and virtual, with teams to work together and with their mentors. We took a field trip to see and experience the innovative design of a school campus completed by Huckabee, with the lead designer present to explain and answer questions. Moving forward, we’ll expose students to the kinds of furnishings available to support innovative design. We want student to take ownership of this project, so we give students the freedom to lead and learn along the way.
Q: Describe the successes of your project. Be sure to provide evidence of measurable impact on education outcomes.
A: Our goal in redesigning the library space is to create opportunities for students to take ownership of their learning, and to build their skills in communicating, collaborating, thinking critically, and being creative. That goal is already evidenced in the work our students are doing through the design challenge. Our team captains have taken lead of their teams, team members are communicating and collaborating with each other and their mentors, creativity abounds in the ideas and discussions being created, and the work our teams are doing with their mentors is helping them to think critically about their ideas.
Q: Describe how your teams/departments collaborated to ensure the program’s success.
A: We specifically sought to partner with the community to provide students with the experience of working with experts in the field and to benefit from the expertise they bring to the project. Because it’s a design project, we’ve partnered with a class of third year design students within the TCU School of Interior Design to give teams a mentor in interior design. Through that partnership we made contact with Huckabee Architects; interns within the company are mentoring students in design and structural components. Students are also free to pursue additional expertise. We hosted meet and greet events for our student teams to meet with the TCU students and Huckabee interns face-to-face and have time to work with each other and plan. Team captains then planned and facilitate weekly meetings with both TCU and Huckabee mentors. Most meetings are taking place virtually through Google Hangouts but some have been able to meet in person. Mentors provide questions and advice to guide teams through the process, as well as tasks to move them forward. Teams can communicate and collaborate with mentors through Slack, an online collaborative space that allows for text, images, and file uploads.
Q: Please describe the collaboration stumbling blocks you encountered and how you overcame them.
A: Stumbling blocks were schedules, communication, and inexperience. Students are involved in multiple activities making it difficult to find meeting times. The inexperience in team communication, coordinating and sharing information, led to delays in getting some teams moving forward. Working as a team, with project timelines and in collaboration was also new to most students; understanding how to bring team members together, how to delegate the work, and how to benefit from each other's’ strengths has been a struggle. Overcoming a lot of these obstacles has been the use of Slack, Google Hangouts, and the expertise of our mentors. Slack allows for teams to have their own, private collaborative space as well as a general forum to share information with everyone. Teams and their mentors can communicate anywhere, anytime. Students have been able to post ideas and questions, while mentors have been able to post questions and responses to guide the teams. Google Hangouts enables virtual meetings, as well as the chat feature, allowing for the variances in students’ and mentors’ schedules. Beneficial to working with students is that these tools also allow for communication without sharing private information and enable students to utilize their school laptops and wi-fi access.
