Nick Petch - Learning Futures | Design-based Assessment and Instruction in Action
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Automatic Transcript of Nick Petch - Learning Futures | Design-based Assessment and Instruction in Action
[Nick Petch] 13:46:57
Thank you very, very much. Yeah, it's a lovely introduction and yeah I love the crowd love the philosophy and the the approach towards creating more thoughtful learning and making every minute of it count.
[Nick Petch] 13:47:25
domain which I think it's a really big domain. It's really interesting domain and yeah I've got a lot to share so I hopefully having overpack this talk. Before take us down the rabbit hole on this, though.
[Nick Petch] 13:47:29
I thought about you know I got the sort of post lunch session.
[Nick Petch] 13:47:34
So it's decided to set you your first assessment to kind of wake the room back up. So what you want to do is you want to grab a piece of paper or a few pieces of paper, and
[Nick Petch] 13:47:50
just don't give everyone just a second to do that too so you got something to draw on.
[Nick Petch] 13:47:56
And so there's a lesson in this so don't worry. It's not too novel.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:01
The next thing I want you to do I want you to turn the camera on, if you're if you're here and in the room and thankfully, some people have the profile photos up.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:12
Fantastic.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:14
Alrighty Hello Hello everyone, how are you going there, lovely to see your faces.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:20
This is what I want you to do with your pen and your piece of paper, I want you to look across the Zoom Room in gallery view and I want you to find someone yeah and I want you to kind of focus on that person.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:33
And then I want you to draw them I'm only going to give you about a minute or a minute and a half to do this yeah so don't think just draw draw them all right.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:41
So, off you go.
[Nick Petch] 13:48:46
can pick any way in your life but it's easy to pick one person and stick with them, trust me.
[Nick Petch] 13:49:21
That 10 seconds remaining. Make it good. Make it your best work you've ever done.
[Nick Petch] 13:49:32
Fantastic. Alright, Next Step one, a new piece of paper.
[Nick Petch] 13:49:38
I want you to get a new piece of paper put it next to the next to the drawing. And I want you to extract. An interesting shape from what you've drawn it could be from that person's face from something they wearing, but I want you to try to extract an
[Nick Petch] 13:49:52
interesting shape from what you've drawn. And I want you to try and create a letter out of it.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:19
Give you a bad another 10 seconds to polish off that letter.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:25
And so now if we had more time.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:29
I could ask you to go and make a whole alphabet based off that one letter.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:35
Now the lesson here in this little itty bitty micro sized assessment is that every step, really really does matter, and that as designers.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:47
The ability to think more thoughtfully more creatively.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:51
With each of the steps of an assessment.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:53
Really really make a big difference to to the users experience.
[Nick Petch] 13:50:58
I've been for some time working at the intersections of learning of design of strategy, and spend a lot of my time going as deep down the rabbit hole of Human Centered Design, as, as, as I possibly can and found some very interesting things and I've been
[Nick Petch] 13:51:16
bringing a lot of those findings back to to the world of learning.
[Nick Petch] 13:51:35
In terms of practice and today I want to sort of share with you some of some of my key findings as well as show you some practical pieces of work that have been implemented, hoping to inspire and illuminate new ways of thinking about assessment.
[Nick Petch] 13:51:40
And a lot of what informs this work is is probably a lot to do with my history as a designer I've worked and been trained in many fields from from print to feature film and visual effects to learning design to web design to animation so I've been through
[Nick Petch] 13:51:55
a lot of different types of assessments. And that's probably subconsciously inspiring me a lot.
[Nick Petch] 13:52:01
But one of the intersections I think really plays into all of this is a movement known as generative design.
[Nick Petch] 13:52:07
It's been around for some time and it's really a movement, established by Liz Sanders in the US and it's really a practice that draws simultaneously from from three core perspectives one of marketing research which is what people say.
[Nick Petch] 13:52:24
One of applied anthropology, which is what people do and one of participatory design which is what people make.
[Nick Petch] 13:52:30
And
[Nick Petch] 13:52:33
I think, you know, design based assessment, the types of assessments that they utilize for creative schools of design and alike are actually very different, they tend to embrace a different perspective for assessment and how it goes and through the use
[Nick Petch] 13:52:51
of things such as generative methods or design thinking and alike.
[Nick Petch] 13:52:57
They really have the potential to take assessment and learning and experience to to new spaces to encourage and habitual ways of going about doing saying and making and learning and so forth that they can be fast or slow assessments that these types of
[Nick Petch] 13:53:18
assessments and approaches can actually create new types of artifacts which are very powerful to way devices for thinking for for finding things in the world can order thought in new ways, which can be really really fascinating and interesting and probably
[Nick Petch] 13:53:32
most interestingly, with this type of work. Is it can actually compete with real world contexts right and I'm going to show you a couple of examples about how health so.
