(Coming Soon) Design Thinking: Reimagining a Distance Learning Space

A Cross-Curricular Unit

NGS Standards

  • ETS1A: Defining and delimiting an engineering problem.
  • ETS1B: Developing possible solutions.
  • ETS1C: Optimizing the design solution.

ELA Standards

  • W1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.
  • W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
  • W3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

Enduring Understanding

Students will identify a challenge and carry out the steps of the design thinking process, which includes:

  • Discovery: Defining/understanding the challenge.
  • Interpretation: Finding meaning and developing a point of view that will guide ideas.
  • Ideation: Brainstorming and refining ideas.
  • Experimentation: Prototyping and receiving feedback.
  • Evolution: Presenting a deliverable and further directions

to create a potential solution to address the challenge.

Main Objective

SWBAT identify the major challenges of distance learning and carry out the design thinking process to design a physical space that addresses some of these challenges.

Phase 1

Activity Sequence

  • Activity 1: Visualizing the Challenge
  • Activity 2: Sharing Visualizations & Finding Themes

Activity 1

Visualizing the Challenge

Objective: SWBAT visualize themselves going through a day of distance learning and describe what they visualized.

Activity 2

Objective: Students will share their distance learning pictures from the day before and identify themes that emerge in students' shared experiences.

Phase 2

Activity Sequence

  • Activity 3: Defining the Design Challenge
  • Activity 4: Designing without Boundaries

Activity 3

Objective: Students will perform a needs assessment for their learning space--which includes:
  • Identifying the jobs students need to perform in their learning space.

  • Identifying the "pains" of their current learning space.

  • Identifying the "gains" that would improve their learning space.

Activity 4

Objective: Students will be given a design challenge and will come up with creative design solutions, free of any restrictions.