What is MYP Design?
If you are new to MYP Design and possibly coming from a more traditional educational system, some of the nomenclature may be worth a quick review. This post will cover some of the MYP Design basics. The term “MYP” means Middle Years Program and serves students from ages 11 to 16. It spans both middle and high school. MYP operates within the International Baccalaureate® (IB) Program which fosters open-minded learners, who strive to be inquisitive, caring, and balanced risk-takers with a global perspective.
In this post, I will provide some insights for upper-elementary and lower-middle school teachers who are curious about MYP Design basics and the problem-solving process. Check out my brief About page to get a general sense of where I am coming from as an educator.
Image Credit: http://anwatindesign.weebly.com/
My specific experience with MYP Design includes almost 70 trips around the MYP Design Cycle with 17 different groups of sixth grade (Year 1) students. That’s about 340 total students. I also taught one year of grade 8 (Year 3) MYP Design. This cycle is sometimes referred to as the IB Design Cycle as well.
If you want a bit more context about the design process, see my post with a simple and short example: Paper Airplane Design, Data, and Discovery. For a deeper dive, check out the six-week lesson on Water Tank Engineering with Newspaper. An MYP Design Cycle Template can help you get started in MYP Design.
Ideally, MYP Design puts a focus on holistic problem solving and systems thinking. The program promotes responsible, practical, and creative problem-solving skills in historical and contemporary contexts all the while asking students to be mindful of their design choices. Essentially, teachers of MYP Design should strive to make problem-solving meaningful for their students through relevant connections. This is sometimes easier said than done!
MYP Design and STEAM
MYP Design does have similarities with STEAM learning (science, technology, engineering, art, and math): MYP Design and STEAM benefit from a problem-solving cycle and can incorporate aspects of problem-based and project-based learning. Both also emphasize and develop cross-disciplinary skills.
It’s worth noting that the differences between project- and problem-based learning are efficiently summarized by Dr. Chris Campbell in his short article Problem-based learning and project-based learning found at Teacher (published by the Australian Council for Educational Research).
For grade six (Year 1) middle school students in MYP Design, learning scenarios are developmentally more contrived than for older students and therefore more like project-based learning. The units can tend to be both multidisciplinary and longer with a set goal as well which falls under the characteristics of project-based learning.
Step by Step
I have found specific steps versus general steps benefit nearly all sixth-grade designers and specific steps are more associated with problem-based learning. Each pedagogy can be tailored to create high-interest topics for learners to develop 21st-century skills and both MYP Design and STEAM learning easily lend themselves to being assessed via performance tasks that facilitate deeper understanding by students.
MYP Design Cycle Basics
The MYP Design Cycle (sometimes referred to as the IB Design Cycle) provides students with a sequential framework to guide them to identify and solve a problem for a target audience.
The cycle is divided into four broad parts called criteria which are briefly:
A – Inquiring and Analyzing – Define and research a design problem
B – Developing Ideas – Brainstorm and refine ideas to solve the problem
C – Creating the Solution – Plan and build a prototype sufficient for testing and evaluation
D – Evaluating – Test and evaluate a solution to determine the effectiveness of the solution for the target audience
Each of these criteria is broken down into four parts which are called “strands”. The International Baccalaureate (IB) refers to a strand as “an aspect or indicator of the learning expectation”. To make connections to standards-based systems (which can be helpful), I think of strands along a standards-competencies continuum, with strands closer to the competencies end.
You could think of this entire problem-solving cycle as having 16 steps in total. Design problem topics may vary with regard to the depth each strand is explored, engaged with, and processed.
Designing with 11- and 12-year Olds
In the most current and commonly used MYP Design Cycle, the flow arrows do not suggest a sequential beginning-to-end process from Criterion A to B to C and finally to D. Each criterion has an arrow from it to the other three criteria. Why? Problem-solving can be messy and nonlinear–there will be a natural jumping around to and from the different criteria in the MYP Design Cycle as ideas are brainstormed and negotiated into a testable solution. Hence the inclusive nature of the process arrows.
With sixth graders, I found that their learning and problem solving progressed more coherently when I did not formally encourage free associations from criterion to criterion. This additional structure choice was especially beneficial for lower-achieving students.
We did do full-on brainstorming, but within the boundaries of a slightly modified Criterion B. References to other criteria did occur wherever we were in the cycle, but this was done verbally through small-group and classroom discussions for the most part.
