As before, this post is well-overdue… once the design is done and the teaching/learning is supposed to commence, things tend to get a little crazy. So it goes. But we’re in the thick of the work now, and it’s as good a time as any to back up and reflect on the Participatory Design session, see what lessons can be learned.
My big take-aways from this session:
- Students want this kind of autonomy and power over their own work… but that does not necessarily transfer directly to enthusiasm and engagement with externally-defined processes and structures. In particular, the 9-step “Engineering Design Process” I used to guide our work (inherited mostly from the standard Technology & Engineering curriculum) felt like a burden — felt lifeless — started to be talked about like a series of barriers to be overcome, instead of a series of steps toward a shared goal.
- Facilitating a group’s work is a skill and also a learning experience. This round, there was no clear leaders chomping at the bit to step up and run the show. One student who most often volunteered to be Facilitator (and, eventually, became really resentful if anyone else was selected for the job) was absolutely horrid at it. Spoke too softly, got lost in his own distractions, needed constant goading to keep the discussion focused, used his power for vindictive ends… but on the other hand, come final reflection-time, he had a lot to say about the experience and how he’d do it better next time. There is a tough balance to be struck between allowing this learning to take place while also keeping the group’s work from being dragged down.
- The process of Formal Consensus serves this work very well. Participants learned it quickly, referred often to the visual reminder, and started going through the steps effortlessly by the end. Even when we had to return to a design meeting after our class was underway, they quickly fell back into it. This is encouraging.
A couple worthwhile excerpts from students’ final reflections:
1. What did you like about this process?
It helped me understand how to cooperate
We got to talk things out
We got to work together, and get other people’s opinions about things.
I think the process was an eye opening expericence because we got the opertounitiy to create the class how we wanted.
That it was easy to come to consensus, and it went smoothly.
(I love reading these answers… really validating that they saw the purpose and the value to them. At times it started to feel too much like “my” project — I think this shows they took some ownership of it, too. I hope.)
2. What did you wish had been different, or better?
I wish people were more involved and didn’t mess around or talk well someone’s talking.
People paying attention and staying on task.
I wish it had gone faster through the steps.
Less yelling from student to student
(Speed is a concern — especially given the limits of the trimester, needing to ensure there’s time to actually DO the class once it’s designed. The perception that other students are not invested and engaged is interesting, since almost everyone self-reports their own engagement as relatively high…)
3. We had to get consensus for every decision — everyone had to agree. Was this a good way to make decisions? Why or why not?
Yes, we got everyone’s opinions on what we were gonna do.
Yes, because, Then everyone wont complain on what were doing.
Yes and No because people get to do what they want and if there was rule that someone didn’t like it was not paassed
Yes, because then if they say they don’t like what we’re doing or the rules we can say you never spoke up and we reached consensus.
(Jackpot! They totally got this!)
4. Would it have been better or worse if we had just done “majority vote” for every decision? Why?
No because then there would be some that were mad with what we’re doing.
It would have been worse because no matter what there would be at least one person who wasn’t happy with the end result
No because then people wouldnt have a chance to make other people hear there opinion.
No because not everyone participates
(This is really interesting to me — I have a sense that Formal Consensus is better for these small groups because it tends to be fairly easy to resolve concerns etc… but I also want to be mindful of the value of straight-majority-vote, in no small part because of something Murray Bookchin says about the power of dissent and the value of speaking from the minority position. Something to think about.)
5. Would it have been better or worse if Mr. Anderson had just made the decisions on his own? Why?
Worse because student would think it was boring and not tried their hardest and not learned about what they were doing
No since people might feel like their voices don’t matter
Better so we had something we had to do and didnt mess around as much as we did
(Yes!!! Here’s hoping all this “investment” holds tough through the end of the year…)
7. If Mr. Anderson were to do this process with other classes in the future, what should he do differently?
He should, but he should make sure everyone is comfortable with each other
He should give the kids the opportunity to do, but if they don’t want it go with Mr. Andersons plan.
Nothing, the classmates were the problem most of the time.
Make the process shorter so we would have more tim efor what we need to do.
Idk man
give them as much freedom
Have more rules during the consensus process.
(I expected a lot more here, to be honest. Maybe it’s good…)
Some final documentation of our process:
(Coming to Consensus on Step 2 – Criteria and Constraints)
(Starting Step 3 – research)
(Researching standards and learning goals, doing a pass-around quick-eval)
(Had to return to evaluate our work, fell right back into the process nicely)
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