5.3 Method
5.3.1 Study 1: Preservice Teachers Designing Technological Products Through Knowledge Building
highlights sustained idea improvement by achieving new syntheses out of concep- tual diversity, complexity, and messiness. This synthesizing effort is similar to the process of design thinking when designers encounter various ideas for consider- ation because a key challenge in this process is how to navigate through a sea of ideas in order to synthesize the most promising ones into higher levels of reconcep- tualization. As argued by Meinel and Leifer (2012), good design thinking is usually constituted by a synthesis challenge more than an ideation (idea diversification) challenge. Nonetheless, differences also exist between knowledge building and design thinking. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between knowledge build- ing and design thinking is that the former is more concerned with knowledge advancement as a learning outcome, whereas the outcome of the latter usually requires the production of a product or artifact. This difference, however, may be quite insignificant if the development of some final products is integrated into a knowledge-building process.
5.2.3 Two Case Studies
In this chapter, we report two case studies of Taiwanese preservice teachers learning to design epistemic artifacts through knowledge-building efforts. The shared instructional goal of the two case studies is to foster preservice teachers’ design-thinking capacity. In Study 1, participants were planning to become ele- mentary teachers for teaching subjects related to natural sciences and living tech- nologies. They were guided to design technological artifacts for improving the quality of everyday living. In Study 2, participants were planning to become middle school mathematics teachers. The epistemic artifacts that they were to design were mathematics teaching plans. The main research question for both case studies focused on whether engaging the prospective teachers in knowledge-building activities would help to enhance their design-thinking capacity as reflected by their ability to work creatively with design ideas for improving their target episte- mic artifacts (i.e., technological products in Study 1 and lesson plans in Study 2).
sciences at elementary school level after graduation. The ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 20. The duration of the course was 18 weeks. One main instructional goal of this course was to help the participants develop design- thinking capacity. To this end, students were engaged in knowledge building;
they were guided to generate their design ideas, work innovatively with these ideas, and accordingly design technology artifacts that can be used to address some real-world problems (e.g., to make a technology device more energy saving).
A computer-assisted online learning environment called “Knowledge Forum™” was set up for the participants to develop their design ideas into some technological products/artifacts. A tutorial lesson was given at the beginning of the semester (e.g., teaching students how to create notes and build on others’notes), in the form of PowerPoint slides, helping the participants to be familiar with the use of Knowl- edge Forum. The instructor who served as a facilitator in this course had more than 6 years of experience using Knowledge Forum in college teaching and did not intervene in any way in students’online learning. Figure5.1shows an example of the preservice teachers’work on Knowledge Forum. In it, each square box repre- sents a note posted by a user, and a link between square boxes indicates efforts to elaborate, question, exchange, or improve ideas. As a university convention, the Fig. 5.1 An example of a KF “view” (i.e., the window in the background) where participants can contribute and reflect on their own ideas in the form of a note (i.e., the pop-out window in the foreground) and/or give feedback to improve others’ideas
72 5 Design Thinking and Preservice Teachers
semester was divided by a midterm examination into two equivalent instructional phases (phases 1 and 2). As knowledge building is a continual process, this division allows us to perform an overall comparison between the two phases and provide some information regarding the students’ progress in their online learning and knowledge building.
5.3.1.2 Data Source and Analysis
A mixed approach to collecting and analyzing data was employed in this case study.
The main data sources included (1) students’online interaction logs and discourse recorded in a KF database and (2) the technology products designed by students.
Analysis of Online Interactions and Idea Development
First, in terms of students’online interactions, three key indicators recorded in the KF database (including number of notes posted, read, and built on) were quantita- tively analyzed to illustrate the overall online interaction pattern. T-tests were performed to compare the two knowledge-building phases to examine major change over time. Furthermore, we content-analyzed the development of ideas by looking into how ideas were improved, using the following three criteria: diversi- fication, clarification, and integration. Table5.1shows the description of each code and examples. Two researchers coded all ideas and the Cohen’s kappa (κ) coeffi- cient was computed as .894. As argued by Meinel and Leifer (2012), deep design Table 5.1 Types of idea development
Type Description Example
Diversification Presenting divergent ideas for solving a technological issue or problem
My ideas of a well-constructed building include (1) having excellent safety mea- sures, (2) using high-quality materials, (3) having practical value, and (4) being environmentally friendly
Clarification Adding details or more explana- tions to a focal idea for addressing a problem
I wonder if it is possible to change some electric equipment by using wireless power transmitters and receivers so that we no longer need electric wires or cables. But will this change cause other issues or problems? Let’s think about it Integration Synthesizing two or more ideas
into an even more persuasive idea
After reading all your ideas about gener- ating electricity through daily human activities (e.g., during walking, swim- ming, talking, or cycling), I think we can integrate all the ideas by designing a power collector that can gather together all the tiny amounts of electricity gener- ated from our bodily movement
thinking is usually represented by idea synthesis activity. It was therefore expected that progressively more idea-synthesizing activities (rather than just focusing on idea diversification and clarification) could be found towards the end of the course.
T-tests were employed to compare between the two phases and see if there were any changes in terms of how ideas evolved over time.
Analysis of Technological Products
Second, the quality of the technology products designed by the participants was peer-assessed using Besemer’s (1998) “Creative Product Analysis Matrix (CPAM).” The original scale has an internal consistency reliability level of Cronbach’s α¼.83. One thing to note is that due to time constraints, students were only required to design technology products in concept form during the course. No actual products were made. The instructional goal was to engage students in design thinking by means of a collaborative process of working with ideas, rather than producing real products. So, of the three dimensions of CPAM, only the first dimension (i.e., novelty) was employed in the final assessment. In this dimension, there are two assessment criteria, including originality and surprisingness. The assessment adopted a seven-point Likert scale. Using a four- point average as a baseline rating for comparing another commonly seen product (e.g., a typical toilet), students were asked to judge the novelty of a designed product. As there were ten groups in this course, there were ten products/artifacts to be assessed. A one-sample t-test was conducted to see if there were any significant differences between the designed products and the baseline products.