[Nick Petch] 13:53:47
So, in the world of design, you know there's a lot of consensus about what design is and there's also a lot of fighting.
[Nick Petch] 13:53:54
So you know just like every other thing, but one notion that comes to mind when somebody asked me what is design is that design is the experimentation within virtual worlds.
[Nick Petch] 13:54:06
In order to make better judgments. Yeah, designed by process by methodology by practice this is a fantastic perspective by the one and only Donald Sean, about what design really is.
[Nick Petch] 13:54:20
Yeah, it's not a graphic object, it's not just a system it's actually this container we're creating in order to experiment so that we can, in fact, learn, and make better judgments about what it is we're we're working on.
[Nick Petch] 13:54:36
And so with this type of thinking and philosophy right, you can imagine a lot of the scholars in and around design and epistemology and you know so on and so forth.
[Nick Petch] 13:54:48
For some very profound thinking at education, and a lot of the questions that they've been asking from the sort of field of design education is whether or not a methodological approach towards education producers students that talk act and thinking the
[Nick Petch] 13:55:04
same ways, and therefore produce the same solutions in the world.
[Nick Petch] 13:55:10
Can the way in which an assessment is formulated become kind of straight jacket. Right. These are some of the big questions they're attempting to kind of dig into.
[Nick Petch] 13:55:22
And throughout history, my most interesting finding that I found is, is this one here, and it's 1959. In Germany, and to really incredible minds are coming together, probably very unlikely minds as well.
[Nick Petch] 13:55:38
One of Anthony for us hug who is basically to overly summarize invented what we currently say is typography.
[Nick Petch] 13:55:48
That's a pretty big deal.
[Nick Petch] 13:55:50
And then also Horst riddle. If you haven't heard of this gentleman. He's a physicist and mathematician who really popularized the notion of wicked problems which, if you know much about design has really kicked off what he's known to be design thinking
[Nick Petch] 13:56:06
and contemporary design, as of today.
[Nick Petch] 13:56:09
And so these two incredible minds and kind of came together to really question.
[Nick Petch] 13:56:14
What assessment is what variables make up an assessment, and I think this is kind of very interesting to kind of play with the formula they kind of landed on was the idea that, you know, x, y is equal to zero.
[Nick Petch] 13:56:37
to be used that equal to the solutions to be found. To dig a little deeper into this.
[Nick Petch] 13:56:41
As designers, when we choose to design assessment, do we choose to reimagine transfer or metal remix or switch out to pilot jelly beans, any one of these particular variables as part of our assessments design because it's by doing this, that we're fundamentally
[Nick Petch] 13:57:00
able to innovate, the foundations of any assessment by design.
[Nick Petch] 13:57:06
And it's these three variables that sit at the heart of assessment, go a little deeper. So, in terms of the problem.
[Nick Petch] 13:57:17
do we define the problem for Lana or do we let them make the inquiry. Are we going to inform them and tell them and pray face what problem they're actually solving or do we let them explore and make that inquiry.
[Nick Petch] 13:57:34
The method, do we define the path to be taken by the learner, as in how to solve that problem or how to work through that problem, or do we let them discover it do we let them develop their own methods or methodology towards fulfilling the assessment.
[Nick Petch] 13:57:51
And then lastly the solution. Do we dictate what's actually out there to be found in terms of the solution. or do we let learn is decide for themselves.
[Nick Petch] 13:58:02
I'm not sure about you but I've done different assessments as a student and designed different assessments as a practitioner throughout my life where at times I've given people a problem to solve it, other times I've given them a solution and ask them
[Nick Petch] 13:58:14
to figure out how we got there, everything kind of in between that already exists, and also exists and I believe that often, where assessment design can really lack imagination and creativity is because we're filling too many of these boxes, we're not
[Nick Petch] 13:58:31
actually creating enough stakes within the design or enough creativity within the design of the assessment Yeah, we're telling them what the problem is, what the method that is that they need to use and the solution that they should find which, if we
[Nick Petch] 13:58:45
go back to what was being asked by the scholars in design is perhaps too much of a straitjacket perhaps it is producing people that walk, talk, and all produce the same solutions.
[Nick Petch] 13:59:01
What I find very interesting, and hopefully that connects and resonates with everyone here is that if we look at the world of work and how learning really operates particularly in the incidental learning domains.
