MYP Design Criterion A – Introduction
Before we take a look at MYP Design Criterion A (the first phase), a review of the most official perspective on MYP Design might be helpful. The Middle Years Programme Design Guide from the International Baccalaureate® (IB) Program is the resource for MYP Design teachers. For a slightly different perspective of MYP Design (with a focus on supporting beginning designers), check out my posts, MYP Design Basics – One Perspective, and MYP Design Assessment Criteria Modified.
I wanted to share my thoughts about teaching MYP Design by reflecting on each phase of the design process. Most of my MYP Design experience comes from teaching to 11- and 12-year old students. Your MYP Design project ideas start here!
MYP Design promotes thoughtful inquiry to solve meaningful problems through four cyclic criteria. These criteria serve to guide students to make pragmatic connections between the content of their learning and what happens in our world outside of school. These important relationships are intended to prepare students for further studies and for life.
Lesson Plan Design
MYP Design has many moving parts! To get things going, this method has worked for me: When I develop MYP units, I write the GRASPS first to get the concrete elements of the lesson established. Then I try to make relevant connections to promote deeper meaning: I consult the MYP global contexts to see which best applies and simultaneously write the statement of inquiry with the inquiry questions.
Once these three core ingredients of the MYP Design lesson are drafted, I edit each more or less simultaneously to have them inform and improve each other. When I am ready to communicate the content to students, the GRASPS, global contexts, and inquiry pieces have evolved into coherent curriculum elements for students.
Related concepts should naturally emerge and meaningfully relate to the content. In spite of the many moving parts, try to have a sense of what each curricular component is about before diving into MYP Design lesson planning.
Context and Audience
In Criterion A, Inquiring and Analyzing, students define and research a problem to be solved according to the needs of a specific audience. Before students conduct research, a scenario should be established to provide a context for learning and to set up the problem to be solved. The GRASPS model does this well (see examples by Understanding By Design coauthor Jay McTighe). It is simple and naturally sets the stage for authentic learning and assessment–hallmarks of MYP Design.
In this context as well, the statement of inquiry should be presented and discussed. It’s also worth noting that the MYP Design Cycle and four criteria do support students in their MYP Personal Project (maybe sometimes called the IB personal project). For example, global contexts are emphasized to promote relevance. Process focus, product creation, and reporting out are also key components in both MYP Design and in the MYP Personal Project.
Product Design Sketching Practice
One final note before getting into the strands deals with sketching. It’s a good idea to have students practice product sketching as much as possible during the Criterion A phase. I found it helpful for students to practice up to 20 minutes per one-hour class.
There are many free, short, and helpful product design drawing videos online. Check out YouTube for guidance. One technique is to do a search for “product design sketching” then filter the duration for under four minutes. After you review and choose one for helpfulness, play and loop the video for your class, and maybe change the speed accordingly. Turn the sound off in almost all most cases. We tended to sketch for accuracy and quantity with a focus on industrial design sketching of products.
Students made sketchbooks from recycled 8.5″ x 11″ paper. Standard number 2 pencils supplemented with 5B, 6B, and 7B drawing pencils produced favorable results.
Why so much sketching? To prepare for their official planning and drawing diagrams requirement in Criterion B, students practiced representing objects visually in nearly every class during Criterion A. I would ask students to be mindful of good sketching practices, but I did not grade each practice sketch. I eventually did include a sketchbook feedback grade that focused on accuracy and productivity.
Strand A.1 – Explain and Justify the Need
After reading, reviewing, and discussing the scenario for the problem to be solved, students typically explain and justify the need for a solution to a problem for the specified client/end-user. By empathizing with their audience, designers are more able to fully justify the need to solve the problem. To the greatest extent possible and as naturally as possible, empathy should be stressed to best help the audience.
Originally after reviewing and discussing the GRASPS, I would ask students to restate the problem and explain why we needed to solve it. Restating the problem required listening and reading comprehension–basically a straightforward task that made sense at the beginning of a unit of learning.
Explaining the “why” was the area that caused the most difficultly for students in this strand. The GRASPS essentially states the problem to be solved as the goal, but the “why” must be synthesized. When mistakes were made, many of the students would write a “what” (i.e., a possible solution) instead of a “why”.
Common Misconceptions – Breaking Down the Problem
Note: Although difficulties in understanding could have been attributable to most of my students being non-native English speakers, nearly all had been in English-speaking classrooms since early elementary school.
How did I try to help kids avoid the what-why mix-up error? Eventually, I made Strand A.1 – Explain and Justify the Need, into three parts:
- What is the problem to be solved?
- What is one possible solution to the problem?
- Why does the problem need to be solved?
By adding a “what” question, students began to better focus on the often-missed “why”. Sometimes I added a “who” question in addition to a “what” as a gentle disrupter as well and to put a focus on the audience. However, if you’re a purest, the “what” could be considered really part of Criterion B – Developing Ideas. I felt the trade-off was worth it to reduce the confusion.
To the greatest extent possible when you finish Strand A.1 – Explain and Justify the Need, make sure that your students know what the problem is, and why they are solving it. By establishing these fundamentals early, students are better set up for success later on in the design process.
