Design in the School Classrooms - ICoRD 2015 paper presentation

Design in the school classrooms – Applying Design tools to improve quality of education Kshitiz Anand* Director & Head of Operations (India Studio) Jean Haag Transcultural Design Masters Student ICoRD, 8th January 2015

Summary

1.  Design needs to come out of its elitist image

2.  Need to implant the value of design from a young age

3.  Quality of education has to be improved across the country

4.  Can we apply the tools of design to primary school education

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

My story of design

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

By luck to passion to vision

Story of Design

2015

no design know design ?

2001

design student with design students

in a design school heading a design school

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

14 years into design, around the world, 1 conclusion

Design to school classrooms

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Can Design Thinking help ?

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Adopt a system-based thinking approach

Keeping in mind each stakeholder

Working with constraints

Working with a methodology

Design Intervention points

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Existing classrooms and education environment

Interactions in the classrooms

What design tools do we use ? Designerly ways of knowing / learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  No idea is a bad idea and it encourages everyone to participate

•  Generate many ideas by promoting Divergent thinking

•  Doing things with time constraints by having a deadline

•  Learn to group together ideas and build onto others’ ideas

•  Encourage to speak up

Brainstorming

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  Promote drawing and doodling

•  Artistic communication is key towards overall child development

•  Take notes by writing keywords, making doodles, illustrations, represented by arrow marks to give a sequential processing of information.

•  It also allows the information to be remembered for a longer time.

Visual Note Taking

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  Make textbooks information easy to grasp.

•  Understanding Visual Order and fundamentals of typography facilitate the learning process by identifying what information is important and needs to be consumed first.

•  Helps in ‘revision’ of knowledge during examination

Visual Order and Information Processing

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  Building the ability to ask right questions

•  The teacher assumes ignorance for a certain topic

•  Help the children build the answer by themselves and extract knowledge out of it.

•  Encourage children to ask questions from early age.

•  Playing the ‘Why’ game

Socratic Questioning

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  It influences their language development and story comprehension at a young age

•  Provide appropriate occasions to play with language, while gaining an appreciation of the sounds and meaning of words

•  Enhances self confidence to be able to present to larger audience

Storytelling

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  Kids actively generate and capitalize knowledge

•  Build a sense of competition to push them forward

•  More likely to develop strategy elaboration, leadership and teamwork skills

Gamification

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  Learning through hands-on activity (prototyping) is more appealing for the kids

•  Equip classes with broad set of stationery and other materials that would help children prototype.

•  Paper and cardboard, different pens and pencils, raw materials (clay, wood, fabric, plastic), paint, scrap items (water bottles broken household items).

Rapid Prototyping

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Values and benefits

•  Avoid focuses on accumulating raw knowledge to do away with rote learning.

•  The curriculum should not be the main motivator for the teacher

•  This would allow knowloefge to be retained beyond its short life span as is today

Critical Thinking

Design Tools / Designerly ways of knowing and learning

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Did we try these out ?

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Design tool and methodologies driven work at Happy Horizons Trust Workshops in schools across India Workshops with kids at conferences and events Partner with organizations like Teach for India (Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore), Mantra for Change (Bangalore), EduGenie (Guwahati)

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Conclusion

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Question the process of learning and what is learning itself

Conclusion

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Look at the stakeholders involved in the learning process

Conclusion

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Rethink the space in which the learning happens and knowledge is delivered

Conclusion

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Impart education that looks at overall development of children

Conclusion

•  Student’s cognitive ability: Brainstorming, Critical Thinking, Socratic

Questioning

•  Student’s learning skills: Rapid prototyping, Gamification,

Understanding Visual order and Information Processing, Visual Note

Taking

•  Student’s personality development: Storytelling, Presentations

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Future Work

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

Taking the paper forward

Conclusion

•  Design Thinking workshops in schools through the Happy Horizons Trust

•  Partner with more schools across India

•  Promote design thinking from a young age

•  Training of teachers to be able to conduct sessions on their own and use the tools it in their teaching

TCD India Studio / ICoRD/ 08 January 2015 / Kshitiz Anand, Jean Haag

THANK YOU Kshitiz Anand Director & Head of Operations (India Studio) k.anand@lecolededesign.com [twitter] @kshitiz [m] + 91 95 35 20 68 28 [skype] kshitiz.a

www.lecolededesign.com