Design as a Pedagogy

Using design as the strategy to teach is not new but it is extremely complex. When teachers decide to allow students to be creative, make their own decisions about what they choose to learn and allow them to solve problems, collaborate with their friends and design their own learning, it is risky, time-consuming, disruptive, non-linear and unpredictable. The control is forfeited to a great degree to the students. Some of these students will embrace the challenge, and others will not be so enthusiastic.

Imagine how much riskier it is when a teacher decides to use a variety of technologies to facilitate the design, then the learning can appear to be completely out of the teacher's control.
The classroom gets noisy and students are not looking to the front, passively listening to the teacher. There are huddles of students chatting in one corner, others might be completely alone, immersed in the images of the closest monitor and many of them are likely to NOT be writing pages and pages of notes about what they should KNOW or remember for the next test. Is this learning? How do we know? How can we be sure?

The answer is not easy and it is not guaranteed. But with enough planning and preparation (and let's face it, this is what teachers do well), there should be plenty of opportunities to check, monitor, ask questions, moderate, guide, review and reflect on student learning along the path of design.

Of course, not all teachers find it easy to take this risk. Many want to know how to use this technology BEFORE they allow students to use it. If only there was enough time to know all this before we put it into the hands of the novice student! Or is it that we don't want to get caught out not knowing all the answers to the questions students are bound to ask? Surely, there will be someone in the room that will know. And if not, isn't that what the HELP link is for?

Others feel that the quality of the finished design product doesn't always warrant the time taken to complete the design task. So what is it that we are assessing here? The finished product or the process of design itself? How can you assess creativity, cooperation, problem-solving and collaboration by just looking at the end-product?

I wonder if sometimes, teachers are guilty of thinking that design is just for the clever kids? Is every student capable of higher-order thinking where predicting, problem-solving, analysing and testing are skills that are only achievable for brighter students?

If the teacher is able to spend time guiding the students through the design process, asking the right questions, allowing students to learn from each other by sharing ideas, reviewing each others' work, refining and improving, then I would argue, that this type of learning is accessible to all students. As I said before, this learning is complex, non-linear, noisy, disruptive at times, very time-consuming and unpredictable. But so worthwhile. It is only then that we, as teachers, can really make an assessment of what a student knows, remembers, is capable of, understands and is responsible for.

If designing is not a familiar pedagogy in your classroom, it is time to re-design your processes of teaching. And if technology can facilitate some of the learning that takes place, makes it easier for you to manage and evaluate the content, process and products created by the learner, monitor the progress and share the journey, then there's no time to waste.