Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

30 minutes – Part A: Negotiating Criteria for Success
60 minutes – Part B: Presentation Piece
30 minutes – Part C: Evaluation and Reflection
10 minutes – Reflection

Talking about bushfires often involves addressing sensitive issues. Bushfires are innately linked to death and dying, and as such, may evoke strong emotions, opinions, or raise challenging questions about values and beliefs that have no easy answers.

Please review the Handling Sensitive Topics and Issues factsheet for information on how to create a safe environment for your students and monitor all students during and after conducting this lesson. If you're aware of any students who may struggle with this content, chat with their parents or caregivers about a strategy for this child prior to the lesson.

Part A: Negotiating criteria for success

Step 1.

This phase of the design process requires students to present all of their learning across the course of the unit for assessment.

Before any assessment can take place, however, it is important for students to “develop criteria for success to evaluate design ideas, processes and solutions" (ACTDEP038) so that they clearly understand what they need to do in order to achieve success and they take ownership for their efforts towards that achievement.

Explain to students that this presentation piece is part proof of concept and part advertisement to sell their design to investors, so it has to look the goods as well as be a clear and concise technical document. As a way to approach this negotiation ask students to define what a ‘good one’ would look like.

What information would they expect to understand from such a document?
What should be avoided?
How should it be laid out so that it communicates effectively to the audience?

Step 2.

Ask students to return to the research phase of their design document and imagine they are William Raymond Loveridge or another government official in charge of the National Construction Code. What would this person want to see in order to convince them that the solution is a suitable way forward for future constructions in bushfire-prone areas?

Step 3.

You may wish to include a rubric as part of your assessment. The details and format of this can be suggested and negotiated by students. Suggestions might include:

Clarity of expression of the features of the design.
The difficulty in manufacturing or implementing the solution. Complex solutions are not always best and come with their own challenges.
Suitability of chosen materials, including sustainability of materials.
How well the designed solutions meet the needs of users. It may be valuable to put each of the problem statements in here to determine how well the design provided answers to those challenges.
Functionality. Does the design actually do what it says it will? Is this backed up by science and research?
The social value of the design. How much will it add to the lives of members of the community by helping them overcome a challenge?
Depth of research undertaken. Did students investigate and understand the complexities of building bushfire-resistant housing?
Innovativeness. Is this design interesting and unique, or is it a copy and paste of another design?
Effort. Did students try their hardest at this project?

Each of these areas could be given a score out of ten, or you might like to categorise them in terms of being below, at or above standard.

Try to avoid assessing students’ creativity and presentation. Creativity is subjective, and the purpose of this document is not to look impressive, it is to clearly communicate the ideas and research behind the design.

Part B: Presentation Piece

Step 1.

Guided by the design documents, students should use an A3 piece of paper (or you may elect to use a digital substitute) to present their final concept and all of their learning about bushfire-resistant housing.

Step 2.

Students should start with an explanation of their problem statements and why they identified these areas as the best way to approach designing solutions to the impact of bushfires on people, communities and property.

Step 3.

Floorplanner (https://floorplanner.com/) is a piece of free online-only software that creates architectural drawings of floor plans.

The presentation piece should also include a stylised view of the front of the home, complete with landscaping.

Provisions for Learning Extension: If you have the time and resources, students may construct a scale model of their solution.

Step 4.

The presentation piece should include labels with appropriate technical information as well as explanations of the thinking behind the proposed solutions as informed by the research they undertook in the previous lesson.

Remind students to:

Choose language that is clear and concise and avoids jargon. Their labels will be read by people without any prior information and who are not well versed on the subject. Many of the ideas and theories that inform their design will seem obvious to students due to the amount of research they've conducted. However, it will not be clear to audiences who are not familiar with the topic.
Keep the order of information consistent and include key things of interest about the design to create a kind of storyline of information for the audience.
Be aware of audience fatigue. Try to stick to a word count of 70 to 80 words on each label.

Consider using digital software to type and print professional-looking labels.

Part C: Evaluation and reflection

Step 1.

Invite students to present their designs with a partner or in small groups to the whole class.

Students critically evaluate each other’s proposed solutions by:

saying one thing they loved about the idea;
noting one thing they think can be improved upon;
asking one question they have about the idea; and/or
using the rubric students have developed.

Provisions for Learning Support: Students may feel more comfortable giving and receiving feedback if the teacher manages the process as part of a presentation to the whole class.

Step 2.

Students integrate the feedback into the design document by writing a short report evaluating their design.

What was one perceived limitation of the student's design?
Does the student have an idea of how to alter their design to overcome this limitation? It's okay if they don't and acknowledge it will require further designing.
Where, how and why did their design start to stray from the problem statement so that it ultimately did not address the problem in the way people needed it to? It could be that the problem statement wasn’t clearly enough defined, missed some key aspect of people’s needs or didn’t account for a key challenge of the problem.

Remember that assessment shouldn't be the final word on a piece. The design process heavily encourages designers to revisit previous phases and incorporate feedback to improve their solutions so that they most effectively meet the goal of helping people by overcoming the challenges of the problem statements.

As the teacher, try to frame the reflection process as a chance for students to demonstrate their understanding in areas they did not effectively do so for in their presentation piece rather than as a judgement on how well performed or met the learning intentions.

Step 3.

Ask students to return to the very beginning of the design document and re-read the non-fiction piece they wrote from the perspective of a person who had experienced a bushfire.

What does this persona think of the design? Does it address their ultimate need of helping them resist the impact of a bushfire on their lives, possessions, family and property?

Reflection

Ask students to reflect on the design process overall and record their thoughts in the design document with regard to the following questions.

Did they like this style of lesson and approach to projects? Why? Suggestions might include having more input into the learning process and a feeling of being experts.
Can they identify any difficulties with the process? What were they? Suggestions might include feeling lost during the research phase, not receiving constructive feedback during the evaluation phase or having a lack of direction and support from the teacher, a common feeling when deviating from the typical teacher-as-instructor model most commonly used the rest of the time.

Teacher Reflection

You can collect the final page of students' design documents as a feedback form.

Take some time to reflect on this feedback from students and how you might adapt the design process in the future. Write down three dot points of considerations raised by this reflection task.

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Where to next?

While this lesson seemingly concludes this unit, remember that the design process is not linear. Each phase is a continual development of understanding that informs new perspectives and ways of thinking, and these insights can be applied further up the chain to change the approach to designing solutions.

Try to move out of the mindset that assessment is the final word on a piece of learning. Instead view it as a way of identifying gaps in students' understanding, which in turn inspires students to address these lingering areas of confusion or being uninformed.

We do not learn to ride a bike to 89 per cent capability and call it enough. If you have the time, consider allowing students to revisit this project and earlier phases of the design process, especially if they have been engaged in their learning and show passion about exploring another rabbit hole of understanding through another research phase.

Bushfire-Resistant Housing - Evaluation Phase

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