Roxanne Pompilio
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EDL 655

Communication, Problem Solving and Decision Making PK12

"One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment . . . ; If it doesn't turn out right, we can modify it as we go along."
— Franklin D.Roosevelt
counseling Frances Perkins

Problem Solving

Design thinking—Evolution phase

8/13/2015

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The evolution phase began with a discussion of what to look for to determine whether our parent website is a success? What are the indicators of a successful product? How do we know if we our meeting the needs of our end users (parents)? Our team’s discussion included, but was not limited to, parent ratings of the website, the use of follow-up surveys and interviews, the degree of parent activity on the website (particularly what links and sections were routinely visited), and an increase of visibility of underrepresented groups. Another indicator of success we discussed was the importance of evidence collected from ongoing evaluation/monitoring of the parent website and that design changes/modifications would need to be made as the website evolves over time. This will be important for measuring the website’s sustainability and its interoperability.

In moving forward to next steps, our team reached out to an outside audience for feedback and compared this with feedback received from our colleagues. Our outside audience included business professionals and school Principals.  Both groups held similar opinions about what they valued the most, particularly the need for such a site, the opportunities it afforded to increase parental communication, access to resources, and involvement at school and at home, and translation component of the site. Most changes suggested and concerns expressed included issues of time, getting “buy-in” from parents and teachers who will start-up and run the site, and technical aspects of how the translation function will unfold and how a mobile device program for parents will work. Based on the feedback we received, our team decided further investigation and additional steps were needed prior to rolling out the parent site. First, we will need to conduct additional surveys to both parents and students to see which parents (one or both are likely to participate) and whether both groups view the website as a way to increase parental participation. Second, we need to recruit an initial startup design team consisting of parents and teachers (and a few students) to develop and run a field test/pilot at each of our school sites. This will be done prior to and during back to school nights. Third, the start-up design team will need to develop a plan, including a timeline and calendar, for development and piloting the parent website at our school sites. Finally, we will need to work out the details for how frequently the website will need to be monitored and the use of Google "analytics" to assess the areas used most frequently.

Your individual contribution to this week's work

  • Set-up shared Google Document
  • Added guidelines, checklist, and rubric
  • Suggested using a chart to organize our feedback from outside audience participants.
  • Shared Blendspace link with videos to a former Vice Principal of mine who is now Principal at an elementary school. I selected her because she provides an administrator viewpoint and she has experience with elementary, middle school, and high school parent groups. I also shared the Blendspace link with videos to a retired business owner who has experience with developing and getting a patent on a product. I selected him because although retired, he had to go through a similar process in starting up his company, getting “buy-in” for the product he patented, and had to consider very similar steps to what my team did for our design process.
  • Read over additional articles/research suggested and selected elements for our team to consider when refining the parent website (Ulises and Angela reviewed this section and agreed I’d covered points from the articles that were relevant for our design project).
  • Collaborated with Ulises and Angela in both parts of the evolution phase in refining our website.

Challenges the group or I faced, and what I
would do differently to better the process?
  • By this phase in the process, we have improved our digital collaborative skills and found communication and collaboration less of an issue than the early phases in the design process.
  • Divergent thinking is also becoming easier.
  • We are using our collaboration time more efficiently.
  • Confidence in our design skills and in our own ideas has improved as well during this phase of the design process.
  • In terms of challenges, probably the biggest during this phase was getting outside audience members to view our design model and give us feedback within a short time frame (I called in a few favors, as my former administrator was starting at a new school during the time frame I needed the feedback and other administrators I’d considered were out of town).
How would you implement the reflection process with students or your staff?
I use a similar process as required in the evolution phase for students to evaluate and reflect on their work. However, I usually have them seek feedback from classmates or from students in other classes. I like the idea of having them seek perspectives from an outside audience. This also has the additional benefit of making my students more accountable. If they know that others in the community and well-respected professionals will be viewing their work, the effort they put into the work will most likely reflect this. (If I were to change anything in this process, I’d make sure students had a clearer idea of all of the phases and processes prior to starting).

How did effective communication play a role in your collaboration throughout the entire DT process? Strengths? Areas of growth?
As mentioned previously, our team’s confidence improved throughout the collaborative process, we became less dependent and reliant on the guidelines from our professors, engagement increased among group dynamics (we moved from frustration in the early phases of the process to increased investment and a clearer understanding of the entire process). This in turn, afforded better communication. Overall, I learned a lot about problem solving, the importance of communication in the collaborative process, and feel I will be successful in implemented similar processes with students and staff.
Evolution Phase I & II
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Design thinking—Experimentation phase

