Rebecca Ward

Your challenge is to redesign the school-to-work transition.

Rebecca WardTeam: Sydney Shapers

Stanford Design Thinking Action LabAugust 2013

Rebecca Ward

1. Empathise and define

Empathy mapSAYTHINK

FEELDO

I have very little to do with the school-work transition at the moment and that’s part of the problem.

The traditional view at the school I teach at (a girl’s Catholic high-school) is that all students will go to university. We are meant to be teaching to create ‘life-long learners’ – but we use old-school ways and don’t teach with some of the technologies people need to understand. The biggest issue is that we teach everything with the end goal being a test. And that is because this is how the school is judged. So there’s an element that it’s not actually about the individual student.

Teachers are accountable for ensuring there are certain skills teached but not others which are essential for how people live in the real world – like creative and critical thinking. Environment doesn’t work in the same way as a corporate environment, and even more so a trade environment – which school does essentially nothing towards for students. It’s all assuming that they will follow academic paths.

- Scratching head and showing he is very passionate but quite perplexed by what could be a possible solution.

- Raised voice as he got nearer to the realisation that schooling as is doesn’t provide all the right skills for people to actually carry through into their lives.

Schools aren’t providing the right skill set for real life.

They aren’t ‘keeping up with the times’ in relation to technology.

Schools are too focused on purely academic results.

There should be a new way of assessing students – not purely around a test.

Frustrated that it’s not black and white and never could be.

Passionate about the ability teachers have to shape students’ lives.

Concerned that it is expected that most students will definitely go on to academic university study regardless of what is best for them personally.

Rebecca Ward

Rebecca Ward

Problem statement

A young tech-savvy, hungry-for-change high-school teacher who’s been out of university less five years and is frustrated with current processes needs a way to

improve how assessments are carried out in high schools because current academic testing only measures academic skills in a test environment that is not applicable to ‘real-life’ and doesn’t prepare students to live in the rapidly changing world. It also

doesn’t help identify strengths outside the current school curriculum, such as trades, that students could take – which may be more suitable to them.

Rebecca Ward

IDEATEAll ideas: http://www.slideshare.net/wardbeck/ideate-how-to-improve-school-assessments

Top 3:• Most practical: Have a percentage of students' year/course grade judged by a

cross-age group, team project that leverages different skills and strengths relevant to the individual (diversity, collaboration, teamwork and strength-based working all key to real world)

• Most disruptive: A percentage of your grade is assessed by a whole term where students go out and get work experience in their chosen field and the employer gives them constructive feedback (this will be real world experience that will dispell myths for students about working and provides them with practical experience)

• Favourite: Student choice. At the beginning of year/course students get to decide with the teacher how they would prefer to be assessed - eg. what weighting will be given for exams, assigments, extra-curricular activities and the rate at which they have improved. (this would be aligned to individual skillsets and learning styles - introvert/extravert/visual learner/presentation skills - and would allow the teacher to get knowledge of how much prior knowledge of the subject that student already has.

Rebecca Ward

PROTOTYPE and TEST

Visualisation of the process and a discussion around thisTested with:

The teacher interviewedA student in their final year of high school

A recent graduate (from university)

Rebecca Ward

Prototype one Most practical: Have a percentage of students' year/course grade judged by a cross-age group, team project that leverages different skills and strengths relevant to the individual (diversity, collaboration, teamwork and strength-based working all key to real world)

Rebecca Ward

TestFeedback:ALL:• Makes sense• Quite simple• Might not have a lot of impact for the effort involvedStudent: • Wouldn’t know if she would find this particularly useful for her – still a blanket approach• Likes the idea of working with different age groups but doesn’t think it would work in practice –

maturity levels etcTeacher: • Nice idea but logistically difficult• Would they really get the collaboration benefits? He feels the older students would take over.Recent graduate:• Felt this would be quite a good university assignment – but not high-school

At this point I decided to go back to another idea instead…

Rebecca Ward

Prototype twoFavourite: Student choice. At the beginning of year/course students get to decide with the teacher how they would prefer to be assessed - eg. what weighting will be given for exams, assigments, extra-curricular activities and the rate at which they have improved. (this would be aligned to individual skillsets and learning styles - introvert/extravert/visual learner/presentation skills - and would allow the teacher to get knowledge of how much prior knowledge of the subject that student already has.

Rebecca Ward

TestFeedbackAll:• Great ideas but not so clear in the image• Hard to picture the exact processStudent• Love that this would be tailored to my strengths• Would feel I was more motivated if I had a say in how I was measuredTeacher: • Probably more feasible if a set amount of the percentage was allocated for

academic results still (a smaller step that would make significant impact)

Back to evaluating the visualisation and incorporating the feedback

Rebecca Ward

Prototype two - modified*What you can’t read is 60% has to be exams/assignments. 40% made up of extra-curricular activities

Rebecca Ward

Test

FeedbackAll:• Improved visualisation of process• Liked generally by all• Would like more in-depth prototype into a

‘persona’ – particular person and how their year would pan out

Rebecca Ward

ReflectionsWhat I learned by testing…• Feelings are paramount – even when something is logical and from the outside could work,

you need to be appealing to people’s emotions (and those people who are impacted often have a good gut instinct)

• Simplification is key – spell things out as your thought process might not be clear to someone else

• Visualisation is a powerful tool – you can let the pictures speak for themselves to some degree if they are done correctly and this helps to not ‘sell’ an idea

If I was to continue working on this project…• I would create a persona prototype (perhaps multiple personas – teacher, student etc) to

show how this process would impact various stakeholders and how it would look• Speak with teachers from different schools – would this work in some and not others?

Private/public etc. There would be state policies that would need to be taken into account in some instances

• Probably go back to the drawing board and start again from scratch – to assess whether I could come up with an idea that is even better; speaking to more people to reframe the problem and either parking this one or ripping it up