[Nick Petch] 13:59:14
We can see some pretty interesting things we know that on like conditions for organizational error can really come down to things like vagueness ambiguity and test stability scattered information withheld information and discuss ability uncertainty, even
[Nick Petch] 13:59:30
inconsistency.
[Nick Petch] 13:59:33
At the same time, these conditions for organizational areas actually make for authentic learning stimulus. Yeah, and sometimes for the very best possible learnings that are out there.
[Nick Petch] 13:59:46
Now, the right corrective responses or motive inquiry to to these behaviors or things like to be able to specify to clarify, to make something testable to concert something to reveal and make visible to make discoverable to be able to inquire effectively
[Nick Petch] 14:00:03
and correctly and to be able to resolve.
[Nick Petch] 14:00:08
So real world learning, often doesn't really relate to traditional classroom assessment, and so we need to be asking ourselves how is the assessment designs we choose to create helping people to thrive within the environments, they actually work.
[Nick Petch] 14:00:24
And this is sort of a particular place where I tend to work.
[Nick Petch] 14:00:30
So, let's have a look at some examples real world examples and I did want to share some more of these but I'm sort of sharing what I'm allowed to share this point in time.
[Nick Petch] 14:00:42
But once you show you some solutions that have been designed and implemented in the post grad setting for students for post grad design students, and also for the workplace, at a local and at a global context.
[Nick Petch] 14:00:59
So they sort of start really simple and gradually get more and more complicated as we sort of go.
[Nick Petch] 14:01:05
So this first piece here. Looks like a child's game but it's not. It's actually quite deep and quite serious. This is called the gingerbread person and it's it's an artifact that he's made, and really the way this one was designed in used is really to
[Nick Petch] 14:01:24
answer the following sort of statement which is how might we enable postgraduate students to understand empathy and reflect on their practice, so that they can design better end of life experience for those affected by motor neuron disease right, this
[Nick Petch] 14:01:40
was the actual brief they were being given as part of their design management unit and empathy is a very interesting thing.
[Nick Petch] 14:01:50
Often it's saying, probably through too much of a limited lens in terms of design empathy is really a tool for building an intelligence up about the context and the end users in which we're designing for.
[Nick Petch] 14:02:05
And so what's really interesting he can see by asking postgraduate students to interview to draw to discuss and to define how empathy operates at an intellectual a compassionate and an emotional level.
[Nick Petch] 14:02:20
It's a very simple tool but the fact remains before this artifact exists, we're not able to have that deep, meaningful informed conversation.
[Nick Petch] 14:02:31
And if you take a moment to sort of study these in terms of like whether it's from an anthropological perspective, or from a learning perspective.
[Nick Petch] 14:02:39
They've actually very very rich for a 15 minute conversation, right. So the idea is is you interview one another one on one you draw what you hear. And this is beginning to to open up those those channels and really build that lesson around empathy before
[Nick Petch] 14:02:57
we take them on words into the greater assessments, what's interesting here at the top you'll see there's the formula for assessment you'll see abstract out problem and solution for these students, um, I would just give them the method, I wouldn't frame
[Nick Petch] 14:03:11
the problem for them and I wouldn't tell them what the solution is and I think that's where the magic in giving them freedom to to create really really is nurtured.
[Nick Petch] 14:03:24
Next up is a vision poster.
[Nick Petch] 14:03:27
This was recently used for a number of different projects but in this particular instance I'm going to show you was for the context of how might we enable a large engineering firm to define aspirational culture for learning for project management, so
[Nick Petch] 14:03:42
that they can redesign how induction and continuous learning operates at scale.
[Nick Petch] 14:03:49
So this is one component of an assessment inside of a design process, and that is very effective. So being able to redefine anything right at scale is quite a big process.
[Nick Petch] 14:04:05
And so with this particular pace, it takes place as part of a greater design process but it is in a sense part of the greater overall descent assessment and and really learning by doing.
[Nick Petch] 14:04:18
And at these posters represented a particular aspect of their culture they want to aspire to to obtain, and these are drawn by fully grown adults, most of which think they're not creative, because that was trying to edit them a long time to go through
[Nick Petch] 14:04:35
system, but the fact remains that you don't, it's not actually about creativity. Right, it's really not because this little person here standing on the steps represents the individual standing on all the tools and methods and structures that they have
[Nick Petch] 14:04:51
and it's by packaging those up neat like that they're able to go and take their little hammer and their star which represents probably the doing of work and their aspirations and they're able to sort of build this cyclical relationship with learning in
[Nick Petch] 14:05:06
the workplace. Incidentally, or otherwise over this side, what we're beginning to see is what the reality of actually being a project manager is actually all about it's actually very little to do with Gantt charts, it's very little to do with milestones
[Nick Petch] 14:05:20
it's a lot to do with listening with having sensitivity with coaching. There's a lot of other aspects coming through in these short little drawings, which I think is very very powerful if you choose to value set data.