8/11/2015

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Our collaborative work for the Experimentation Phase of the Design Thinking (DT) process began with a review of our DT challenge, increasing involvement of underrepresented parent groups and revisiting and aligning our DT questions. Particularly, we are concerned with how we might better address issues of communication and access to increase parental involvement and support at school and at home. Following this, we reviewed the point of view and needs of our end user (our parents) with emphasis on underrepresented parent groups. These parents need better modes of communication, access to and entry points for support services and resources because of the language barriers and inequities that exist between parent groups. Our solution to this challenge involved developing a website capable of streamlining the modes of communication so that resources are consistently updated, can be accessed from several locations using any device, and are more accessible for all parent groups. At this point in the process, we were ready to develop prototypes of our parent website. Our first two Prototypes A and B had visual appeal and many of our parents’ needs. Prototype C was missing the layout, but was more comprehensive of requirements to meet parental needs. Our final product, Prototype D using the Weebly platform— was a synthesis of Prototypes A-C. For a more in depth view of this process, see our shared Google Slide Presentation below. This platform afforded ease of use for our users and connectivity to social media, as well as to already established school sites.
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Experimentation phase—increasing parental involvement and support

Google Slide Presentation
To test our prototype prior to full development, we crafted it to receive feedback from our end users and from our colleagues. We asked those viewing our design thinking process and final prototype the following questions:
  • Whether the Parent Connection site meets their needs?
  • Which parts of the site are the most useful?
  • Which aspects of the site were confusing?
  • What parts of the site need to be changed or modified?
  • What parts of the site do not work and need to go back to R & D?
The feedback we received (see below) was invaluable and fruitful.
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Our team discussed, categorized, and reevaluated our final prototype over Google Hangouts based on the feedback we received to better refine our end product. We also examined what did not work? And what needed to be further investigated?  Overall, we received more positive reviews of our product than we initially were expecting. Probably the main concerns of those reviewing our final product/version of the parent website was whether we’d be able to get the needed “buy-in” from key stakeholders (our parents and teachers)? And whether we’d be able to streamline the site to meet parent needs without sacrificing usability. Among items needing further investigation were the details of how a mobile device checkout program would work for parents, additional costs/budget concerns, sustainability and ongoing evaluation/monitoring, how our social media campaign would roll-out, and the selection of a startup team to further refine and develop our website.

Individual contribution to this week's work
  • Set-up shared Google Document with what was required, including a checklist and rubric
  • Organized team workflow and recommended process to follow
  • Developed Prototype A and Final Prototype D (our team voted for my Prototype A) so it made more sense for me to design the synthesis of Prototypes A-C after our team agreed on what elements should be included in the final prototype.
  • Agreed to take-on Part 4 of the presentation—The Solution to our DT challenge in terms of the presentation on our shared Google Slides.
  • Shared all of our work with our professors
Challenges the group or you as an individual faced
In terms of collaboration, this became much more streamlined than previously. It seems we have developed a system that works. Online collaboration is more efficient and expectations are clearer. Challenges included technical difficulties in getting our presentations uploaded to Youtube and/or Google Drive. Although I uploaded and checked my work earlier, I did not attempt to view it from multiple browsers (this was a great lesson as I know now what browsers it can be viewed in and have a plan if this occurs in the future).

Next time, would you do anything differently to better the process?
I used Google Draw for my Prototypes of the website. I thought this was an excellent idea, but with more time, I might have set-up a prototype on Weebly. Our team had discussed this as an option, but decided against it because the site would not several missing links and basically would be under construction, yet would require us to publish it in order to get feedback on it. We agreed hosting the parent website on Weebly when we are really to field test it, would be a better ideas and is in the works if we move forward in rolling out our design.

How would this process differ if implemented with actual end users? What would you need to take into consideration?
If implemented with actual end users, this idea would probably need to include a way for them to field test the website. This is an essential part in the process, as it would allow our team to trouble-shoot many of the issues we may run up against.

How can the revolutionized idea of collaboration in the 21st century add to the DT process? Elaborate on some possibilities.
Collaboration in the 21st century has changed from how it was used previously in that we have a greater opportunity to learn from and work collaboratively with individuals representing diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles, and have access to experts across the globe to collaborate with and further the design of our end product. Those with the ability to work fluidly around the globe and who are able to leverage technology will definitely have a comparative advantage over those who do not possess these skills.

Experimentation Phase I & II
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Design Thinking—ideation phase

8/3/2015

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Ideation Process Parts I-III—Shared Google Document
Mural.ly—Brainstorm 100 Challenge to Idea Formation