Strand A.2 – Identify and Prioritize the Research
Students identify and prioritize the primary and secondary research needed to develop a solution to the problem. If this is your first unit or first unit after a big break, or if you are working with younger designers, it is well worth it to review what primary and secondary resources are.
I never developed my own materials to dig into the benefits of understanding research resources as primary or secondary. I did use the following short video frequently by Imagine Easy Solutions.
Newspapers offer both primary and secondary resources and are easy to access. Consider using them to learn about the benefits and differences between original and interpretive information.
I also used an activity sheet to help students learn about primary and secondary resources. I found it on the Idaho State Historical Society’s website. It originally came from Common Core Sheets. There are 15 source statements and students are asked to identify if the resource is primary or secondary. You might find that some of the responses produce a debate in your classes!
To the greatest extent possible, try to make a primary research experience happen for your students in this strand. If this experience is hands-on, engagement and interest will be even better. Why? Because Criterion A tended to be, at least in my experience, one of the least preferred of the four criteria. Grades tended to be the lowest in Criterion A too.
MYP Design Teaching Tip
For instance, when my students engineered a paper water tank, the official build took place in Criterion C. However, they made rapid prototypes with half the materials to get acquainted with the properties of the newspaper, Popsicle™ sticks, and masking tape as part of their research.
Depending on the nature of the unit and what the students already know, the inquiry questions can be answered here. These questions are factual, conceptual, and debatable in nature and work to establish connections to significant and enduring concepts, principles, and/or theories.
Strand A.3 – Analyze Existing Products
Here, students analyze a range of existing products that inspire a solution to the problem. If you have physical products in the classroom or at home for students to study and inspect, that would be ideal especially for English-language learners. Previously-made student designs inspire interest as well.
In many cases, however, Internet research will be useful and the primary option. Students would need to find and evaluate high-quality, relevant, and useful information about existing products. You may need to pair up with your media specialist to examine ways for help!
I vetted and communicated a set of helpful websites because I worked with 11- and 12-year olds and our academic time was limited. Students would check these resources out first, then maybe go on to perform their own Internet searches about products that inspire solutions.
ACCESS FM Meaning
I recently became aware of ACCESSFM which is a framework to guide product design. It was created by Design Technology guru Spencer Herbert. ACCESSFM can be used as well to focus students’ analyses into studying existing products.
The letters of the ACCESSFM acronym each represent a characteristic of a product to study. Note the questions that students could use while analyzing products to inspire a solution:
- A – Aesthetics – What should be the color, shape, texture, style?)
- C – Cost – What are the material costs, labor costs, time costs?)
- C – Customer – Reference the GRASPS: Who is the audience? What do they want/need?
- E – Environment – How reusable, recyclable, repairable is the product?
- S – Size – Does the size make sense for the context of use? What about similar products?
- S – Safety – How safe is the product to make, use, repair, store?
- F – Function – How well does the product do what it is supposed to do?
- M – Material – What is the product made from? How is this optimal?
Strand A.4 – Develop a Design Brief
If you try internet searches for “examples of design briefs” and “what is a design brief” you encounter aspects of the GRASPS! Design briefs essentially outline the requirements of the project at hand. But what does that look like in MYP Design?
The official Middle Years Programme Design Guide states the following for Year 1 (grade 6): “Students should be able to present the main findings of relevant research.” For Year 3 (grade 8) we have: “Students should be able to develop a detailed design brief which summarizes the analysis of relevant research.”
I did try to have students write design briefs that inspired but did not constrain the designer, but that was too confusing. Trying to under-explain felt contrived, didn’t summarize their Criterion A research experience comfortably, and led to more dislike for Criterion A!
Design briefs for beginning designers are not recommended in the Middle Years Programme Design Guide and more importantly, concluding our research with a design brief didn’t help learning for the age group. Looking back, I was taking my cues primarily from the MYP Design Cycle rather than digging into the Middle Years Programme Design Guide.
A “Brief” Journey
I eventually developed the optimal requirement to be for students to summarize, and present in full detail, the main findings of their relevant research. The “full detail” part tended to be a retelling of much of what was already established in Strand A.1, Explain and Justify the Need unless the “what” for example had changed.
Essentially, students developed a general design summary from an analysis of the relevant information to guide and inspire the designer. Although again, we might have been getting into Criterion B – Developing Ideas a bit, students were required to state: what they were going to make, why they were going to make it, and who the design was for.
MYP Design Criterion A Wrap Up
With an authentic scenario established by the GRASPS and supported by a statement of inquiry, Criterion A can effectively set the stage for MYP Design students to solve problems with success. Both primary and secondary research prepare students well to develop ideas and create a solution.
Hands-on investigations are especially helpful to promote high-engagement learning in MYP Design projects. Summarizing this research at the end of Criterion A officially opens the door to focus on developing ideas in Criterion B.
If you need help with MYP grading, download and check out the grading rubric for MYP Design Criterion A. The language is modified to be more in tune with the needs of Year 1 students.
Do you want more insights into helping Year 1 MYP Design students develop ideas? Check out MYP Design Criterion B – Developing Ideas.