One caveat to stricter sequencing in the MYP Design Cycle is the importance of referencing the design specifications from Criterion B with the evaluation of the success of the solution in Criterion D: The more specific the design specifications in B the deeper and richer the analysis of success will be in D.
Design Specifications in MYP
Design specifications are essential to developing an effective solution in MYP Design but, for sixth graders, a slightly different path to get to them may be more beneficial for the age group. A small change to the cycle that may facilitate greater engagement by students is within Criterion B.
Consider flipping the first two strands so that the student ideas generated to solve the problem are created and processed before getting into the rules to constrain the possible solutions. Why make this minor change? The reordering of the sequence takes advantage of the age group’s tendency to come up with non-traditional suggestions (as one colleague once remarked: “Sixth graders will say anything.”) while promoting healthy risk-taking through brainstorming among peers. Creativity first before all those persnickety design specifications!
MYP Design for Understanding
Apart from some of the word choices tweaked for the criteria and strands, another modification to the MYP Design Cycle to consider is a more intuitive and less cumbersome labeling of its parts. This change is especially helpful for the age group.
The four criteria from A to D with their brief and descriptive titles work well for reference, navigation, and understanding; and are consistent with other cycles used in the IB Program. The strands, however, lacked a simple visual and verbal identifier and needed to be more or less referenced fully by name. I prefer prefacing each strand with the respective criteria letter, a period, then the number of the strand within the criterion (1, 2, 3, or 4). The four strands in Criteria A, for example, would be named:
A.1 – Explain and Justify the Need
A.2 – Identify and Prioritize the Research
A.3 – Analyze Existing Products
A.4 – Develop a Design Brief
It becomes easier to reference each strand, especially verbally, via its letter-number prefix. After a unit or less, it can eventually become natural to make reference to a strand by its prefix only. You might remind a student, “Don’t forget, we’re continuing with A.3 today,” or say something like, “After we finish A.4, we will start to develop ideas in Criterion B.”
Finally, via another post, I reviewed some changes in the MYP Design Assessment and Criteria A, B, C and D that I felt would benefit student learning.
Is Design Always Cycle?
An optimal approach as a designer would include multiple trips around the MYP Design Cycle to get at the best solution for the target audience. However, time, resources, student interest, and other factors relevant to learning can limit the repetitive benefit of a problem-solving cycle. For my sixth graders, we completed one cycle per unit. Our discussions in Criterion D included how to improve the solution (which would be a natural setup for Criterion A).
There are possible ways to optimize the benefits of exploring the MYP Design Cycle more than once for the same topic. Some examples are: Explore topics quickly. Facilitate speed by covering the spirit of each criterion (rather than digging into each strand).
Promote rapid prototyping and possibly design sprinting where applicable.
Repeat a high-interest mini-lesson that uses quantifiable data after substantial time has passed from the first time doing the lesson. My teaching evolved into warming up with a short unit at the beginning of semester one and repeating the same unit at the beginning of semester two. Teachers can leverage student-generated data from the first unit (e.g., averages of students’ paper plane flight data from semester one) to determine the success of the solution for the second unit. By trying to “beat their old mark” the second time around, friendly competition is encouraged which can help meaningful engagement and learning as well.
Final Thoughts About MYP Design
A helpful infrastructure piece I eventually adopted involved the sequence of the units. Each school year, we completed four units–four long-term projects after warming up at the beginning of each semester with a hands-on mini-unit. Essentially, we went around the MYP Design Cycle once for each unit, four times total in a school year.
Briefly, here’s how I organized the units:
Semester 1
- Physical Solution – Engineering
- Digital Solution – Cybersafety
Semester 2
Why organize design learning this way? The semester break was as long as a U.S. summer break. Many students were probably spending their vacation time on devices for extended periods. So, starting with physical units made sense to move students away from screens and into hands-on experiences with tangible engagement. Also, physical materials had a greater chance of being cared for and returned to their proper place (a good thing) because behavior tended to be better at the beginning of a semester than at the end!
MYP has much to offer learners. It shares characteristics with STEAM learning, offers interdisciplinary power, facilitates project- and problem-based learning, and promotes 21st Century skills. MYP Design for my sixth graders evolved gradually to be more procedural so that all students would always have more explicit learning targets. The adjustments I made to the MYP Design Cycle over time provided needed clarity to ensure success while keeping an eye on global perspectives.
If you’re new to MYP Design, try thinking about design problem by focusing on the four criteria before going deep into the strands. This approach can be helpful for your students’ design thinking as well, whether you make adjustments to the MYP Design Cycle or not. Good luck!