the visionary pursuit of the learning sciences: projecting the future while remaining grounded in...

1 ZuikerJordan_MLFTCEduCon2014 - September 22, 2014

Michelle Jordan

Learning to Design Collaborative Engineering Projects

Design Literacy… �  is the foundation of a new instinct for navigating

the complexities and pace of our dynamic, information-rich, and systems-oriented world

�  is an essential literacy for the re-calibration of our educational system if we want to prepare our students to thrive and have agency in their future

� empowers the creative imagination � embraces questions as much as answers �  is comfortable with ambiguity

How can we foster dispositions for design?

� Designers must cope with undecidable problems, act without imposing inappropriate order, refrain from looking for a single correct outcome, and welcome opportunity over certainty (Glanville, 2003)

� Design practices are highly social, requiring collaboration and communication with diverse people for multiple purposes (NRC, 2011)

Designing combine transform define generate

“Let’s each draw our own idea”

BRAINSTORMING

Building Structures

Programming

Testing the Robot

� How do learners manage uncertainty during collaborative design projects?

� How does peer support influence uncertainty?

� Are there times when intentionally increasing uncertainty is preferable to reducing it?

Life consists of “the stable and precarious, the fixed and unpredictably novel, the assured and the uncertain”

~John Dewey Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to

unfold his powers… creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. ~Erich Fromm

Limitations: Life is complicated

� 

Ambiguity: Life is value-laden

Unpredictability: Life is complex

http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/lagrange/doublependulum.html

In a rapidly changing world, how can we cope with our limited ability to predict the future, evaluate our options, and interpret ambiguous situations?

Asuchallenges.com

How we manage uncertainty

Reduce

Ignore Maintain

Increase

•  task • disposition •  culture

� Theme 1: Learners used tactics to reduce, ignore, maintain and increase uncertainty related to task and social issues

� Theme 2: Fewer strategies in closed projects than in creative projects

� Theme 3: Varied dispositions for managing uncertainty

� Theme 4: Uncertainty management dependent on supportive peer response

Figure 5.1 Uncertainty Management in Collaborative Academic Tasks

Task Characteristics • structuredness -novelty -activity & tools

Peer Response • shared • warranted, salient • other uncertainty • previous experience

OUTCOMES • resolution, maintenance, increase,

or shift of uncertainty -emerging task structure -engineering knowledge -social relationships

Reduce, Ignore, Maintain or

Increase Uncertainty • task issues • social issues

Individual propensity or habitus

How do participation structures scaffold social

interaction for design learning?

Formal review (Robo-fair) Customer surveys

School

Classroom

Pin-ups Wikis

Desk crits Stop & talks

Design Studio Rituals for Critique

Shifts in Design Critique Pinups

Pinup 1 Pinup 3

Teacher authority Audience talks to Teacher/Presenters Sketches as discursive tools Report only on self-generated design ideas Help students deal with negative feedback Report design ideas Talk focused on structures and functions

Student authority Audience talks to Presenters and each other Structures & websites Remix other’s creations (Kafai, Fields, & Burke, 2010)

Help students consider needs of the customer Co-construct design ideas Talk about structures, behaviors/mechanisms, and functions interwoven

BEHAVIORS How are you going to make the NXT read the air tire pressure?

STRUCTURES That’d be cool if they used all 3 motors and have like

three separate little boxes on it.

Novices tend to focus on perceptually available system components, whereas experts cohesively integrate structural, behavioral, and functional elements (Hmelo-Silver & Pfeffer, 2004) � 

Structures Behaviors Func1ons Teacher 48 37 39 Students 30 20 5

Changes in Peer Interaction

}  Social topics interleaved with task topics

} Expressed social-relational uncertainty

} Overlapping speech & topic initiations

}  12 new design ideas in 375 comments (3%)

}  Focused on Structures

Prior Subsequent � No social topics; 2 topics

evaluating intersubjectivity � Task topics interleaved

with other task topics �  Sustained substantive

discourse � 22 new design ideas in 157

comments (14%) � Focused on Function-

resistance to change

How do 5th Grade designers… •  use and create textual resources? •  interweave digital & physical worlds?

And for what purposes?

Textual resources

How were textual resources used?

Brainstorming – Self-‐created resources the ini1al catalyst in all groups Defining a product Genera1ng solu1ons Valued Sketching

make design decisions coordinate inven1on persuade (reify) expand on ini1al ideas avoid being misunderstood

Thank you [email protected]

the visionary pursuit of the learning sciences: projecting the future while remaining grounded in...

Education

life

ignore

structures

september 22