A Tactile Approach in Online Learning
Dr Aldo Valencia | Design Researcher and Brain Enthusiast | Assistant lecturer at the Design Innovation department, member of Mi:Lab linkedin.com/in/aldo-valencia-57a6a598
Two years ago, a world interacting exclusively through screens might have been seen as dystopian.
Who would have thought that peoples’ proximity would cause some to get anxious?
There is no doubt that the current circumstances sped up the digital transformation; we are encircled by screens, remote meetings and even online birthdays and wedding celebrations. Swiftly modifications caught many of us unprepared for these changes.
After more than a year of working remotely, the opinion is polarised. Some people like working from home, studying online at their own pace while some others miss the office/classroom banter, the social gatherings and face-to-face interaction.
In any case, I think it is fair to say that living among screens drains our attention, our work shifts are longer, we suffer the extra strain in our eyes, and we feel that we are always missing out on something because of the overabundance of never-ending information.
One of the modules I teach at Maynooth University is Design-Driven Entrepreneurship for a Multidisciplinary Audience. We set out this module as part of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Design and Innovation (EDEN). It is about how to design a business starting from the user’s needs.
We have a whole academic year to blend the Effectuation theory from Saras Sarasvathy, Design thinking and the Radical Innovation of Meanings from Roberto Verganti. In the end, all of these theories have to be combined with experiments, interviews and rough prototypes into a very detailed business model to participate in an entrepreneurial student competition organised by the EDEN centre, with a prize pot of more than €10,000.
When I planned this class, I wanted my students to interact and learn from each other. One month into the pandemic, I noticed that very few students participated during the class; the engagement was quite low. Obviously, I couldn’t deliver the content of this module as I planned it B.C. (Before Covid), so I needed to find a way to engage the students and keep their hands out of the mobile phone.
Having spent ten years in design schools, I know the power of the studio culture. We always see students and staff members in the workshop using their hands to materialise their ideas, learning by doing, and having a symbiotic collaboration. Students always ask for more time at the shop; it seems they are in a flow state whenever they are down there. I didn’t know how business, marketing, and social science students would react to this, but we had to come up with something.
At Mi:Lab, we discussed how we could bring the studio experience to the students without breaking lockdown restrictions and complying with the university rules. We wanted to engage their hands into their experience of building their business model, improving the multidisciplinary collaboration and their engagement in the virtual classroom.
One of the coolest ideas we came up with was creating an interactive learning experience that was centred on the needs and goals of students in the online classroom?
We wanted to see beyond the audio-visual dimensions that are currently available. Virtual, artificial or mixed reality wouldn’t help us achieve that. In this new digital environment, it was important to integrate an interactive learning experience that was centred on the needs and goals of the students. Led by curiosity, students were encouraged to build to think and learn by doing.
The main constraint was the physical location of the students and I. Students were all spread out in Ireland, from the wild beauty of Donegal to the rebel county of Cork, from the chill atmosphere of Galway to the always cheeky and witty capital city. And for myself, I was in Mexico, with a 6 hrs time difference. Having to teach a class at 9 am on Monday morning Irish time feels unique, when you are in another continent.
Given the multidisciplinary nature of the class, we have to explain the Design of Business activities in very simple terms.We used EDEN and Mi:Lab proprietary innovation maps and card decks to guide the students in their activities.
The human side
Outside arts and design, the use of haptic elements in higher education is not widely explored. The three H model -Head, Heart and Hands- by the Design Council can help us to understand a little bit more about this approach. Head refers to its problem-solving ability, which taps into the visualisation and conceptualisation of intangible elements. Heart — placing people at the centre, building empathetic solutions collaboratively. And last but not least, Hands — thinking through making, turning invisible into visible and turning complex into understandable with the power of making skills.
Thinking through making brings back tactile learning into the equation. We sent each of the students a parcel containing a Lego serious play kit, a kitchen timer, play-doh, a postcard, and a tote bag. We planned activities focused on the emergence of metaphors to spark creative thinking among members of each team. The Design thinking principle of Show it- don´t tell was the key element to integrate and engage the remote team members. The activities concentrated on building the business model, exploring the value proposition, the user, the problem and the solution, as well as the cost structure and revenue streams. The team members built these business model sections remotely while they had a virtual session on Microsoft teams.
Some students had a dedicated desk with proper lighting and space to work, but most of them adapted the kitchen table, the corner of their rooms or the sofa to go through the activities.
And, to push them away from their phones, we asked for a time-lapse video of the students building up their business model using the Lego bricks and play-doh (1 hr approx. each session). It worked wonders! Students were playfully collaborating, co-constructing their business models and building new scenarios on top of their teammate’s ideas. Time-lapse videos helped them concentrate away from their phones fantastically.
Why?
From an academic point of view, this can be explained from different perspectives. To collaborate in teams remotely, we based this project on two theories: social constructionism and social constructivism, both describe how knowledge is built rather than just taken passively. The only differences are that the former concentrates on the artefact created through social interaction, and the second concentrates on the personal knowledge that is generated through social interaction. In this case, the business model represents the artefact and the individual knowledge on building a user-centric business model.
But from the neurological point of view, it is more difficult to engage students’ brains if the information is presented digitally. Reading a book is not the same as reading from the screen.
Our hands provide more information to our mental networks that help to make sense faster and spark more creative ideas. Scientists explain that our brain doesn’t have specific circuits dedicated to reading due to its early addition to human cognition. Scientist also claim that our brain interprets letters as objects, and these objects sit on a mental landscape formed with the representations of meanings subtracted from the text. In other words, some of the brain regions that our brain uses to make sense of the letters are specialised regions for object recognition. When we enhance the vision with tactile interaction, we allow the brain to feel the landscape of new concepts, giving an extra dimension of understanding to the problem we are facing.
Results
Students engaged far better with their classmates. They even put things on social media showing this approach. Four teams made it to the final Entrepreneurial competition organised by EDEN and one team made it to a National Entrepreneurial competition, ranking in the highest positions. Not bad for second year students!
James, one of the most committed students in the class, posted a Tik-Tok video about this experiment. He got more than 77K video reproductions in the first week! Hundreds of students commented asking about it.
This made us realise that the conversation about the university experience moved from the official university channels to a more bottom-up student generated dialog with the Maynooth´ community.
The takeaway
Imagine a computer without a 3D printer or a 3D scanner. The printer lets everyone see what is inside of this computer, and the scanner let the computer learn about what is outside.
Now imagine that your brain is that computer. It would be incredible to have peripheral devices to make sense of the world and also have them to help the world understand what is inside of your head.
What would those peripheral devices be?
Yeah, you are right, your hands!!
Thanks to everyone at MiLab, Trevor, Therese, Amalia, Siofra and Layne. Also, thanks to Anthony Cleary and Emer Fitzpatrick from the Design Innovation department. Special thanks to Margaret Keane from the Teaching and Learning department at Maynooth University for all the amazing support.
