CAL POLY, POMONA
DESIGN BASED LEARNING DELIVERS REQUIRED
STANDARDS
IN ALL SUBJECTS, K-12
Professor Doreen Nelson
Teachers find that by using a small activity to ignite their students’
curiosity they can speed up their students’ learning while solving problems of
curriculum overload and classroom behavior. Design Based Learning provides a
concrete method for teaching and evaluating students that integrates the
required K-12 curriculum. It uses techniques from the design professions to form
a methodology that challenges students to design hands-on solutions to
problems in simulated experiences. As students develop Never-Before-Seen
solutions for businesses, cities, villages, or civilizations they learn to think
critically.
They apply the lessons from textbooks that address the required
academic standards.
Introduction
In all walks of American life there are students who are so turned off to learning
that they are not paying attention at school and sometimes not going to school,
altogether. Teachers are overwhelmed with all they are required to monitor. Teaching
to the tests leads to burnout for them and for their students.
Both English Language Learners and English speakers are struggling with basic
English fluency skills. Learning Handicapped (L-H) students are lacking the academic
confidence needed to enter standard classrooms. Even those learning the skills of
reading, listening, speaking, and reasoning, cannot extrapolate information from stories
they have read. Disruptive students eat away at classroom time, unable to remain ontask in both individual and group efforts. With all of the in-services and legislation not
much has changed except that in the rush to teach to the standards, critical thinking has
been lost from the curriculum.
In the late 19th century John Dewey described the importance of learning by
doing. He believed in the act of discovery and original thought and he rejected
replicative learning. In K-12 classrooms Design Based Learning (DBL), an outgrowth of
Dewey’s methods, gives teachers a blueprint to teach critical thinking that gets results
on standardized tests. By continuing in Dewey’s tradition - and adding a strong
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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evaluation component - DBL provides a way to unify the classroom and to evaluate
student progress that meets academic standards.
Design Based Learning delivers any required K-12 curriculum by challenging
students to design hands-on solutions to problems in simulated experiences. A teacher
may focus on building Never-Before-Seen businesses, cities, villages, or civilizations.
Based on real places in the future, students develop Never-Before-Seen solutions.
Whatever they build becomes a starting point for entering academic lessons as the
students compare their designs to what they read about. Criteria are set for each activity
as a built-in evaluation process as a rubric for grading.
Students learn to set and use criteria. They are graded on their ability to think
critically as they develop proposals for solving problems. By creating a tactile
experience with a monitoring technique the students have fun, remember what they
learned, and can transfer it to other situations.
In each of the researched classrooms presented here, students were immersed
in Design Based Learning. Across the board they excelled on standardized tests.
Those students at the lower end of the testing scale, those with learning disabilities and
those usually unable to succeed far surpassed their own previous test scores. They
made leaps of 10 to 20 percent. The traditional ‘higher achievers’ continue to
accelerate though not at such a dramatic rate.
An Example
Emily Tilton, a sixth grade Language Arts teacher in La Puente, California,
motivated her English Language Learner students to master the test materials. She
started using Design Based Learning in 2000 to teach them how to deliver
presentations. Once they based their work on a design activity, building a NeverBefore-Seen Recyclable City that took 45 minutes away from instructional time, the
investment paid-off with a flurry of persuasive, well-organized presentations. The
students readily spent hours researching, writing about, and presenting their designs.
Emily demystified the grading process by getting them to use criteria for self-evaluation.
As a result, they excelled on the standardized tests and were having so much fun that
they thought they were playing.
The visual template below describes how Emily met her specific academic
standards. She started her students with a design activity, then taught multiple lessons
linked to the standards using textbooks, drill, and practice. The lines between the
academic standards and the lessons indicate that all but those in the middle took place
after the activity.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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Standards
Writing
Strategies1.4
Organization and
focus: identify
topics, ask
questions that
lead to research.
Reading
Comp. 3.4 Identify and
analyze
recurring
themes across
works.
Speaking App.2.0
- Deliver well
organized formal
presentations.
Writing
Strategies1.3
Organization and
focus: use note
taking, outlining,
and summarizing
to impose
structure on
drafts.
Reading Comp.
2.1 - Understand
differences of
purpose in
various
categories of
informational
materials.
Activity
Build a Never Before Seen Recyclable
City
Lessons
Share pieces of
Recyclable City.
Write goals for
city committees.
Read “Barrio Boy”
p. 29. Discuss
themes of new
experiences, city
living, friendship.
