I NEED Educational technology expert

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Mode 1 Sense Intent, Method – Intent Statement

Mode 1 Sense Intent

Initially, designers must figure out where to start. Sense Intent considers the “where to” by examining the circumstances, the conventions and the opportunities for innovation. For many designers it feels natural to jump straight to a solution, which frequently means using familiar tools and processes to solve a problem. However, pausing to consider the circumstances surrounding an issue will help a designer to frame the problem. Identifying the purposes, conventions, opportunities and changing conditions that surround a problem also encourage a designer to understand the intent of innovation.

Why is Intent important?

Consider the following scenario. Every morning workers line up in a building lobby at four elevators that may be ridden down one floor to a ground floor, or ridden up to nineteen other floors. At the start of the workday a large number of the workers take the elevator down to the ground floor, which effectively slows the delivery of workers riding up. Workers also ride the elevator up from the ground floor. An elevator going up from the ground floor will bypass the lobby if a weight threshold is exceeded, thus further slowing the delivery of the workers heading up from the lobby. The design problem seems to be how do we get the workers to the ground floor without impeding the progress of the workers who need to travel up. An obvious and expensive solution is to provide another elevator shaft that only goes between the ground floor and the lobby. This solution is an example of jumping to a design without sensing intent. By looking at the changing conditions, examining trends and reframing the problem, the designer would learn that the real problem is that the workers who need to take the elevator up to their offices learned that by taking the elevator down to the ground floor they would not miss a filled elevator that would otherwise bypass them in the lobby. Understanding intent, points out that the level of real traffic exiting on the ground floor is minimal. Simply by limiting access to the ground floor to one elevator during peak arrival hours would allow workers quicker access to upper floors with a negligible impact on those actually heading down to work. Little innovation is necessary in this example. I chose it because it occurred at a university where I was employed. The university hired consultants to analyze the problem. Collecting usage data at the lobby level, the consultants counted the number of riders who rode up and down the elevators. Based on the statistics they decided the volume of riders was high enough to merit building a dedicated elevator to the ground floor. Had they considered qualitative data on the intent of the riders they would have learned that most of the riders going down were the same ones who rode the elevator up. The workers simply rode down to avoid having a full elevator bypass them. Knowing intent, the university could have saved a lot of money.

Mode 1 – Sense Intent / Selected Method – Intent Statement

Description – the intent statement states the initial innovation intent based on an identified opportunity.

1- From a practical standpoint the intent statement method requires that you first organize rough notes on the following points.

• What is the problem?

• Who is the audience?

• What were the prior efforts – failures?

• New values or what has changed?

• Opportunities or Why now?

• What are the risks?

• Title (I put the title last as you will have a better idea of what to call your innovation idea after you organize your notes on the questions.)

After collecting this background information the process continues with 5 steps that will help you to identify the intent of the design. Since the goal of the “Intent Statement” is to provide a general mindset about the design problem, many of the responses listed in the rough notes may be cut and pasted into the table provided.

General Tip:

All the methods’ activities are meant as “warm up” activities. As such, the problem you identify for a “warm up” activity probably won’t be the design innovation you consider for your final project. Pick something straightforward so you don’t turn what is meant to be a simple learning activity into a major project. The following mock-up provides an example of what is expected for the intent statement activity.

Sense Intent Mock-up Rough Notes

Title - Inquiry Instruction

Problem – For decades educational researchers have called for more inquiry based instruction. Despite interest in inquiry and the belief that the approach encourages students to learn “how to learn independently”, the implementation of this methodology has been limited. What will make inquiry instruction more attractive to teachers?

Audience – Social science teachers in Grades 7 – 9 (I reduced the scope of the audience for the exercise to focus the innovation on the teachers needs. However, I recognize that student knowledge and skill levels are also critical to the innovation’s success.)

Prior Efforts (Failures*) – Edward Fenton proposed the notion of historical inquiry in the nineteen sixties, Barry K. Beyer formalized steps for school inquiry. The Los Angeles School District conducted inquiry instruction using the Strasser & Dalis materials in the seventies. Willis Copeland et al, developed a series of computerized social studies inquiries in the nineteen eighties, Bernie Dodge originated the idea of a Webquest which could be implemented as an inquiry oriented instructional model. Since 2003 Sugata Mitra’s Student Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) have been implemented in K-12 classrooms. In SOLE, students research open-ended questions on the Internet.

* Kumar labels prior efforts as failures but I view innovations on a continuum that absent early near hits and misses, the opportunity for successful innovation is limited.

New Values – the notion that current teachers believe inquiry is an engaging way to teach and learn suggests that there is interest in this type of instruction.

Opportunity – many of the content management issues that plagued prior attempts at inquiry instruction may be amenable to a technological fix.

Risk – teachers may find an instructional inquiry innovation exciting and engaging but the innovation may not be adopted if it does not address standardized assessments.

Intent Statement Mock-up – Table Responses

In this section I present Kumar’s Intent Statement steps with sample responses based on the inquiry instruction rough notes provided above. Your task will be to identify an innovation opportunity and then to provide sample responses. As you read the mock up table responses you will see that much of the information came directly from the rough notes. So, it is important to do the rough notes even though it is not required to submit them. Note, you are learning a process. It is not necessary to provide detailed documentation of your responses. However, there is a possibility that you will use your sample innovation for subsequent practice activities, so you may want to record your sources to avoid duplicating effort.

Response Form Mode 1 Mindset, Method - Sense Intent

Rough Notes (Optional)

Title - Educational Games

Problem –

These days’ students in the class will mostly be disengaged to what the teacher says which will negatively affect their academic level. So, my question is what will make the learning system more attractive for students, or how can we make students more engaged in the class?

Audience –

The audience is students in grade K-10 and K-12.

Prior Efforts (Failures) –

Mania Moayad proposed that the use of games in teaching English has increased the student's attention and motivation and it is very useful to use games. Moreover, Games create a rich environment full with interaction and stimulations for the students. Christian de Luna proposed that the game allowed students to actually see what they had only heard about during the first session—it gave them an improved contextual vision of the events of that had taken place. Gee mentions, “in video games, losing is not losing, and the point is not winning easily or judging yourself a failure. In playing video games, hard is not bad and easy is not good”.

New Values –

Mania Moayad stated that when using educational games that will increase the student’s attention and motivation. Moreover, it will create a rich environment full with interaction. Which result in making student more engaged in the classroom.

Opportunity –

The need for engagement in classroom and motivation is a real and pressing obstacle. Upwards of 40 percent of high school students are chronically disengaged from school, according to a 2003 National Research Council report on motivation.

Risk –

Students will be more engaging in the classroom if we use educational games that will motivate them. However, these educational games will not have a positive effect if the instructors didn’t have the sufficient experience on how to deal with technologies.

Table Responses (Required)

Feedback:

Rough Notes

problem - okay, audience - okay,

prior efforts - fine for activity, for a real project you would do more investigation and research

new values - seeking engagement

opportunity - need is recognized - good

risk - okay, another risk is that it can be expensive to create a game and educational games have had mixed results in terms of transferring the skills to real life situations.

Table Responses

step 1 - okay

step 2 - good, you are looking for issue that might impact your success

step 3 - I'm not sure I agree.  I think students love what they are passionate about but simply go through the motions with content that they do not see as relevant to their circumstances.

Step 4 - okay (looks like the rough notes were useful to you)

Step 5 - only thing I'd change is to include the content focus as you will not be creating a "universal" gaming software. At least, I don't think that is your intent.

You seem to have the basic idea. Remember this is just on of many methods a designer may use when starting the innovation process.