Reflexion – Learning Launch

Challenge

I am the head of a small science communication association in Austria named  “De  Crown”. We are focusing on science communication/education in primary  and secondary schools and kindergarten. Every year we develop at least one new set  of 4 corresponding 2h workshops for the teachers to choose from and we also try to  find funding or sponsoring, so the courses can be free or at least halve priced for the  kids.  As a scientist it can be very challenging to meet the educational demands of the  teachers AND the kids, appropriate of their age and of their prior education. We want  to inspire, raise their curiosity and awareness, build scientific knowledge (in teachers  and kids) and not to overstrain them.

My challenge is to develop those “perfect” (age adaptable) workshops with a very  limited budget

Selection

To test critical parts of the new workshops we decided to identify volunteer teachers  who are willing to give feedback and allow us some testing in their classes and have a  learning launch.

A learning launch is all about assumption testing– an experiment conducted in real  live situations, quickly and inexpensive. (in our case – will they like the new  experiments as much as we do? Will the material we provide be sufficient? Will we  be able to adapt to the different ages of the kids? Will it all work out with 25 over  exited kids in a too small classroom?)

Application

To have our learning launch of those critical experiments we asked four teachers we  had worked with before, if they would like to test some new experiment we  developed with their class. They were all happy to help us developing courses and  immediately agreed. Usually we have packages of four 2h-courses focussing on  different topics, but the first 2h ours of each package are exactly the same in all of  them, focussing on the nature of science.   So we decided to use one of those two hours for the learning launch of our new  prototype experiments, so that we would not take away too much time of the main  topic.  During the learning launch we focussed on our assumptions and on how the kids and  the teachers reacted, what delighted them, what was frustrating? Did they get the  insights we wanted them to achieve?

Insight

We found that in some experiments the materials we provided where not optimal for  that age and we needed to simplify things for the next class. But most science  communication concepts work out great. We were also thrilled to get very helpful  feedback from the teachers and we had the impression that they really appreciated

being involved in our work.  In summary the learning launches worked out great and with very beneficial results  for our course development and customer relationship.

Approach

When developing our next workshop block we will again work with the learning  launch, since it was appreciated by teachers and also gave good results.

Additionally, next term we are going to develop a new course format - tinkering for  teachers in Austrian primary education - targeting a new (adult) audience. We  already applied for funding so we hopefully will be financially able to use all the  elements of the design thinking process for our course development.

