From 'base camp' to the 'ascent' and then on to the 'summit', the journey to learning human-centred design thinking can feel like scaling a mountain!
That’s why students at Matthew Flinders Anglican College are starting early, with three bespoke milestone events in Year 1, Year 3 and Year 5 in the Flinders Primary School. Each event is age- and stage-appropriate to set students up for success.
The one-day Design Base Camp enables Year 1 students to build foundational knowledge of design thinking, while the one-and-a-half-day Design Ascent for Year 3 students sees them dive deeper into design thinking.
The culminating conference is the three-day Design for Impact Summit for Year 5 students who are challenged to act as future thinkers and design the future environments they want to live in.
Each of the immersion events provide real-world challenges and connect students with experts across a range of industries and fields with the aim to inspire and equip students to be confident and capable future thinkers.
The students follow the design thinking cycle (Empathise - Define - Ideate - Prototype - Test) to create a design prototype that improves their school, their communities and the wider world.
The Base Camp challenge in Term 4 for Year 1 students sees students design a product that benefits others in the school community.
The Design Ascent in Term 2 saw the Flinders Year 3 students challenged to redesign and prototype the Primary Playground used by the Years 2-4 students. The aim was to envision a unique playground that was exciting, challenging and safe while meeting the varying needs, capabilities and interests of Junior Primary students.
Students crafted by hand a vibrant, life-sized playground prototype, brought to life entirely from cardboard and recycled materials, a testament to their creativity and sustainability.
The Design for Impact Summit in Term 3 challenged the Year 5 students to repurpose the facilities and infrastructure from the 2032 Olympic events held here on the Sunshine Coast to benefit residents post-Olympics.
These milestone events are informed by the College’s bespoke Design Thinking curriculum program, known as the I-care program for Prep and Year 1 students, and the i-Impact program for students from Years 2 to 6.
I-care and i-Impact empower students to integrate Humanities, Science and Technologies subjects from the Australian Curriculum while using human-centred design thinking to empathise, ideate and prototype innovative solutions to cultural, social and environmental issues.
About the Design Ascent - Year 3 Students | Term 2, 2024
In Term 2, the Flinders Year 3 students were given 1.5 days to redesign and prototype the Primary Playground used by the Years 2-4 students.
They used the Design Thinking framework to Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test their solutions.
Students were empowered to use their creativity and imagination to envision a unique playground that was exciting, challenging and safe, and which met the interests and needs of students.
Students were placed in groups to be responsible for different elements of the playground, such as Sensory, Musical, Agility, Balance and Friend zones.
Along the way, ‘hijacks’ were thrown in to disrupt and challenge students' thinking.
The students had to draw on the Flinders Learner Powers, such as resilience, reflection, collaboration, innovation and self-motivation, to assist them with their challenge.
The end result was a giant cardboard prototype that represented students’ individual and collaborative designs.
The Ascent Day, which forms part of the Flinders Design for Impact Program, is a unique opportunity for students to develop their human-centred design thinking skills, setting them up for success in the culminating Year 5 Design for Impact Summit.
About the Design Base Camp - Year 1 Students | Term 4
The Design Base Camp for the Year 1 students is a half-day program utilising the design thinking framework, with a particular focus on the stages of ‘empathising’ and ‘prototyping’.
The Year 1s explored these foundational design thinking skills through a special challenge in 2023: to design a farewell cake for Mrs Debbie Planck, a retiring staff member who was not just a treasured long-term member of staff but also instrumental in implementing Design Thinking in the Flinders Primary School.
The aim was to empower students to be designers and problem solvers; to be creative, innovative in contributing their individual ideas to an innovative solution.
A local cake maker was invited to talk to the students about the possibilities. Members of Debbie’s family also visited to answer students’ questions as they discovered things about her that might influence their cake designs.
To learn more about design thinking at Flinders, visit this story here.
