Saipprentice

Part of

Reset Learning

Arouse curiosity . Inspire wonder . Nurture positive environment for creativity growth

MA 2022

Keywords

Inspiring, purposeful, futurist, episodic, imaginative, innovative

Overview

An online learning platform designed to offer an episodic learning journey to awakening children's creativity through the lens of creative role models.

Collaboration

No items found.

SECTION ONE SECTION TWO STATEMENT SECTION THREE SECTION FOUR

BACKGROUND

‍

According to the future of job report, it urges us to equip future skills, like creativity, and problem-solving skills, to avoid being replaced by the machine. The world is urging us to equip future skills, but in Hong Kong, creativity is perceived as a gap to be filled by the current education system from different stakeholders’ perspectives. From one of my interviews, a mother of 2 children shared with me a similar observation that children were born creative. Something happened in their life so their creativity dropped.

During 2 years working in the education sector under an NGO in HK, our team taught future skills to over 5000+ students from primary school to university through STEM education. My senior told me primary school students are more creative than secondary school students. I don’t believe it until I launch my first design thinking workshop. I learned they are more creative, in terms of perspective to see a problem, ways to make prototypes, etc. That makes me wonder why this happened…..

PROBLEM DEFINITION

‍

Before looking into the problem, we have to know what the definition of creativity is to the stakeholders in HK After I interviewed parents, tertiary students, education professionals, business executives, researchers, and NGO education officers, I realised that the most frequently mentioned terms are problem-solving, flexibility in handling problems, being unexpected, and being able to see from different perspectives. From that, we conclude that the definition of Creativity in Hong Kong is A form (process) of problem-solving via different perspectives which can lead to unexpected output.

Then, I investigate why HK youth's creativity drops. So, I study the correlation between children’s age, psychological development stages, parents' involvement, and school life and taking reference to the creative genius-level developed by professor George Land who did the research for NASA; then made hypothesises and further validated them with 6 teachers & 9 parents.

Finally, we find that the problem statement is that unnurtured environment for GenZ in HK to play creatively in daily and school life due to: The limited time for creativity in schools; the authoritative teaching style of teachers; the inappropriate support from parents(Asian background) who lack updated soft skills in parental education; fear of judgment from peers.

DESIGN DIRECTION

‍

How might we provide an engaging learning experience which can

Awaken children’s creativity outside of school;
Boost parents’ self awareness on their action by involving them in the children’s learning journey;
Build up a positive peer environment for creativity growth.

METHODOLOGY & PROTOTYPING

‍

In this project, we adopt 2 methodologies into our learning journey to awaken children's creativity. The first one is that according to Professor George Land, We need to “divide diverging and converging thinking process into different stages for children to retain their ability and desire to be creative ”. The second one is advised by MIT LAB, "PLAY" methodology, to design learning experience with "Imagine", "Play" "Create", "Share" and "Reflect".

The experience is also developed by using a holistic and user-centred approach, studying our target users' needs and desires, and co-creating with children, parents, educators, teachers, and researchers. I conduct 30 interview sessions, 10 rapid prototyping tests, and 9 workshops to develop the learning journey.

DELIVERABLE

‍

Saipprentice - an online learning platform designed to offer an episodic learning journey under design thinking philosophy and PLAY methodology to awaken children’s creativity. The learning journey is suitable for primary 4 to secondary 3 students. It is also suitable for peer-to-peer learning, child-parent, and individual learning.

The journey is composed of 2 formats of activities; the first one is an interactive video learning journey to understand different role models’ perspectives. With activities designed to train children’s skills to observe, imagine, analyse, create, etc. Then following up with a collaborative gamification role-play missionary journey. Allowing children to be in role models’ shoes and solve real-life challenges to train their divergent and convergent thinking.

SPECIAL
THANKS

Thank you for the guidance of my final year project tutor: John Makepeace;

Thank the parents, children, researchers, teachers, educators, and professors who contributed to the work;

Appreciated the help from the technician: Halim Lais for Gaming design; Thomas Deacon for XR experience design; Antoine Hacheme for AR design; Mike Faulkner for Moving image design;

Team

Huang Jie

254796@network.rca.ac.uk

Portfolio

Approved