PROJECT XOXO X BOLDATWORK
Written by: Jeremy Tan
As the calls for lifelong learning and being future-ready pervade our day-to-day conversations, perhaps we’ve been charged with the (un)enviable task of figuring out what that actually means and could tangibly look like.
It’s easy to simply remark as educators and those working with young people that “we need our students to be future-ready” and that we need to raise a generation of “lifelong learners”. But to you the reader I ask, what the hell does that even mean?
A similar question came to the fore in a recent conversation I had with some teachers from River Valley High School. In the conversations, I noticed that the terms, lifelong learning and future-ready, felt large, lofty, and daunting. It was clear that these goals are important, but the ‘how’ to achieve them seemed to still lack clarity and form.
Project XOXO BOLD Lab Experience
Fortunately, here at BOLD, some of our recent experiments have shed light upon what that could look like. Blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with Singapore Polytechnic and Loving Heart Multi-Service Centre, a partner Volunteer Centre, we were able to launch our pilot-run of the Project XOXO BOLD Lab Experience.
This involved guiding a group of 12 Year 1 students from across the School of Media, Art, and Design and the School of Business through a 1-month long student-initiated community innovation project. And of course, thanks to COVID-related challenges, the project was eventually extended to a 2-month period.
After all, we’re designers, not (all) wizards.
While we were heartened to learn that all of our students felt that they had gained a deeper understanding of themselves and ways in which they could contribute to the community through this experience (with 82% strongly agreeing with this statement), we were even more excited by some interesting insights and teaching moments that we felt compelled to share.
After all, good things must share. Right?
Insight 1: Obstacles to Taking Action - Agency Problems
These are some of the quotes students shared with us in their feedback at the end of the project. In our partnerships with other institutions, we have found that these sentiments are shared among a lot of young people.
“I used to think that impact has to be large, but now I think that impact starts from small.”
“I used to think that impacting the community can only be done by others, but now I think that even the little things that we do can impact the community.”
Why is it that impact must be perceived to be large enough before one decides it’s something to be done? Why is it that some students felt that making a difference can only be done by others? What are the dysfunctional beliefs that are hindering passionate young people from making a difference in the community?
Perhaps, this is a matter of agency. And in the case of our young, supposedly-soon-to-be-future-ready participants, it appears that FEELING like they don’t have much, is a common sentiment.
Teaching Moment 1: Focus on Baby Steps
To overcome this, we guided students through an innovation process focused on taking baby steps. This was as simple as starting with values-sorting and a vision board, then slowly progressing to linking them up with potential resources and stakeholders. And ultimately, leading them towards building a real-world prototype to test out their ideas.
Guided by our belief that the best source of innovativeness comes from activating the Self, we focused on baby steps to develop their sense of agency. By being able to actively contribute and participate in a project’s growth, students are not only able to see their ideas come to life (which is exciting!) but are also able to realise their active roles as agents of change.
Insight 2: Stuckness and Stress when called to Prototype - Leaving the Textbook Behind
Another tidbit we noticed during our sessions was a rigid stuckness and intense stress filling the room when students began shifting from the ideating phase to the prototyping phase of the project. This struck us as odd. As designers, we ideate so that we can test out hypotheses when prototyping. So the feeling that arises, as one might expect, should be an excitement or eagerness to learn.
And yet, we sensed a palpable fear emanating from the students when it came time to take action. While we don’t have all the data points tracked, we hypothesize that this may be a reflection of young people’s general fear of doing things and taking action. Perhaps it’s out of a fear of doing something, quote in quote, “wrong”?
It’s probably fair to assume that students growing up in an education environment where following textbook examples to a T, and backwards-engineering seniors’ projects to score As have become so normalised, have difficulty approaching the boundaries of the unknown. But building the future and real-life learning is often a voyage INTO the unknown. In which case, perhaps being future-ready involves learning to diminish this fear and guiding young people to cultivate trust in themselves and trust in the process.
Teaching Moment 2: Real-world Testing and Feedback
To address this fear, we created an opportunity for students to put themselves and their work out into the real-world. That includes working with real-world resources, assets, and collaborators such as our partners at Loving Heart Multi-Service Centre and seeking out residents in our local Yuhua community to test prototypes with. By testing ideas with real-world users in the community, students received immediate feedback which enabled them to iterate and refine their project ideas.
By putting themselves out there, trying things in the real-world, students become more familiar with the process of real-world learning and realise that there are, in reality, no textbook answers. And while that may initially be pretty terrifying to discover, we give them space, guidance, and feedback to step back and realise that it’s not as scary as they initially thought.
Insight 3: Ideas and Creativity Unleashed
One student remarked, cheerfully, at the end of the project that they “liked how [they] were given the time and freedom to explore ideas of [their] own”. Indeed, our post-project survey results showed that 10 out of 11 respondents said that the process allowed them to experiment with new ways of thinking about community service.
A few of which specifically cited that the brainstorming component of the project was particularly useful in allowing them to ideate seemingly wild and disconnected ideas.
Teaching Moment 3: Cultivating a Spirit of Experimentation
Here at BOLD, we believe that academic theories are only as valuable as they can be contextualised in a way that brings out the individuality of each participant. Thus, we designed a self-directed and self-initiated environment for this project. In other words, what we did was to really hold space for exploration, dialogue, and experimentation. Create an environment where there were no “right” answers and provide prompts for support before and after each workshop session.
One tool we particularly liked and used is called ‘3 Visions’. To support students in redefining what impact could look like at different scales, we asked students to conceptualize three parallel pathways or possibilities for what they can do to solve their defined problem statement in a given timeframe. As students mapped out these parallel potential visions, they began to realise that there are actually multiple pathways and possibilities for how to address a single problem.
To me, being future-ready is about being open to new possibilities and seeing opportunities that the future may hold. By using innovation tools like ‘3 Visions’, we help students see for themselves that there are many ways to make an impact in the community, invoking excitement and a sense of freedom to solve problems in their own unique ways.
In the long run, I believe this activation of Self cultivates a spirit of experimentation that is guided by excitement, curiosity, and imagination. These, I believe, form the bedrock to a journey of lifelong learning. The journey we’re so eagerly trying to set them on.
Takeaways
Lifelong learning and being future-ready are lofty aspirations when it comes to what we hope to inculcate in future generations. But perhaps they don’t need to be so esoteric and out of reach. If there’s anything we’ve learnt running Project XOXO, is that being on the ground, designing the future alongside our young people is perhaps the best way to truly understand the current gaps between where they’re at and the promised land of where we hope they’ll be able to go.