In each charrette, HCDE undergraduate students function as classroom teachers, conducting the workshop, presenting the material, and facilitating the activities of the K– 12 student groups. In addition to guiding the students in the process, they also must exercise good classroom-management practices for a workshop to be successful.

The charrettes are typically offered in classrooms with 20 to 30 students, with special events accommodating as many as 60 participants. We find that it is most effective to have students work in small groups (of usually three to four), having one undergraduate student facilitator for each four to 10 of the K– 12 students. Middle school students generally need more coaching, so more undergraduates are deployed in those classrooms.

The workshops are planned to last between one and five hours. This provides opportunities for the K– 12 students to interact closely with the college students. These interactions often lead to informal conversations between the two groups that are priceless. K– 12 students frequently ask questions about college studies and life outside of academic pursuits.

Having the opportunity to spend time with current undergraduates allows them to envision themselves as college students, which is often difficult for young people, especially in underserved communities.

We find these direct classroom interactions with current undergraduates to be far more effective in generating interest in human-centered design, engineering, and college in general than using traditional “booth and brochure” methods of outreach to K– 12 students.

 

CO-DESIGNING THE CHARRETTE WITH TEACHERS TO FIT THE CLASSROOM SETTING

Our team takes a human-centered approach as we design a charrette.

We identify the needs of the students and research their educational and community environments. HCDE undergraduates co-design the charrette workshops with the classroom teachers.

They interview the teachers about student interests, learning goals, available time, room layout, students with special needs, and classroom technology. This allows us to customize the workshop.

Co-designing with teachers in an urban and rural setting. While we do many workshops locally, near the U W Seattle campus, we also try to reach schools that are outside of this urban area to fulfill our mandate as a public state university. Students in districts farther away from Seattle have a harder time learning about the U W and its myriad opportunities.

To work with schools in distant communities, we collaborate with the U W Pipeline Project [ 2], which has been successfully bringing outreach workshops to remote locations in Washington for decades. In one such effort, we offered a weeklong workshop at Neah Bay High School and Markishtum Middle School, both in Neah Bay, Washington, in conjunction with Pipeline’s Alternative Spring Break (ASB) initiative [ 3].

In Neah Bay, the charrette workshop took place in one-hour class sessions each day for one week, in middle and high school classes.

Planning the curriculum for such a workshop began more than three months in advance. In a visit to the school in the autumn, program leaders met with the school’s educational team to discuss workshop topics and

Figure 1. An HCDE student provides feedback to middle school students on the interaction flow for the app they are designing during a charrette.