Blending Design Thinking & CBL

​Engaging in Challenge Based Learning
 
Challenge-based learning (CBL) had to grow on me.  It wasn’t love at first sight or even a very strong initial attraction.  Coming from a firm problem-based learning background, where problems fit neatly into subject area categories, CBL seemed much too open and abstract a pedagogy to assure students would learn.  

​However, the idea of the student products – solutions to challenges they found meaningful in the context of their community and world – was intriguing.  And it was obvious that challenges tackled through CBL led to actual creation, whereas PBL activities typically lead to a hypothetical outcome.
 
Last year, I spent nearly 5 months with CBL studying and considering how it might fit in a traditional high school as a driver of learning (not an add-on).  The framework, as described by Digital Promise in the Challenge Based Learning Guide is pleasingly constructivist.  The three stages of the framework coincide nicely with the learning cycle or 5E structure.
 
But challenges are so long (some take months!) and open-ended.   I wondered how teachers cover content at all when students are learning this way?  Exactly how was a teacher supposed to move students through these challenges?  The details of the pedagogy seemed to be missing.
 
I tried to find a thought partner outside of my school to consider these questions.  However, most individuals I engaged found there to be little or no significant difference in CBL and versions of PBL.  Most would say, “it doesn’t matter what you called it. It just matters that the kids are solving problems.”
 
As I began introducing the ideas of design thinking to my staff, as a process for school transformation, it was they who became the thought partners.  The staff of NRHS, in the end, created the detailed pedagogy we now use as all our 9th and 10th graders work on challenges on a daily basis, which we refer to as Design Thinking CBL.  By using design thinking tools to enhance the CBL framework, we discovered an extremely effective method of instruction for building life skills right along with deepening core content knowledge.
 
Investigating Design Thinking CBL
 
There is a great deal of literature about design thinking and a great place to start is the Stanford d.school.  Design thinking is a process to aid in thinking through wicked problems–human-centered problems without a single or clear solution.   At NRHS, wicked problems became congruent with our challenge topic. Because the design process is not content-specific, it works best with heterogenous teams who possess amongst their members cross-curricular knowledge, also a feature of CBL.  The process is shown in this diagram by the Stanford d.school.

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As we began using resources from design thinking to fill in the details of the CBL framework, the entire process came into sharp focus.  The design teachers explain it this way: “CBL is what we do and design thinking is how we do it.”
 
Acting On Our Learning
 
We created a school schedule that allowed students time beyond the core content classroom to engage in real-world problems with the intent to create and implement a real solution.  By utilizing a local elective called Design, students were still building the necessary content background in core class to then apply to the challenges in the design lab.
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The design thinking processes of empathy mapping and defining the problem from the identified user needs, helped our teachers engage students in the challenge and improved students’ ability to be considerate of others.  The iterative design thinking process of ideation and prototyping aligns with investigation in the CBL framework and gives us strategies like rapid prototyping and brainstorming to move the process to a very creative space.
 
It’s in the last stages of the Design Thinking CBL process that we move to a level of implementation quite different from the more traditional, content-oriented PBL model.  Whereas PBL leads students to create something for the teacher that may be represented hypothetically in a plan, slide deck, poster, or presentation to the class, the Design Thinking CBL act or test/assess stages require that students actually put their products out into the real world for feedback from the people who will actually use the product. At NRHS we use the terms “authentic work” for “authentic audiences” to differentiate this stage from the typical turn-in-your-project-to-the-teacher stage of PBL.  
 
Falling in Love
 
Throughout the first year of implementation of Design Thinking CBL our teachers learned many nuances of the pedagogy.  They learned how difficult it can be to help teenagers develop an empathetic perspective, how the iterative process is quite foreign in our fast-paced, turn-in-your-work-now educational machine, and how scary putting prototyped work out real audiences can be.  However, the teachers continued to hone the details of their instruction by increasing scaffolds around the challenging pieces and removing them as quickly as students could tolerate to build agency and independence in learning.  
 
The result was phenomenal as our students began celebrating empathy (example a school-wide pep rally for our Special Olympics students), demanding time to iterate (some students took 6 to 9 weeks to complete their project), and seeking their own opportunities to display work to authentic audiences (our students hosted over a hundred visitors throughout the year).  
 
It was a long romance, but I’m in love with challenge based learning.  I love the blend with design thinking to make a well-rounded experiential learning opportunity for our students as they work collaboratively to celebrate their individual gifts and talents and the opportunities they see for improvement in our world.  I’m in love with the agency I see developing in our students as their confidence grows and their understanding of their role in the community matures.  I’m in love with the products I see students produce that show how they’ve learned lessons well beyond the core content.  I’m in love with the culture shift direct instruction on empathy has made in our school climate and relationships between peers. 
 
I’m also in love with the way the teachers of NRHS, by acting as designers themselves, used the congruent processes of design thinking and challenge based learning to make a cohesive pedagogy that was both flexible and supportive enough to successfully turn our students into designers as well.  This is how education should be. 

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