Connecting Research & Practice

Learning engineering requires applying scientific research to the design process.

Lenses are one set of tools that I used to connect research and practice. Lenses are theories, pedagogies, and approaches that offer ideas about how to go about designing a solution for a given learning challenge; they typically offer “tried and true” design patterns that help launch the design process. 

By "applying lenses to my designs," I refer to the process of leveraging the findings of previous researchers and educational designers to my current design challenge. These lenses also help me determine what kinds of evidence I need to collect through testing my prototypes with potential learners.

For instance, one of the lenses I applied when designing the Symmetry Dot Grid was sociocultural learning theory. Because this theory suggests that learning is inseparable from the contexts, practices, and histories in which it takes place, caregiver-child interactions became an important source of data in testing the second prototype. In the future, I can apply this lens to any design challenge in which interactions among people engaging with my design (in this case, learners and their caregivers) will serve as evidence for learning.

Read more of my insights!