Knowledge Building Design Studio: Saving Planet, Saving Lives (22 and 23 November 2021)

The Knowledge Building Design Studio (KBDS) November 2021 brought together over 50 students, researchers, and experts to work on the challenge of, “Saving Planet, Saving Lives”. KBDS’21 was a virtual event, supported by virtual conferencing technology and the electronic discourse platform Knowledge Forum (KF), that gave students, across levels and schools, an opportunity to work together, generate and improve their ideas on real-world problems.

Group photo of participants from KBDS 2021

 

The design goals of KBDS were:

1. Wondering culture: Provide the environment for students work on real-world issues that are authentic to them—problems that they can connect to. Support them when they become motivated to seek out information and find out more about the problem.
2. Creative culture: Build a culture that assures students that it is not about getting the right answer. Encourage students to evaluate their current knowledge about the topic, identify gaps and potential ideas, and through discussion, research and experiments, derive new insights about the topic.
3. Shared Responsibility. Challenge the notion of building consensus. Create space and time for students to share responsibilities in discussing and working on different ideas that surfaced in the community. Assure them there is no hurry to converge ideas; they can remain different as long as the ideas are useful in understanding the topic.

The design goals were translated to activities and strategies that were shared with teachers.

State your curiosity

In the KBDS, students explored the theme of ‘Saving Planet, Saving Lives’. By giving students opportunities to share, students suggested topics that engaged their natural curiosity and that they were truly interested in. The students, many of whom were meeting each other for the first time, collectively generated five areas of interest: Animals and Humans, Food Wastage, Global Warming, Renewable Energy and the Plastic Problem.

Through continuous engagement with the wider community over the two days, students worked relentlessly to generate ideas and theories to attempt to resolve the problems. They tested different ideas, discussed potential and conflicting ideas, and managed to get to a deeper understanding of their topic of interest than when they started.

The community coming together

We invited scientists, researchers, and journalists to the community to share their ongoing research and work with students.

Dr Norman Lim’s (Researcher) sharing on his research work on stray animals and its impact on humans

 

Ms Hoe Yeen Nie’s (Journalist and Documentary producer) sharing on the importance of biodiversity in the insect species on our planet

To heighten students’ awareness of their learning and knowledge building effort, we invited Dr Erik Jahner, a neuroscientist, to join the community. He shared the latest brain science evidence and discussed the role of emotions in learning with the students. Students’ newfound knowledge on emotions in learning was then put into practice when they worked through a series of emotion surveys to self-report and reflect on their own emotional engagement during the KBDS.

Dr Erik Jahner’s sharing of the neuroscience in emotions and learning

Ms Leanne Ma, a researcher from the University of Toronto, brought in playable analytics to students where students could choose what and how they want to analyse the ideas in their discussion so far. By giving students opportunities to identify words that they found promising across groups, they developed new connections between concepts they had not thought about before to continue to explore and work on their ideas.

Journey of thinking

Students interacted within and across groups, generated new ideas and brought back the ideas to their interest group to inform their own idea improvement journey. Students wrote their ‘Journey of Thinking’ on the KF, which they shared across groups. Through this ‘Journey of Thinking’, students visualised how their ideas grew and connected key ideas across groups. Through such open communication, students found deeper connections where they identified common points and the intersection of their ideas. They realised a collective effort is needed to change peoples’ mindsets towards saving the planet. Therefore, students worked as a community towards a similar direction to encourage the public to realise the importance of saving the planet to save lives.

 

A student sharing his group’s growing understanding on plastic pollution and the new connections that had emerged through the ongoing discussions with other groups.

Ideas that change the world

On the final day, students created artefacts to visualise their idea development across the two days. Students explored and built artefacts related to their ongoing discussions that pushed for a change in people’s mindset towards sustainability problems. One group created a website that encourages people to take care of animals and shared tips on how to do so, and other groups created posters to raise awareness of global warming and encourage the public to reduce their plastic usage. The students shared their artefacts and the future directions that they can explore following the closure of the KBDS.

To support students in advancing their ideas shared beyond the Design Studio, Jaslyn (National Youth Council Representative) shared with students about the Youth Changemakers Grant. We have plans for students to expand on the ideas generated in the KBDS to create grant proposals so that they can translate their ideas into real projects that can contribute to saving the planet.

 

Students’ presentation of their poster on the solutions developed to raise awareness of global warming and share solutions with the public

Jaslyn sharing the Youth Changemakers Grant to inspire students in bringing their ideas from the Design Studio to the community for public good

 

By participating in the KBDS, students deepened their interest in causes they believe in and developed a deeper understanding of their roles in saving the planet and saving lives. We hope that subsequent iterations of the Knowledge Building Design Studio will continue to give students the opportunity to work on novel solutions that can be further extended and brought back to the community for public good.