Unit Plan Outline

Design thinking requires partnering teachers and librarians or other specialists to become mentors rather than "in charge" of carefully crafted lessons. The students are in command of their learning as individuals and groups and the adults are  their advisor as they progress through the ideas of inventing, creating and solving problems.

Quick Lesson Plan Outline

Here is a summary of the steps in creating lesson plans that you can copy into your own template:

• Old  Method: What type of learning experience this is replaceing

• Overview: A broad almost elevator speech the describes and defends this learning experience

• Goals and Objective created by adults:

  • Major Objectives of the design thinking to be accomplished::

    • Content Objectives embedded by both adults  as needed

    • Process Objectives embedded by both adults as needed

    • Co-Assessments for Each Objective outlined in design thinking

  • Other Objectives to Watch

• Essential Questions created jointly by adults and students

• Graphical chart/flow chart of the learning experience...useful for presentations to audiences about this type of learning experience.

• Learning Activities:

  • Step 1:  Empathy: Generate interest among learners for self-directed projects, problems to solve, opportunities, and building a passion about personal interest. Here, the mentors work hard with many learners who claim no interest in anything or have little experience with self-directed learning opportunities

  • Step 2:  Introduce or remind students about tools they might use to re-invent, re-create, or solve problems. This might be an intro or reminder session about the design thinking model.

  • Step 3: Continue the Engagement stage: Guide individuals/groups through the formulation of a problem, question, project, or invention they are passionate about and title these the essential questions

  • Step 4:  Define and Ideate: the Problem: Help learners discover the knowledge and skills they will need in order to accomplish their task

  • Step 5:  Continue Ideate and Prototype: Have regular meetings/conferences to note progress, problems and to teach process skills

  • Step 6:  Prototype and test: Clear the path/be an ombudsman for the difficulties learners might encounter

  • Step 7:  Implement the new system if possible.  Celebrate success and challenges overcome

• Step 8:  Culmination of the implementation: Develop a culminating experience. This could include some sort of exibition of the projects, but if students have kept logs, it should be a compare/contrast about the process of design thinking.

• Step 9:  Evaluate: Conduct a Big Think

• Archive on the Virtual Learning Commons website of the learning commons

• Defense: What did the adults learn about the process of design thinking and the role of the adults as mentors?

Knowledge Building Center Website  Tips

• Create your hook page/home page where you try to interest your students in the main goal for your design thinking project(s)

• Create the Unit Plan page where the partner adults will plan, assess, and conduct the learning activities together.

• Now create the rooms or tab pages, where the students can work together collaboratively. These rooms could be:

  • A room/tab for preliminary background and building

  • A Getting Started room//tab

  • Rooms/tabs for the various steps of the entire project where all the individuals and or groups are reporting their project progress

  • Rooms/tabs for individuals or groups where they are doing their own project.

  • A room/tab for the culminating activity

  • A room/tab for the Big Think