Sarah Flicker, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, shares her experience of using Lego teach students about coding.

 

I used Lego in my classroom to help students understand the concept of “coding” in qualitative research. I asked students divide up into groups and:

• Examine their Lego box
• Sort it into meaningful categories
• Build something that illustrates, encapsulates, symbolizes or develops those categories further.

 

They were also given the following guidelines:

• Get creative and have fun
• Include your entire group in the process
• There is no right or wrong way to do this
• You don’t have to use all your pieces.

I gave them 20 minutes for this activity – then we did a gallery walk around the class to examine everyone’s installations.

Students loved this activity. They had a lot of fun and it really helped them get the abstract concepts of the purpose and value of coding. The metaphor of Lego as qualitative data worked well. They really got the idea that order can emerge from the chaos – that you need to be systematic about organizing and cataloging and interesting new patterns can emerge which can be used to build something new and very exciting (Lego structures/theory) out of raw data (Lego).

Our Teaching Commons colleague and faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Natasha May, reflects on her experience using Lego to facilitate a communication activity in her very first class of the Fall 2018 semester.

As it turns out, my students are still quite shy so they didn’t volunteer any answers themselves when I asked them to reflect and then tell me what they learned from the activity last week.  So I began to recount what we did, what I remembered and posed some questions to help get them contributing.   I personalized this by identifying very specifically who experienced what and who offered observations they made.  They either nodded in agreement that I was recounting correctly and when I knew it was safe, that is, the students were comfortable if I called on them individually, I asked specific individuals what they observed and offered to us during the debrief.  Here are our takeaways from the activity, as recounted today:

• The LEGO pieces each pair had, seemed to be different, when the student with the model (teacher) tried to explain what piece they were referring to (this was the train model) the builder (learner) didn’t seem to have the piece or understand what piece they were referring to
• An observation that was made by one of the students observing the interaction was that the teacher then tried to adjust their explanation by explaining the pieces in a different way – they took a different approach.
  • This is a strategy we can use when explaining mathematics solutions.  Specifically, we can work together to solve problems, write our solutions separately to ensure academic integrity, but then verbally explain our solutions to our peers to see if they understand or if we need to adjust our explanation and explain in a different way.
• Another pair had a complicated model, the large plane model.  The learner thought it was going well for the first 3 pieces, but the communication stopped.  To overcome this, the learner asked questions to continue the communication.  The reason the teacher stopped communicating was that he became overwhelmed.  The plane was so complicated and he didn’t know how to describe it and explain how to build it.  An observer identified a strategy he could have used.  She suggested he break the plane down into simpler parts, go step-by-step, focus on a particular area to explain, one step at a time.
  • This is a strategy we can use in our MATH communication and problem solving.  It is common that students have an idea about the solution of a problem in their head, but they are so overwhelmed that they do not know how to translate this to words and to paper. By identifying a place to start, breaking the problem down and going step-by-step they will be able to overcome this communication difficulty.

I used this LEGO communication activity during the very first class of the semester in a 1000-level course.  I used it because one of the threshold concepts of the course is mathematics communication.  Math students generally identify mathematics with equations and formulae and algorithmic solutions.  They have difficulty problem solving and more so, explaining their solutions precisely using complete sentences.  Given my experience with the LEGO communication activity, specifically when Mandy (a fellow Educational Developer) and I did it together and we had a communication breakdown, specifically I built a completely different model than Mandy directed me to.  I thought this was a great activity for my class.  I had the opportunity to realize what I had learned about effective communication through this activity and the fact that our outcome was not desirable, we did not build the same model, and analyzing what happened and what was necessary for effective communication.  So, when I had the opportunity to explain a different model to Mandy, I focused on the strategies I observed would have helped us in the previous activity.  Specifically, describing the pieces precisely, understanding the pieces did not appear the same to me as to her – I thought some pieces were connected already for her, but they were broken down completely.  Also, orientation – understanding what we each mean by “top” “bottom” etc.  So, my purpose for doing this activity on the first day of my class was to introduce the purpose of the course, mathematical communication and giving the students a concrete experience they can refer to (and I can refer to) when we are applying mathematical communication in our course.

I had over 30 students in my class, with round tables and chairs (LSB 107).  I asked for 6 volunteers, asked them to pair, find their own table to sit at, ensure they sit back to back with the builder having access to the table.  I asked students at the tables and around to be the observers, make sure they could see both individuals and their job was to observe, ensure there was no cheating and pay attention to the strategies the builder and communicator were using to communicate, how they were communicating or not and consider the different strategies they may use.  They were also free to make suggestions – meaning I didn’t say they should do this, nor that they couldn’t do this and didn’t stop them from doing it.  Although only one person assisted because the communicator in one pair, had a difficult time.

After pairing the first 6 volunteers, I realized I needed 6 more volunteers as I had 6 models to distribute.  I enticed the next 6 by telling them they would get to play with LEGO.  So we had 6 tables with models being built with 2 to 4 additional observers.  Unfortunately 2 tables had no building, but students at these tables were invited to view from afar, which was possible.  I gave the students 6 minutes to build.  I walked around to observe myself while timing.  Students were surprised how fast the time went.  After the 6 minutes we went through the debrief, where I asked the students how the process went, specifically how did they do?  This prompted discussions on the difficulty of the exercise and specifically what was difficult.  I followed up with questions about how they tried to communicate with each other and what they did when they got “stuck” this resulted in the observations and strategies shared above and the connections made to our course.  I wish I had emphasized more that the outcome wasn’t important and that the process was most important to us.  Focusing on the communication and process not the final build model (or the answer) to connect with our course.  I also wanted to highlight the important of academic integrity and if they had cheated and achieved the outcome, they would have missed out on the valuable learning experience and the process which is most important.   I think I may have said this, but I’m not sure how impactful it was because it didn’t come from the students themselves.