Use prototyping tasks to help students unfamiliar with design-mode thinking share incomplete ideas¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

This strategy involves introducing prototyping activities—creating designs that express product or service characteristics before specifications are final—to help students engage in knowledge creation practices. The article proposes prototyping "to assist students unfamiliar with design-mode thinking with representing incomplete and imperfect ideas." Prototyping fosters a culture of learning from failure through experimentation, making it suitable for learners who avoid representing incomplete work due to uncertainty.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A safe and positive environment where students feel comfortable sharing and refining ideas
• A facilitator who does not prescribe specific activities or timing within the session

Constraints¶

• Studied with expert designers; effectiveness for novices is proposed rather than directly tested in this study

Target Learners¶

• students unfamiliar with design-mode thinking
• higher education students

Target Learning Goals¶

• knowledge creation
• collaborative problem-solving
• design-mode thinking

Related Strategies¶

• Multiple Writing Surfaces
• Product Testing
• Create Space for Students to Reflect
• Use technology after learner effort to protect productive struggle

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Ohsaki, A., Tan, Y., Eagan, B., Shaffer, D. W., & Swiecki, Z. (2026). Temporal Network Analysis of Collaborative Prototyping from a Knowledge Creation Perspective. Journal of Learning Analytics, 13(1), 190–207. https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2026.8959