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PEN wiki

Creative Capacity Building I

What is this lesson?

The creative capacity building lesson is a lesson in basic principles of design such as brainstorming, idea selection and prototyping. It is possibly one of the most important lessons you can teach (!!) because it gives people the basic tools they need to go about solving real engineering problems in their lives.

It is designed to begin with a brief design exercise (e.g. “hold as many corn cobs off the ground as you can using 6 sheets of paper”), then goes on to give teams a task for how to solve a problem that is appropriate to their environment.

The class focuses on brainstorming and idea refinement, and students go through these steps in groups for the problems that have been given. The groups should each have one teaching assistant in them to facilitate the design process.

At the end of the class, the students should have each made a prototype of their chosen design to solve the problem.

If this lesson interests you, there's lots to do:

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Whether or not you're interested in writing a part of this lesson, please leave lots of comments on this page, the teacher's guide, and the evaluation form. Thanks!

What this lesson teaches

Science/Engineering principles

Not applicable.

Technical skills

Whatever the prototyping requires!

Design skills

- Defining a problem

- Brainstorming

- Design requirements (Pugh Charts)

- Idea selection

- Prototyping

Other skills

Team design work.

Deliverables

Each group has their own prototype of a device designed to solve the problem that they have been given.

How this lesson fits into the curriculum

PEN lessons that meet the requirement are noted in brackets.

Curricular knowledge and skills

None, or lots! This is designed as an intro to the design process, so can be taught to students of any level of technical skill.

Assumes no knowledge of formal design process.

Extracurricular skills

None

Follow-up lessons

any design/building lesson. Recommend that this be taught at the start of a curriculum so that design concepts are kept in mind through the other lessons.

Practical Work

Demonstrations

Could potentially do role-playing exercises in front of class to demonstrate brainstorming.

Pick a simple problem that you have to work out how to solve, and teachers/assistants demonstrate throwing out ideas for how to solve it and testing those ideas in front of the class.

Front-of-class demo should also be done for the Pugh chart section of the design process.

Experiments

Design intro:

The first task in the workshop should be to give the teams a simple task - holding as many corn cobs (or some other readily available object) 4 inches from the ground using only 5 sheets of A4 paper and some tape, in 5 minutes. This activity will provide a point of discussion later in the lesson.

Design/Build Work

This is the entire second half of the lesson!

The teams will each be given problems they have to build a device to solve. These should be chosen carefully beforehand to be relevant to the area the lesson is being taught in (e.g. for a lesson taught in a Ghanaian village, tasks such as fruit drying and separating seed from flax).

The teams should (after a front-of class talk) define exactly the problem that needs to be solved. Then, team brainstorming begins, facilitated by a teaching assistant. Once a substantial amount of ideas have been collected, teams should move on to the Pugh chart section to evaluate them. Finally, choose an idea!

Figure out how to implement the idea! There could be a break to collect materials to do the building with, or the materials could already be there.

Build the idea! Demo it!

Logistics/Resources

Building materials

Anything and everything you can find from the surrounding area.

Demonstration materials

Some small problem that can be solved as a front of class role-playing demo, for brainstorming (cracking nuts works well)

Pieces of paper and corn cobs/other objects for first design exercise.

Other materials/equipment

Any tools students can get their hands on!

Whiteboard/giant paper pad + pens are good for demonstrating Pugh charts.

Pens and paper for in-team brainstorming, selection and design work.

Classroom logistics

Class can be as large as you want, as long as it can be broken up into teams of 4-8ish. You need one teacher/assistant per team to facilitate design discussions.

Optional Questions

Why should students want to participate in this lesson?

Because it's fun! Because they end up with something that is genuinely useful for solving a problem!

Because they learn design skills that they can apply to anything and start solving their own problems!

Why should teachers want to teach it?

Also because it's fun!

Because it's very satisfying to see people who have never thought of themselves as engineers, builders or designers start realizing that they have the power to create something useful.

If this lesson (and its prerequisites) were the only PEN lessons someone took, what should they be able to do?

Solve engineering problems!

Brainstorm, select an idea, begin to make design plans.

If you had to teach this lesson tomorrow morning, what would you spend tonight working on? (assuming that materials were not an issue)

Rehearsing the role-playing demo, going over guidelines for how to facilitate team design work.

If you hadn’t taught this lesson before, what questions would you have for someone who had taught a very similar lesson?

What are good ways to overcome language barriers?

What are good ways to include women/children/younger students if the group has a wide range of participants?

Did showing the design process for an “example design” (unrelated to any of the projects, maybe something previously designed by another club/team member) work well?

If the only materials available were broken radios, TVs, and computers, could you do all the electronics in this lesson? (assuming you had solder, soldering irons, etc.) If not, what would be missing?

YES

If the only structural materials available were dish-cloths, cardboard, and plastic bags, could you make the mechanical bits of this lesson? (assume equipment as above) If not, what would be missing?

YES

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