[Nick Petch] 14:05:38
Now of course, this makes up part of a bigger assessment process.
[Nick Petch] 14:05:44
One in which we actually packaging things into Problem Based Learning briefs and then creating teams as part of a design process.
[Nick Petch] 14:05:54
To be able to go forth and actually solving design for those particular particular problems right.
[Nick Petch] 14:06:01
And so so very interesting it'll into links and it all kind of has play, sort of, sort of going through throughout.
[Nick Petch] 14:06:10
So this one is actually a tool, or it's an assessment dressed up as a tool, given to people in order to transform the way in which they work. So, the context, we're working in or the or the artifacts.
[Nick Petch] 14:06:29
Planning Canvas, and the context was how might we enable non designers to put design thinking at the center of everything they do. So that they can capability uplift and transition towards becoming a customer centered organization.
[Nick Petch] 14:06:42
So I need to give you a little bit of context, this is a large force for large software company. We did a lot of research what we discovered was there got a lot of really senior designers, and then a lot of people wanting to practice design but nothing
[Nick Petch] 14:06:55
in between.
[Nick Petch] 14:07:12
So therefore, there was no practice of design at an entry level through to a research or mastery level and our job was to fundamentally look at how learning by design could intervene on that particular problem and to address this problem what we ended
[Nick Petch] 14:07:15
up designing was a design thinking circuit. So, it is a four hour session that you do three times and you do it once a month, and each session you would get one hour theory, two hours of practice, and one hour of planning.
[Nick Petch] 14:07:29
Now that one hour of planning for how you're going to adopt design thinking So who are you going to talk to. What is your research plan what tools you're going to use what problems are you going to go and investigate, so on and so forth all ties back
[Nick Petch] 14:07:45
to that Canvas and that a three planning canvas or assessment Canvas, really becomes this artifact within this socio technical system.
[Nick Petch] 14:07:57
That really is an ongoing assessment because each cycle of the design thinking circuit, you know they bring this sheet back, and they're able to continue to build on it.
[Nick Petch] 14:08:07
So over a month, someone a non designer let's say they're from HR is trying to put design thinking to work in their context to the first month that they might just go and talk to seven people and start to collect stories from across the organization.
[Nick Petch] 14:08:23
Maybe it's stories about the current onboarding experience for example right and so they're starting to build up this this canvas or this assessment over time and this is how, in fact, they're learning through incidental design based and unstructured
[Nick Petch] 14:08:40
instructed learning.
[Nick Petch] 14:08:44
So lucky last and seems to be running on time, which is good, the artifact for this one is a circle.
[Nick Petch] 14:08:52
And this one is really centered around the context of how might we enable adults who go to work, to create permission space and spark for play, so that they can transform situations at work into more playful ones in ways that increase well being, connection
[Nick Petch] 14:09:08
and new thinking.
[Nick Petch] 14:09:11
So this one is actually for that big toy company most of you know, as Lego, and there's some background research that really discovered in order to get adults player at the center of work they need to create permission space and spark at all levels, and
[Nick Petch] 14:09:26
and if they can do that, then they're able to increase well being increased connection and increase the occurrence of new thinking.
[Nick Petch] 14:09:34
So in terms of creating a method of assessment for this is a very tricky one to get at, but also the living the dream right.
[Nick Petch] 14:09:43
So what's really interesting up on the left there you'll see the old way of doing things which is using Lego to to solve problems. So tactile design methods participatory design methods.
[Nick Petch] 14:09:52
But if you pull Lego apart meta physically or philosophically what what actually Lego does is it creates learning that is socially interactive actively engaging meaningful intuitive and joyful.
[Nick Petch] 14:10:06
So what we looked at doing was taking those learning through play characteristics and creating a social construct or a method of assessment, whereby teams can stand in a circle.
[Nick Petch] 14:10:18
They can each put on the hat of one of these loan through play characteristics, and then they can find a situation at work, that gets in the way of well being connection on new thinking say it's that I don't know Wednesday.
[Nick Petch] 14:10:30
9pm sales meeting, right, that thing is killing my well being said let's get that and let's put it in the center of the circle by doing that we've given it permission to change.
[Nick Petch] 14:10:40
And then the person in the center of the circle does it 360 and as they go around the circle, everyone around them it aids on the ideas from the characteristic, the hat that they're wearing.
[Nick Petch] 14:10:52
And what you end up with is a large amount of high quality ideas for changing situations at work into more playful ones that can be implemented.