Reflecting on the IDEATion Process—Parts I-III

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Reflecting on the Ideation Process—Part I: Generating 100 Ideas
The first part of the ideation process was perhaps the most challenging for myself and my group. We established norms for brainstorming, created a Mural.ly document with three columns, but when we initially met, the ideas were not flowing. In terms of myself, much of it had to do with brain overload. For the first part of the activity, we created the columns so that we could post ideas without being influenced by the others in our group. However, later when we were trying to build on each other's ideas, it was difficult to see them and remember what others came up with, so we decided to collapse the columns but keep the color-coding. It helped to take a screenshot of the ideas, as it was easy to expand to view and these were easy to add to our Google Document. In terms of my own contribution for this section, I came up with the initial idea of creating three columns. A constrain during this process was that we had to wait for everyone to  finish generating ideas before we could discuss, categorize, and select the promising ones. Therefore, there was a bit of a gap between parts 1 and 2 of the process.
Ideation—Part II: Selecting Promising Ideas
For this part of the process, we had to develop a protocol for selecting ideas. We came up with placing similar ideas into categories. The categories we came up with include: Involvement, Use of Technology, and Communicate, which are at the heart of our end users' (our parents' ) needs. 
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Ideation—Part III: Reality Check and Refining our Ideas
This part of the process came together once all of us were able to eventually meet. Because there was much overlap with our ideas across all three categories and many of these could be put into action with the right design product, designing a parent website is a way we truly believed will improve parental involvement of targeted or underrepresented groups. The website will provide streamline communication, create access and new points of entry, and provide more consistent translation than some of the previous delivery systems. In terms of constraints, this end product had more than we initially realized, but there were a number of realistic solutions. There were also a few outrageous ones (See a few of our radical solutions we generated in our second Ideation round—>Mobile Techlabs for parents or free parent mobile hotspots)
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In terms of constraints, we were able to brainstorm solutions to these, some more radical than others (see above). Probably, the most difficult of the constraints was time. There never seems to be enough of time. Although not mentioned as part of the solution to this dilemma, many of the reasons against investing time in a parent website have to do with the school climate and culture, at least this is my own experience (resistance to change). Many are worried about taking risks and changing traditional practices such as use of email for all modes of communication (even though there may be more efficient methods). 
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Evaluating the Effectiveness of our Solution—Creating a Website for Parents: Although most school sites already have a school website with information parents can access and districts have websites as well, what my group and I noticed is that parents are lost trying to navigate the district site and therefore, do not access many of the resources available or do not even know they exist. As for school websites, most have a page with some information for parents (minimum at best) that do not meet the bulk of the needs we discovered with our parents, particularly the underrepresented groups. Our solution is inclusive of most of our parent needs, incorporates most of the ideas generated, and adds a more personal connection for parents that was lost. Furthermore, our solution is cost-effective, easy to maintain, and it meets many of the communication and access issues parents were having; particularly language support and having a central location to meet (in this case a virtual one).

Challenges and What to Change for Next Time

In terms of my own challenges, these were twofold. First, I'm still playing catch-up. I have several obligations I have put off in order to get caught up in all of my courses. What I discovered is despite working continuously since I returned from China, I am still behind scheduled. I finally wrapped up EDL795a and I am caught up in EDL652, so this week affords an opportunity to hopefully make more headway with EDL655. Unfortunately, getting caught up in EDL655 also depends on the amount of work and time others are willing to or can commit. This brings me to the second challenge, group schedules. I found when I set aside work time, no one else was available. When others were available, tasks we agreed to complete prior to meeting were not finished. This was frustrating for me as I do not like to waste time when I have a lot of work to do. This being said, our group collaboration time is improving. I find the clearer the task, the more efficient our use of online collaboration time is. For example, if all of us are not sure what we are doing, everything takes twice as long and we are frustrated. What I found to work, is if I review requirements and scaffold the steps so that everyone else understands what we are doing better, we get our collaborative work accomplished much faster and more efficiently. Also, use of the chat box in both Google Documents and Mural.ly definitely saved time. Not everyone had the best Internet connection so discussion over Google Hangouts while working in the documents created delays. We could still use this off and on but didn't need to be on for three hours. 


Using the Ideation Process with Colleagues or Students
As my comfort level gets better with online collaboration, I am definitely excited about using this process with students. I particularly think the brainstorming technique is useful and I like some of the ideas from IDEO to get the brain working. I think in terms of the time constraints required in the ideation process (although according to IDEO, these are by design and are intentional), this would need to be explained to students or many would find the experience stressful (I'm thinking about my AP folks). For colleagues, this process would be particularly good in some of our professional development trainings; except we would need better Internet in our library if online. 


Ideation and Creativity: There are many traditional characteristics of creativity in the ideation process in terms of brainstorming, generating ideas, refining ideas, developing these, problem-solving, and finding solutions; however, the process does include non-traditional characteristics such as the reduced amount of time to brainstorm ideas and the fact that there is much less time between ideas and solutions. The creative process also becomes a more collaborative activity than an isolated one and also adds additional problems to solve like how to collaborate with team members across distances. Although I like the idea expressed in the Britta Riley collaborative open-source "Garden in my Apartment" project. Rather than research and development, the process enabled others take take the guidelines developed by others to research and develop it themselves.
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    Roxanne Pompilio

    "Frustration is greater when we have much to do and say, yet lack the time to express it."
                  By Roxanne Pompilio

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