What happens when projects are not graded?

A reflection from IDEAS Project

This is a reflection after our students completed their IDEAS Project in the last week of the school year. The IDEAS Project’s detailed information and rationale can be found in my previous post, Building the community through IDEAS.  

I had a meeting with our school parent representatives and successfully got their support in implementing the IDEAS Project with students. It was important for me to communicate with parents and form a partnership with them in order to help our students grow. I was also very mindful that some parents might think that this was not “learning” as students were doing independent projects and teachers were not available to their child(ren). Transparent communication was essential in this process. Frankly speaking, I was also anxious that the student sign up rate might be low as students had been exhausted from their online learning and I wondered whether they had any energy left to do any project. Some parents and students emailed me and asked if the IDEAS project was optional. I was not able to answer whether it was optional or mandatory. My response was that “It is an opportunity the school has designed to help students explore a topic of their interest and expand their creativity and empathy through helping other people. This is a collaborative project and we hope students will enjoy some social interaction with their friends through making the project collaboratively.” 

Surprisingly, we had about 83% of the students who signed up for the IDEAS Project, and the completion rate was about 86%. I did not think less of the students who did not participate or complete the project. Learning is especially emotional and tiring during this lockdown. Both of my two kids had meltdowns during the period of home learning. They were motivated kids and at the dinner table, they suddenly started to cry and expressed how much they missed school. The psychological impact was significant on children (and of course, adults) and we should not underestimate the impact. We were also able to use this time for some students to catch up on their work as no new assignment was added to the student’s calendar during the last week of school. It was a break for teachers to finish their marking and submit semester report card grades.  

Lots of data are generated at school and we don’t always have time to interpret the data to inform our decision. Looking at the projects that our students have created, I truly feel that students at my school are very curious and motivated in their learning more intrinsically. All students knew their project was not graded, yet they were engaged in conducting their own inquiry and responding to their choice of topic. They were not just consumers of the information; they took a step further and created fantastic content in their own interpretation. I felt this was what John Spencer encouraged schools and educators to do, “making the shift from student engagement to student empowerment“.  

The importance of project management

It took me a while to decide on the platform for project management. I did not want to create another website to showcase the projects. Meanwhile, I’d also like to encourage students to see their project making as a “process”. When you monitor 80 plus projects, it’s crucial to have a platform that can provide you with a quick overview. In the end, I went with Trello and made a video recording to show students and supervisors. Students recorded their process and showcased their final work in their Trello cards. 

Reflection is an essential element of any design thinking project. Students were provided with a template to reflect on their project-making process for each project. If you are interested in these reflection templates to support your students, they can be located in our KIS IDEAS 2020 Trello Board.  

IDEAS Project Showcase

All IDEAS Projects were showcased via our KIS IDEAS 2020 Trello Board. I always share with my students not to be afraid of sharing our ideas with others. It might not be the best idea, but it might be that one idea that will inspire someone somewhere in the world. Here are some great projects to share, and hopefully, they will make you want to visit more projects in our  KIS IDEAS 2020 Trello Board. You will be able to read the meaning of their artwork and projects as well as reflections on their Trello cards. 

Art COVID

COVID t-shirt design

Students responded to one of the challenges and created a Minecraft project. Their final product was a video less than 3 minutes. The ideas were from Minecraft COVID-19 Design Challenges organized by NASEF.

Minecraft Challenge

What’s next?

These projects demonstrated excellent independent learning and the intrinsic motivation of students. We need to continue to create opportunities to empower students and develop their agency. It’s not an easy process as we need to do lots of prepping and provide scaffolding. But it’s an important thing to do as it will prepare students for life and allow them to develop their intellect and creativity.