One of my absolute favorite shows on television right now is HGTV’s Fixer Upper. If you haven’t seen it before (what are you waiting for?!), it involves the husband & wife duo Chip and Joanna Gaines completely re-designing old, outdated homes. No matter how many episodes I watch, I left speechless every time the Gaines’ take a dirty old house and completely transform it into a dream home.
Now…what does this have to do with teaching, you ask?
Well, this week I had the pleasure of exploring a new concept: experience design. The idea behind experience design is that design is focused around the experience you wish to create from your design, and who you wish to create it for. If we go back to the Fixer Upper example, Chip & Joanna re-design homes with the new owners in mind. They take into consideration their family life, hobbies, and personalities while re-designing the home of their dreams.
When you ask a teacher to imagine the classroom of their dreams, there are a few possible things that might happen. You might have a teacher describe to you a classroom that looks straight out of Pinterest- perfectly themed, colorful, and cheery as can be. Or, you might have a teacher tell you that their ideal classroom would have oodles & oodles of technology. However, today’s educational research is proving that experience design belongs in a school setting as well.
“Look at your learning space with 21st-century eyes: does it work for what we know about learning today, or just for what we knew about learning in the past?”
(O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi & Peterson, Architects Inc, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design, 2010)
The students we have sitting in our classrooms are significantly different than the students of the past. Students have more exposure to technology, have different interests, and face new pressures that didn’t exist previously. Educational research has revealed a great deal as well: authors Bransford, Brown & Cocking of How People Learn believe classrooms and schools should be learner centered, where attention is given to what is taught, why it is taught, and what mastery could look like (2000).
‘Fixing-up’ my Classroom
I was challenged to look at my classroom with “21st century eyes” and re-design it into my ideal dream classroom (with no buget limitation-horray!). I followed the Design Thinking Process.
Empathize
I chose to re-design my classroom for its stakeholders- myself and my students. Currently it is a welcoming learning environment where students are free to choose their seating. Many aspects of my classroom create a calm and comfortable feeling, such as pillows and lamps for softer lighting. However, I feel the space does not effectively promote the learning I want in my classroom. The desks (including my own) make it hard for learning to happen naturally anywhere in the classroom, and collaboration is limited to only certain areas. The furniture is not easily movable, which forces both the teaching and learning that goes on to only happen in certain areas of the classroom.
Define
I evaluated my current situation:
CONSTRAINTS (Negatives):
- Wall of windows & Lockers- hardly any wall or storage space
- Desks & large book shelves in classroom library take up a lot of room
- Teacher desk takes up a lot of room
AFFORDANCES (Positives):
- Windows (natural light)
- Large chalk board & white board- great collaboration tools
- Access to technology
- Relaxing lighting options
- Comfortable seating (stools, pillows, chairs)
I decided my goal would be to give my room flexibility in terms of work space. I don’t like how the desks limit where the learning happens in my classroom. I feel like we are limited to only certain areas of the classroom, forcing student choice to be limited.
“…learning environments should allow students to exercise their musical, spatial, bodily, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences,” (O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi & Peterson, Architects Inc, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design, 2010).
Ideate
I aim for my students to learn by doing while they are in my classroom. I want them to be able to participate in any given situation, in a “connected learning environment where challenge is constant” and we can rely on one another (Ito, Gutierrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen, Schor, Sefton-Green & Watkins, 2012). I made some decisions to improve my learning space:
- remove student desks
- remove my teacher desk, keep my computer desk (takes up less room)
- add varying learning spaces
Prototype
To turn my dreams into reality, I did the following:
- Sketch before and after pictures of my classroom
Before
After - Create a 3D model of my after picture using SketchUp.
My re-designed classroom has significantly more learning space. The 3 tables at the front of the room have wheels (for movement), I added stools to the window area, additional tables, and more seating.
Test
To test if this space truly allows for more flexibility with teaching & learning space, I would ask: Do I notice students learning in different areas of the room? Are students engaging in meaningful conversations as they happen naturally, or do I notice learning being stifled due to the environment? Am I engaging in teaching all over the room, as opposed to only one area?
Overall, I had a lot of fun with the challenge of playing ‘Fixer-Upper’ with my classroom. I challenge you to try, as well!
References:
O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi and Peterson, Architects Inc., VS Furniture., & Bruce Mau Design. (2010). The third teacher: 79 ways you can use design to transform teaching & learning. New York: Abrams.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Ito, M., Gutierrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., Schor, J.j Sefton-Green, J., & Watkins, S. C. (2012). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Connected Learning Research Network. Retrieved from http://dmlhub.net/wp-content/uploads/files/Connected_Learning_report.pdf.
Natalie D'Amico 