[Nick Petch] 14:11:03
And this is something they continue to do and it makes up the largest sort of ecosystem, but this is sort of at the heart of the assessment for the team to be able to come together to be able to ask, what do we need more of Do we need more well being
[Nick Petch] 14:11:15
more connection or more new thinking, so we're not giving them the problem to solve, but we are giving them the method, and by empowering them to use a method of self assessment and alike, they able to come up with their own solutions.
[Nick Petch] 14:11:29
And I think this is a very powerful way to consider how assessments are made.
[Nick Petch] 14:11:39
So coming back to the key point is adjusting variables of assessment can create new spaces for learning for change can encourage and habitual ways of knowledge of learning a change of behavior that can be fast or they can be slow, right, as you were saying
[Nick Petch] 14:11:54
with the canvas pace that that can take up to four months to complete that assessment of what they're going to focus on and it's something that's really built up over time, and it can be quite organic at times right new types of artifacts So choosing
[Nick Petch] 14:12:07
to to invest in the concept of say do and make and to really start switching out the variables in design. So, you know that that that's a very powerful thing to be able to do to empower people to to put to order for the new ways, and to compete with real
[Nick Petch] 14:12:25
real world context.
[Nick Petch] 14:12:32
So, I've given you the variables for assessment. I've given you a handle on site and making generative design.
[Nick Petch] 14:12:38
All very very interesting stuff.
[Nick Petch] 14:12:41
I believe if you sort of continue down this pathway, you will find novel and unique ways to transform learning designed to focus on behavior change instead of just knowledge recall, and you can do that as as living incidental learning and assessment,
[Nick Petch] 14:12:58
and I I believe that very, very much.
[Nick Petch] 14:13:00
You can provide employees with goals guidance and feedback, and it can make it key not just to measuring impact of letting inside of an organization but to actually start creating it.
[Nick Petch] 14:13:15
Thank you very much.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:13:20
Thank you. Thank you so much.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:13:23
Got a couple of minute minutes before I dive into questions and observations, unless anyone got any questions for Nick.
[Mick Gwyther] 14:13:39
Thanks for looking because Thank you Nick I'm going to question about the planning camp but that's just a really lovely example of what was talked about a couple of times by people, including myself and write this morning about the work tasks something
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:13:53
someone needs to do in the in the workplace being both the activity and then forming the assessment as well.
[Nick Petch] 14:14:02
What that particular course was their completion. Was there someone could be in the team, I'm really interested in Yeah, in the measurement externally or internally based on that.
[Nick Petch] 14:14:12
Yeah, absolutely. So, okay, in terms of the impact of the program, there's definitely two measurements going on but in terms of the impact of the program yeah we benchmarked.
[Nick Petch] 14:14:23
So I interviewed and surveyed about 100 and 110 people before we got started thinking about problems or solutions to benchmark, the current perspectives towards design thinking cannot solve meaningful problems and what was interesting is it came out like
[Nick Petch] 14:14:39
a US election, it was like 4349 51%.
[Nick Petch] 14:14:47
In terms of the the the the analysis that we sort of got from that.
[Nick Petch] 14:14:51
And so that that comes out at about 5.1 in terms of out of 10 in terms of an average, and now after we ran it three times and put 120 people through it.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:15:02
The dial shifted from 5.1 to 8.2, which represents a 60% positive increase in the perspective that design thinking can in fact, solve meaningful problems in the workplace.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:15:13
Yeah.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:15:15
Essentially what you did was a impact on the status and perceptions of the way of doing indirect measurement on impact, which was the indirect measurement of people's behavior change.
[Nick Petch] 14:15:28
That's right. Yeah, and again it does come down to scope I think when you're dealing with a problem like that it's it's a it's actually a really big problem it's not as simple as just throwing training at it.
[Nick Petch] 14:15:39
Interestingly, that's what they've done previously and it had wasn't successful.
[Nick Petch] 14:15:43
So you so we tried to find a real targeted intervention and we, I guess, go into it knowing that it's going to take a few years to to build that capability.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:15:51
It's not something that switches on overnight and thank God design thinking isn't otherwise I'll probably be out of the job, it's it's a practice and it's practices, a very broad thing I think it really its associated technical system, I think, you know,
[Nick Petch] 14:16:07
goes into the broader environments.
[Nick Petch] 14:16:10
Yeah.
[Robin Petterd - Host] 14:16:11
Thank you for a great session by catch up with you for a podcast later on.
[Nick Petch] 14:16:15
Creative disciplines and assessment as well. Yeah, I'd love to.
[Nick Petch] 14:16:21
Thank you for having me.