Keep notes of
committee
meetings.
Research
on-line
information about
recycling.
There are hundreds of teachers in California, New York, and across seven cities
in Japan raising students’ test scores and meeting local and state requirements with
Design Based Learning.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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Presented here are four case studies from those teachers. The research
collected in their classrooms gives a glimpse into how it works for a variety of grade
levels and subject matter areas. These teachers each had their own motivations to
seek out better teaching methods. Each felt overwhelmed with the many, varied
demands that are put on them. Each wanted to have fun with their students and to
make his or her own time in the classroom more fulfilling. Each wanted to teach the
required information and have their students pass the tests.
Case Studies
Maria Teresa (Teri) Ceja, a 2nd grade teacher in La Puente, CA, started using Design
Based Learning in 1998 after having taught for 12 years. Teri had three objectives when
she changed her teaching method to Design Based Learning: to make students want to
be at school, to teach them the English language, and to have them meet the required
standards.
Teri’s 2nd grade students’ test scores showed that for her lowest end students, Design
Based Learning experiences produced marked improvements.
Teri developed a Design Based Learning project called Creatureland. They started
out backwards. Each week she led an activity in which her students role-played, set
criteria, designed solutions to problems, and actually built their designs. They took on
double personalities pretending to be everyday objects then invented a new cover for
their body. They interviewed their object about what it liked, disliked, or feared and
described who they were and why. Their verbal skills translated into written stories. Math
skills became relevant as they measured themselves and their objects to compare ratios
and proportions.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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QuickTime™ and a
GIF decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
As “creatures” these at-risk students from low-income households liked coming to school
“to play”, significantly improving daily attendance rates.
Once their object creatures were ‘born’, each located their family, friends, and
natural predators. Sound Boy (radio) decided that Flashy Girl (camera) was his sister, as
they are both communication tools. Water Boy (milk) who made things wet was a natural
enemy to both. All of the creatures moved into a never-before-seen future city. They
pretended to live on a physical landsite with their families and used natural resources
(junk materials) to create shelters. They experienced the meaning of private and
community ownership. They named and located necessary services. They tried out
different governments for Creatureland. They made agendas and conducted town
meetings to decide where to place structures in their community. They designed a
Never-Before-Seen movement system for the city creatures. They compiled booklets to
document the history of their activities. They produced puppet shows to learn to construct
dialogue and drafted written and oral presentations for classroom visitor tours, identifying
main ideas. All of these products were used as evidence for grading.
Teri developed a curriculum that tied together many of the disconnected
standards. She found it easier to communicate with parents, administrators, and students
about expectations and evaluation.
Leslie Stoltz, a 6th – 8th grade Social Studies and Language Arts teacher in Diamond
Bar, CA, started using Design Based Learning in 1996 after having taught for 15 years.
Leslie had five objectives when she began using Design Based Learning: to teach the
required standards so that the variety of material added up to something memorable for
the students; to team teach with and train her partner Mark Lantz, a Science teacher; to
cover extensive material in their three subjects; to keep 70 students on-task over an
extended time block; and to continue her own intellectual growth as a teacher.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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Leslie’s students, from upper-middle to lower-middle income households, significantly
strengthened their literacy skills - to read, listen, speak, and reason while making oral
and written presentations. The students were divided into four quartiles with the lowest
achievers being on the right. The lavender represents before DBL and the blue
indicates the results after.
Leslie used four separate landforms (approx. 4’ x 6’) with each representing the
geographical features and climates of the ancient civilizations she was required to teach
in Social Studies (Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Greece). Calling it Civilization
Building, the students had to meet specific pre set criteria as they developed shelters, a
division of labor, a government, a culture, and a communication and movement system
for each culture.
Instead of building Egypt, they were given the situation and problems which
ancient Egyptians encountered. Calling themselves the Dune People, they built NeverBefore-Seen biomes, ways to move around and ways to live to eternity. If Leslie had
shown them the pyramids they would have built replicas of them. Instead they made
their own places for rites, rituals, and religion before studying the Pyramids.
These built models helped students find the similarities and differences between
their designs and those of the four historical cultures. The Mountain People (China), the
Desert People (Mesopotamia), and the Seaside People (Greece) all had the same
problems to solve, but each with different physical conditions.
Leslie wondered when to tell her students what they were really studying. They
liked pretending they were creating the first civilizations on earth, much like those that
they were reading about in their texts. When she did tell them they said, “Yes, we knew
we were studying Egypt, but our Egypt is better.” Now, six years later Leslie says it
doesn’t matter when or even if you tell them, because they know.
Design Based Learning put a stop to Leslie’s burnout. She now chooses to remain
in the classroom and train other teachers.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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Leslie developed her students’ problem-solving techniques by having them work on
physical landsites in order to learn in a context. Her disruptive students were channeled to
remain on-task in both individual and group efforts.
Don Huey, a high school World History, Life Science, Governments, and U.S. History
teacher in Pomona, CA, started using Design Based Learning in 1995 after having taught
for 19 years. His Learning Handicapped (L-H) students gained heightened levels of
confidence and many were able to enter standard classrooms. An autistic student was
motivated to enter the Toyota Automobile of the Future Competition without additional
coaching from the teacher.
Don had two objectives when he began using Design Based Learning: to bring LH students up to grade level so they could mainstream into standard classrooms and to
engage them with a variety of learning in academics.
At the high school level, students spend shorter time periods with one teacher in
core subjects. Unlike lower grades, they rarely construct artifacts that represent their
learning. For Don’s L-H students, in particular, hands-on authentic learning is essential.
His students created a Never-Before-Seen island continent called Newlandia. It was
placed on a map of the world with an actual latitude, longitude, shape, and size.
Each of the four classes created one-fourth of this new place according to Don’s
criteria. They each set out to explore and develop it. The government students created
a government for the new land and played the roles for activating it; the history students
created an indigenous culture and built it; and the science students located the
continent on the world map and then created the biomes, plants, and animals that
originated there. They sent e-mails to each other with instructions and explanations for
their choices.
Don contends that this was the first time in his teaching career in which he found
one method that reached the varied needs of all his students.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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Where in the world is Newlandia?
Grace Lim-Hays, a high school Literature teacher in Walnut, CA, started using Design
Based Learning in 1996 after having taught for 4 years. Her middle-income students
learned to extrapolate a wide variety of information from the stories they read. They had
a 95% passing rate compared to the other literature classes that had an 80% passing
rate. Design Based Learning gave her a method for remaining in charge while giving
more responsibilities to the students.
Grace had three objectives when she began using Design Based Learning: to
have students understand the meaning of the themes found in great literature, to motivate
students to want to read that literature, and to have students write descriptive
compositions using the skills that are outlined in the state required standards.
Grace’s students constructed a simulated experience they called Community
Building. They role-played the jobs of characters in scenarios about community life in
the miniature model of the future. They experienced ensuing conflicts and found
solutions together. They made group comparisons and connections to the themes in
the literature. In many pieces of literature such as Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, To
Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, and Fahrenheit 451, there is a struggle between
the needs and values of individuals versus the community.
Her students built Never-Before-Seen learning places to identify an author’s
description of how the characters portray what they learn. As they gained insights from
examining their own first-hand proposals, they better analyzed the motives of the
characters and the deeper meaning of the literature they read. Parallel experiences
with their own Community Building and those of fictional characters from their readings
led them to identify ways people resolve problems and shape their community. Grace
willingly allowed them the building time as she found that the questions and concerns
raised by the students’ designs guided their reading, writing, and analysis of the
required literature. The students’ work was no less demanding and there were multiple
paths to success.
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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Grace compared the final grades of two high school Literature classrooms. The blue at
the left indicates a non-DBL classroom, the red indicates her DBL classroom in the
same grade level.
Conclusion
These teachers used the techniques associated with the design professions over
and over again in their K-12 classrooms to deliver mandated academic standards.
Students set criteria then built physical models to develop and test out their own
solutions to the problems they encountered. The lists of criteria for each activity easily
turned into a rubric for grading. Using their illustrated solutions, they learned to think
critically and to make revisions and modifications by incorporating information from the
lessons that pertain to what they were doing. By sneaking up on learning, the students
were able to succeed.
Teachers like Emily, Teri, Leslie, Don, and Grace find that one small Design
Based Learning activity eases their curriculum overload and classroom management
issues. They have a concrete method for teaching and evaluating that sticks for the
students, and it sticks for the teachers. (This research sample was drawn from the
Master’s Degree in Education in Curriculum and Instruction, Design Based Learning
started in 1995 at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. It is based on City
Building Education’s methodology of Backwards Thinking, started over 30 years ago by
Doreen Nelson.)
Published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 17, Fall 2004
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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